Modern War Heroes

Neither spoke the other’s language, but both spoke a bit of French, and, during the three days that Lopardo was waiting for American intelligence agents to take Sakai into custody to find out what he knew about the Japanese military’s plans, the two young, frightened men created a bond.

Sakai believed that the American intelligence officers would kill him after they extracted the information they needed. If he did manage to survive, he thought that the shame upon him for surrendering would be so great that he would never be allowed to return home. So he had a special request for Lopardo.

While the two soldiers waited in the foxhole, Sakai passed Lopardo two photos: a black-and-white image of him and his wife, who he had married the year before; and a photo of the couple and their 4-year-old niece. Sakai gave the photographs to Lopardo, asking him to keep them safe—and, if possible, to send them home to his family, who he believed he would never see again.

Lopardo accepted the request, and kept the photos safe in his possession throughout the rest of the war, and after his return home to his family. He never found out what happened to Sakai, and though he searched for the Japanese soldier’s family, he was never able to locate them.

“He told me and my sister, Lisa, about his desire to return the photos, but he never really had a way to do it,” Lopardo’s son Steve told the San Diego Union Tribune. “This was the days before the Internet. Finding people was a lot harder.”

But after Lopardo’s death a few years ago, Steve decided to take on his father’s quest. He tracked down soldiers from his father’s battalion, looked at previously-classified interrogation reports, and even talked to Japanese tourists he encountered about his mission, but found no leads.

However, one of the tourists he’d met had told a newspaper about his story, and it soon got picked up a Japanese television station. A Japanese government official who saw the program decided to put his staff’s efforts into locating the family.

Finally, last September, Steve Lopardo received an email from a Japanese official: “We found the family, it said. “Will you come and deliver the photos?”

Soon, Lopardo hopped on a plane to Yokohama to fulfill his father’s legacy, not knowing what to expect. On his arrival, he discovered that Sakai had not been killed or shunned after all—he had given the American troops a fake name to protect his family. After his release, Sakai (actually Sakamoto) returned home to his family. He and his wife had six children together, and both passed away in the late 1980s.

Sakai’s son and two daughters were there to welcome Lopardo—along with Sakai’s niece, who was in the photograph.

“Sixty-three years ago, my father accepted these photographs from Taizo Sakai and promised to safeguard them,” Lopardo said in Japanese—he didn’t speak the language, but had gotten his speech translated, and practiced it for weeks, so that he would be able to communicate with Sakai’s family. “With respect to both our ancestors, I now return them to your family.”

After passing over the photographs, fulfilling the promise that his father had made to that frightened Japanese soldier so many years ago, Lopardo’s eyes filled with tears.