Corona man found dead

A dead man found on a drifting yacht off Japan on Wednesday has been identified as Sakae Hatashita, an 81-year-old Corona resident who sailed alone for seven months last year from San Diego to Japan to fulfill a promise to his late wife.

The cause of death is under investigation.

According to friends, Hatashita was born in the United States, but was raised and married in Japan. After World War II, he worked as a skipper on a tuna boat before returning to the U.S. with his wife in the early 1970s.

In 1997 his wife, Shizuko, was killed in a car accident. On the seventh anniversary of her death, he decided to honor a vow he’d made to her -- to bury her remains in Japan. He sold his house, bought the yacht and set out across the Pacific on May 17, 2004.

He survived typhoons, a capsizing and a collision with a fishing boat, which left him with a deep wound and collapsed the sail of his boat and punctured its hull. He reached Japan on Dec. 17 malnourished and bleeding.

During the six months he spent in Japan, before setting out on the return voyage, friends begged him to fly home rather than sail, but he declined.

“Planes fall,” his friends quoted him as saying. “They’re very dangerous. Boats don’t fall.”

-- Scott Doggett