The morning of May 5, 1945, the submarine USS Atule was lurking in Bungo-Suido, the strait between the southern Japanese Islands of Shikoku and Kyushu. The Atule was on a "lifeguard" mission, prepared to pick up any U.S. airmen shot down. Overhead circled a B-29, the Atule's "Dumbo" military lingo for a plane that watched over the sub and helped it communicate.

At 10 a.m., about 12 miles off the Japanese shore, the sub crew spotted tow Japanese planes coming toward them. The single-engine Japanese warplanes spotted the submarine and the B-29 spotted the enemy planes. One of the Japanese plane turned and headed back for the home base, while the other made for the Atule, which was at periscope depth. The captain of the Atule watched the confrontation and kept a minute-by-minute log. The bigger, faster, better-armed B-29 wheeled and shot the Japanese plane from the air, ripping it apart with .50-caliber slugs.

The Atule surfaced and found two of the Japanese crewmen dead, the third wounded and burned on his face but alive. They took him below to an empty torpedo room and gave him a mattress made from spare rags. At first he wouldn't reveal his name, so the sailors called him Bungo, for the body of water where he crashed. The pharmacist mate on the Atule treated the prisoner's burns with petroleum jelly and bandages, all that was available.

After a month the Atule returned from duty, and the prisoner was turned over to the Marines at Midway Island. The prisoner, Lt. Masayoshi Kojima, was moved to several prison camps, some of which he can't remember. In January 1946, he was returned to Japan.