Masamitsu Yoshioka, the last known Japanese survivor of the air group that took part in the Raid on Pearl Harbor, has died aged 106. Yoshioka was a 23-year-old bombardier at the time and dropped a torpedo that sunk the unarmed battleship USS Utah (according to the Japan Times, this was by mistake). While The Japan Times doesn’t specify which plane he flew, it was likely a Nakajima B5N torpedo bomber
. Among the

Japanese aircraft taking part in the raid was also the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter
.

Yoshioka’s participation in WW2

According to The Japan Times, Masamitsu Yoshioka was the last of the 770 airmen who took part in the fateful Raid on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The raid brought the US formally into the Pacific War (and shortly after, the War in Europe), making the conflict truly World War II
. The attack on Pearl Harbor took place 83 years ago, and the war ended around 79 years ago. Yoshioka stated in an interview last year, “I’m ashamed that I’m the only one who survived and lived such a long life.”

Yoshioka was born in 1918, joined the Imperial Japanese Navy at the age of 18, and took part in operations against Nationalist China before attacking Pearl Harbor.

He was assigned to the Japanese aircraft carrier Sōryū (which was sunk the following year in the Battle of Midway by dive bombers from the USS Yorktown – which was, in turn, sunk in that battle). At the time of the Battle of Midway, Yoshioka was on leave.

He also took part in the Indian Ocean raid of 1942 that drove the British Royal Navy from the region. He later fell ill with malaria in the Philippines in 1994, before the Battle of Peleliu. When Japan started using kamikaze attacks, Yoshioka’s aircraft had been grounded due to a lack of spare parts. It is unclear if he would otherwise have been ordered to carry out a kamikaze attack—those were mostly carried out by

green pilots with cheap disposable aircraft
and not by veteran pilots.

uss-arizona-burning-after-the-japanese-attack-on-pearl-harbor-naid-195617

By the time Japan surrendered, Joshioka was at an air base in Japan. After the war, he served in the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force and later for a transport company.

The Raid on Pearl Harbor

The US Pacific Fleet’s battleship force was devastated by the raid – with 8 battleships sunk or damaged. Most of these were later raised and returned to service (with the notable exception of the USS Arizona, which claimed around half of those killed). The USS Utah was an old dreadnought battleship that had been demilitarized in 1931 and was serving as a training ship. In all, the US lost 188 aircraft destroyed and another 159 damaged. A total of 2,403 military and civilians were killed.

Nakajima_B5N Kate torpedo bomber

During the raid, the Japanese lost only 29 aircraft, five midget submarines, and 64 Japanese servicemen. The raid was part of a larger near-simultaneous Japanese attack against British Malaya, Papua New Guinea, and Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and the US Philippines and Wake Island (Yoshioka also took part in the invasion of Wake Island).

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