that were encountered, whether they were armed or not. On a patrol with his Zero over Java, just after he had shot down an enemy aircraft, Sakai encountered a civilian Dutch Douglas DC-3 flying at low altitude over dense jungle. Sakai initially assumed that it was transporting important people and signaled to its pilot to follow him, but the pilot did not obey. Sakai descended and approached the DC-3. He then saw a blonde woman and a young child through a window, along with other passengers. The woman reminded him of Mrs. Martin, an American who occasionally had taught him as a child in middle school and had been kind to him. He ignored his orders, flew ahead of the pilot, and signaled him to go ahead. The pilot and the passengers saluted him. Sakai did not mention the encounter in the aerial combat report. During the Borneo Campaign, Sakai achieved 13 more victories before he was grounded by illness. When he recovered three months later in April, Petty Officer First Class Sakai joined a squadron (chutai) of the Tainan Kōkūtai under Sub-Lieutenant Junichi Sasai at Lae, New Guinea. Over the next four months, he scored the majority of his victories in flying against American and Australian pilots based at Port Moresby. A myth has been perpetuated over time but declared to be product of the imagination of Martin Caidin, the co-author of Sakai's book "Samurai." Supposedly, on the night of 16 May, Sakai and his colleagues, Hiroyoshi Nishizawa and Toshio Ota, were listening to a broadcast of an Australian radio program, and Nishizawa recognized the eerie "Danse Macabre" of Camille Saint-Saëns. Inspired, Nishizawa is said to have come up with the idea of doing demonstration loops over the enemy airfield. The next day, his squadron included fellow aces Hiroyoshi Nishizawa and Toshio Ōta. At the end of an attack on Port Moresby, which had involved 18 Zeros, the trio performed three tight loops in close formation over the allied air base. Nishizawa indicated that he wanted to repeat the performance. Diving to , the three Zeros did three more loops without receiving any AA fire from the ground. The following day, a lone Allied bomber flew over the Lae airfield and dropped a note attached to a long cloth ribbon. A soldier picked up the note and delivered to the squadron commander. It read (paraphrased): "Thank you for the