It’s been more than 100 years since the Titanic sank.

While considered the most talked about ship tragedy in history, it’s the stories of the passengers that were onboard that have us still searching for answers.

But, recently, one passenger is getting recognition for having been wrongly accused of being a coward and being forced to live his life in shame. Instead, historians have learned, he was a hero.

Masabumi Hosono was a Japanese man who worked for his government’s ministry of transportation. He had been working in Russia and was finally heading home after two years. He made his way to England and boarded the Titanic when it docked there. 

In recently discovered letters to his wife, Hosono spoke of the ‘lively music’ and ‘grand views’ on the Titanic. But more than anything, he wanted to see his family again.

With every golden sunrise, I was closer to home.”

Those letters written by Hosono and finally released by his family more than 90 years later, are considered the most detailed record of the tragedy. And, they are what exonerated him.

Survivors of the RMS Titanic in one of the ship’s collapsible lifeboats, just before being picked up by the Carpathia, April 15, 1912. Photo from Universal History Archive/Getty Images

The Titanic struck an iceberg on April 14th, 1912. By the following day, the ship had sank, taking with it more than 1,500 lives.

Hosono was one of 700 who survived. On the night of the tragedy, Hosono was told to go to the lower decks, away from where the lifeboats were. He tried to tell the crew that he was not a passenger on the lower decks, but no one, he wrote, would listen. 

So he slipped past guards, and made it up to the ship’s deck. After seeing the crowded lifeboats, he wrote that he knew he wouldn’t make it and prepared himself to “die an honorable samurai death.”

But suddenly a ship officer yelled that there was ‘room for two more’ and Hosono, after seeing another man jump into the lifeboat, quickly followed him. Even then, he expressed, he knew he might be judged for his actions. 

“I myself was plunged into desolation at the thought of not being able to see my beloved wife and children again since there was no other solution for me than to share the same destiny as the Titanic,” Hosono wrote.

But the example of the first man to jump pushed me to take this last chance.”

Once in the lifeboat, Hosono began rowing and got himself and the other passengers away from the suction of the Titanic going underwater.

Hosono’s letters.

As he had wished for, he did make it back to his family in Japan. But once home, he was shamed by society, called dishonorable for not following the ‘women and children first’ principle. He spent his life in seclusion, living as a recluse until his death in 1930.

But once his writings were released, historians knew the man had been wrongly exiled. The letters proved that Hosono had been mistaken for another Asian man who had acted ‘ignobly’, and who was also in a different lifeboat than Hosono.

More importantly, the letters showed that Hosono was only on the lifeboat at the urging one of the ship’s officer. His actions on the lifeboat, historians said, saved other lives.

“It’s a very sad thing that it took us 85 years to be able to put this piece together,” said Matt Taylor, an American researcher and Titanic scholar.

The discovery immediately “restores his honor and credibility,” he said.

Also with that discovery, I think, is the option to consider what we would do in a desperate situation where no real choice is the best one, and death seems all but certain.

As Hosono wrote, “On that cold and terrifying April night, in a single moment, I seized an opportunity. And I chose life.”

For a look at the tragic, yet heroic life, of Hosono, watch below.

Sources: Upworthy | Business Insider | Seattle Times