As the RMS Titanic was rapidly sinking at the bow into the cold, dark depths of the Atlantic Ocean, a lone Japanese traveler was faced with a dilemma – jump into the lifeboat that was slowly lowering before his eyes for salvation, or die with honor.
It was almost 1:20 am as lifeboat 10 launched with 55 of its 65 seats occupied. It was the 7th to launch that night. By this time, the situation was so chaotic that crew members were frantically throwing children and women into the boat whether they wanted to go or not – women who did not want to leave their husbands, children crying and frightened beyond their years.
Masabumi Hosono, 42, was that Japanese traveler, a transportation official who had gone to Europe to study its rail systems. He had boarded the luxury liner in Southampton as a Second Class passenger which, perhaps, foretold of his future. He had tried to get topside many times that night but all "foreigners" had been ordered to stay away from the lifeboats.
As the end neared for the great ship, Hosono finally found himself up top near lifeboat 10, after finally getting past a ship's officer. A man standing next to him at the rail jumped into the boat as it was swinging away from the ship, desperate to survive.
"I tried to prepare myself for the last moment with no agitation, making up my mind not to leave anything disgraceful as a Japanese," Hosono later wrote in a letter to his wife. He told her that he had given no thought to the gold European coins or travel notes left behind. Later though, he regretted their loss. "After all," he wrote, "The human mind is a strange and unaccountable affair."
As he was perhaps staring at lifeboat 10, honor rooting his feet to the deck boards, an officer ordered him into the boat. He was an able-bodied man and could help row the vessel. He jumped without hesitation. Hosono helped row the boat far enough away so that it would not be dragged down by Titanic. He sat there as all the rest of the survivors and watched and listened to those left on board screaming in fear as the ship went down.
At 3:20 am the final cries from where the Titanic had been ended. At 4:00 am the Carpathia arrived, and by 8:00 am all lifeboats had been rescued of passengers.
Sometime during Hosono's trip to New York on the Carpathia, Hosono wrote a letter to his wife. He poured out all his unvoiced emotions of the tragedy. He wrote of the strange, wordless panic of women and children as they were rushed silently into lifeboats – and of the screams of those thousands left on the ocean liner. "What had been a tangible, graceful sight was now reduced to a mere void," he wrote. "And how I thought about the inevitable vicissitudes of life!"
Hosono returned to Japan, but not as a gallant survivor but as an ostracized man. He had been wrongly identified in the world press as another Asian man who had been in lifeboat 13 and who had behaved "badly." The Tokyo press even suggested that he commit ritual suicide to save face. He lost his job and was a social outcast even after his death in 1939.
85 years later, Hosono's honor is on the mend. First, his granddaughter found and published Hosono's diary in an attempt to clear his name. And then, in 1997, researchers persuaded the family to publish the powerful letter that he wrote on the Carpathia to his wife. Now, there is considerable proof that Masabumi Hosono was and always will be, an honorable man.
Desiré‚ Gonzales, a native Californian, has written non-fiction since 1986. She has also written screenplays and fiction in a variety of genres, including science fiction, horror and fantasy. She is a member of the National Writers Union and the Romance Writers of America, Orange County and Kiss of Death Chapters.
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