00:00As the Titanic slipped beneath the waves, a man clung to life, and somehow, against all odds, he survived.
00:10He thought the drama was over, but what awaited him on land was way colder than the Atlantic Ocean on that dreadful night.
00:17When he returned to his home country, Japan, people met him with shame.
00:22Newspapers denounced him. Strangers whispered behind his back.
00:26His only crime, according to them, was that he didn't go down with the ship and with the other passengers.
00:33This is a real story of Masabumi Hasono, the only Japanese person on the Titanic who wrote a letter that sheds new light on the details of the well-known tragedy.
00:44Mr. Hasono was in his early 40s when he set out on his journey aboard the Titanic.
00:50He was a civil servant, working abroad for two years and studying the railway system.
00:54He really missed his beloved wife and children back home, so he couldn't wait for his assignment to be over.
01:01Finally, in 1912, his long-return journey to Japan began.
01:07He got to travel in style with the prestigious RMS Titanic on her maiden voyage.
01:12He made it to London, where he stayed for a short time and bought a new suit, and then to Southampton.
01:17There, he took his place in Titanic's second class.
01:22As he mentioned in his writings, he was impressed with the Titanic's grand views, enticing aromas, and lively music.
01:29At this point, he was counting every sunrise as it meant he was getting closer and closer to home.
01:35On April 14th, the weather was fine, and Hasono woke up at 7 a.m. and had a regular day at the ship.
01:44Around 10 p.m., he almost fell asleep while reading, when suddenly he felt that the ship had hit something.
01:51Then the ship stopped completely.
01:53Hasono didn't take it seriously and just went to sleep.
01:56Just after midnight, a steward knocked on his door.
02:00He gave the passenger a lifebuoy and told him to go up to the lifeboat stations.
02:05Mr. Hasono quickly got dressed and rushed to the deck, where he saw passengers running around in all directions.
02:12No one could tell him what had happened.
02:14The crew had already started launching the lifeboats at that point, but he couldn't make it through.
02:19Somebody from the crew took him for a third-class passenger and told him to return to the lower part of the ship.
02:24When he finally made it to the deck, he saw women and kids getting in the lifeboats.
02:30Unlike what they show in the Titanic movie, it wasn't that dramatic, and passengers were remarkably calm.
02:37No one was shouting.
02:38Many of the men were trying to get into the lifeboats, but the sailors wouldn't let them.
02:42The crew was sending distress flares that were shining bright blue in the night sky.
02:47Mr. Hasono addressed the situation and prepared himself to end his life that day.
02:51Without panic, not to bring shame upon the Japanese people.
02:57The Titanic was tilting at a 45-degree angle when one of the officers shouted that there was room for two more people.
03:04A man immediately jumped in.
03:06Hasono knew if he didn't do the same, he would never see his beloved family again.
03:11So, he jumped inside the lifeboat, and because it was dark and so many things were going on, the conductor didn't notice that two men joined them.
03:20As they were rowing away from the ship, they saw many passengers still on the deck.
03:26They were screaming for help.
03:28By that time, the Titanic was tilting by about 60 degrees.
03:32After a while, they heard three or four loud bangs, and the ship disappeared underwater completely with a strange noise.
03:39He didn't mention that it broke in half, as they show in the movie.
03:44Hasono and one Armenian passenger were the only men in the lifeboat.
03:48The women were crying about their husbands, and husbands who went down with the Titanic.
03:53At this point, our hero realized that people would blame him for sneaking out, and it made him really sad.
04:00They were drifting, and the waves were getting higher and higher.
04:04The human voices coming from the water and begging for help disappeared.
04:08The lucky ones in the lifeboats were now afraid they wouldn't make it out alive either, as they would get hungry and cold really soon.
04:17Only around 3.30 a.m., they saw a ship in the distance.
04:20Half an hour later, the ship called Carpathia reached them.
04:24The boat that Hasono was on was the last to be rescued.
04:28Carpathia saved over 700 people from the Titanic, so it was full to the brim.
04:34When Carpathia started sailing away, Hasono saw many icebergs and was afraid there would be another collision.
04:41They got food and coffee, and when he felt that he was finally safe, he started worrying about the things he had to leave behind on the Titanic.
04:49His foreign coins, watches, new Western clothes, and especially his work notes and diary.
04:55But he still had half a sheaf of stationery with Titanic's letterhead in his coat pockets, on which he had started writing a letter to his wife in English.
05:04Now, he used that piece of paper to describe everything that happened to him, this time in Japanese.
05:11This diary became the only such document known to exist on Titanic's stationery.
05:15There was a roll call for the survivors and collection of personal details on the ship, and everyone received name tags.
05:23When they arrived in New York, Hasono went to the offices of a Japanese company to ask his friends to help him get home as soon as possible.
05:33Then, he traveled to San Francisco and departed for Japan by boat from there.
05:38At that point, his story didn't attract a lot of attention.
05:42One American newspaper just called him the lucky Japanese boy, and that was it.
05:47When he finally made it back to Tokyo, several magazines and newspapers interviewed our hero, and one of them published a photo of him and his family.
05:56And that's when the real drama began.
05:58The Japanese press described him as a coward.
06:01Strangers sent him letters that were less than friendly.
06:04He even lost his job, although he would later get it back thanks to his valuable qualifications.
06:09The media would urge him to take his own life in the spirit of a samurai.
06:14And, some even say, the textbooks mentioned him as an example of how to be dishonorable.
06:20All this because people thought he had selfishly pushed aside women and kids to get into the lifeboat.
06:26They said he had embarrassed Japan.
06:28Although, the women and kids' first idea was not part of the samurai code.
06:32It came to Japan from the West and became one of their values only in the middle of the 19th century.
06:39Back in the United States, a writer who described the disaster in detail called Mr. Hasono a stowaway aboard Lifeboat 10.
06:48The crew member who was in charge of that boat told the U.S. authorities that Hasono and the second man had disguised themselves as women to sneak aboard that boat.
06:57Luckily, this false accusation never reached Japan.
07:01Hasono had to live with the stigma for surviving for the rest of his life.
07:05He tried to avoid the public and didn't let his family members ever mention the Titanic in his house.
07:11He passed away at the age of 68 in 1939.
07:15And even then, he was sure that he was a disgrace to his own family and his entire country.
07:21People would shame his relatives for decades, even after his passing away.
07:25So, his handwritten diary of what happened to him on that horrible April night was sitting in his drawer, well hidden, until 1997.
07:35That year, his family finally decided to publish it.
07:39Once it came out, an American researcher and Titanic scholar wrote that the diary actually contradicted other stories from that night.
07:47Apparently, someone mistook Hasono for another man who was on a different lifeboat.
07:53They said he was acting dishonorably.
07:56Hasono was rowing as hard as he could to save his fellow passengers, and wasn't just sitting there as a stowaway or pretending to be a woman.
08:04That discovery finally restored his honor.
08:06The diary Mr. Hasono kept on Titanic stationery is still one of the most detailed accounts of what happened to the passengers that escaped from the drowning ship, against all odds.
08:22That's it for today.
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08:28Or, if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
