“Everything” about JFK, wrote journalist Robert T. Hartmann in 1960 of Kennedy’s PT 109 experience, “dates from that adventure,” “the only time Kennedy ever was wholly on his own, where the $1 million his father gave him wouldn’t buy one cup of water.” Kennedy’s mettle and leadership had been proven, and yet his brush with death marked him. The tragic episode haunted Kennedy, and triggered the little-known story of his 1951 journey to American-occupied Tokyo to try to find the Japanese man who had nearly killed him, and who did take the lives of two men in his command. But when he got to
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