History of Hawaii
Pearl Harbor was surprisingly attacked on December 7, 1941 by the Imperial Japanese Navy, killing 2,403 people and sinking the main American battleship fleet. Fortuitously, the four Pacific aircraft carriers were not in port and escaped damage. Hawaii was put under martial law until 1945. Unlike the West Coast of the United States in which 100,000 ethnic Japanese citizens were interned, the Japanese American population in Hawaii completely avoided such similar fate, though hundreds of pro-Japan leaders were arrested. Pearl Harbor was the U.S.' main forward base for the Pacific War. The Japanese tried to invade in summer 1942 but were defeated at the Battle of Midway. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen passed through on their way to the fighting.
Kazuo Sakamaki
Sakamaki was one of ten sailors (five officers and five petty officers) selected to attack Pearl Harbor in two-man "Ko-hyoteki" class midget submarines on 7 December 1941. Of the ten, nine were killed (including the other crewman in his submarine, Kiyoshi Inagaki). He had been chosen for the mission due to his large number of siblings. Sakamaki had set an explosive charge to destroy his disabled submarine, which had been trapped on Waimanalo Beach, Oahu. When the explosives failed to go off, he swam to the bottom of the submarine to investigate the cause of the failure and became unconscious due to a lack of oxygen. The book "Attack on Pearl Harbor" claims that his sub hit four coral reefs and sank. Sakamaki was found by a US soldier, David Akui, and was taken into military custody. When he awoke, he found himself in a hospital under US armed guard. Sakamaki became the first Japanese prisoner of war in US captivity during World War II and was stricken from Japanese records and officially ceased to exist. His submarine was captured intact and was subsequently taken on tours across the United States as a means of encouraging the purchase of war bonds.