''Samurai!'' is a 1957 autobiographical book on Saburo Sakai, ghostwritten by

Martin Caidin Martin Caidin (September 14, 1927 – March 24, 1997) was an American author, screenwriter, and an authority on aeronautics and aviation. Caidin began writing fiction in 1957. In his career he authored more than 50 fiction and nonfiction books ...

based on interviews with Fred Saito. It describes the life and career of Sakai, a Japanese combat aviator who fought against American fighter pilots in the

Pacific Theater The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, surviving the war as one of

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

's leading

flying ace A flying ace, fighter ace or air ace is a military aviation, military aviator credited with shooting down a certain minimum number of enemy aircraft during aerial combat; the exact number of aerial victories required to officially qualify as an ...

s. Caidin wrote the prose of the book, basing its contents on Saito's interviews with Sakai as well as on Sakai's own memoirs. According to an analysis of official Japanese records, Sakai had 28 aerial victories, which includes shared victories, while the book claims 64 kills. The same source claims that

intentionally inflated those numbers to generate publicity for that book. It also attests that many of the stories written in his books are fiction and that the claims made in ''Samurai!'' are very different from the content of Japanese works on his life.''Zero Fighters of Our Grandfathers'' . Kodansha. . pp. 315–325. In a 1998 interview with writer Naoki Kodachi, Sakai claimed to have never met Caidin prior to the book's publication, and that the 64 kills number was made up, possibly as an allusion to the battles of

Miyamoto Musashi , was a Japanese swordsman, strategist, artist, and writer who became renowned through stories of his unique double-bladed swordsmanship and undefeated record in his 62 duels. Miyamoto is considered a ''Kensei (honorary title), kensei'' (swo ...

. However he claimed the true number is "not far off".Dialogue with Saburo Sakai

References

1957 non-fiction books Aviation books {{WWII-book-stub

See also

References