Saburo Sakai, Japan's leading living ace has passsed away. He was at a dinner with other WW2 aces and went to shake hands and had a heart attack.

His story is inspirational and amazing. The name of his autobiography is "Samurai!" and it was published in the mid-1950's. It gives you an incredible insight into the Japanese psyche- for example they were required during training to jump off a 50 foot tower onto concrete. By using acrobatic flips they were expected to land without injury. Many times however this led to serious injuries and several deaths.