Raffaello Kobayashi

Raffaello Kobayashi, born as Raffaele Sanzio (Bari, 14 January 1917 – Yokohama, 1 April 2011), was an Italian petty officer second class who was later naturalized as a Japanese citizen.

A submariner during World War II, he served for all three major Axis powers: the Kingdom of Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Japanese Empire. At the end of the war, he hid in Japan to avoid internment in a prison camp, eventually becoming a Japanese citizen and changing his name.

He took part in the sinking of HMS Calypso in 1940, Italy's first naval success of World War II.

After World War II Raffaello lived in hiding for several years to avoid imprisonment by the Allied Powers. He first married in 1947, with a woman known as Ichido Fumico, but he'd later remarry with Maruko Kobayashi. For many years, Raffaello was involved in a legal battle with the Italian Embassy in Tokyo, refusing to receive correspondence addressed to him and protesting against his children being included in the military conscription lists, but at the same time protesting that he had not been invited, like all Italian citizens residing in Tokyo, to the Republic's Day celebrations. The Italian state had also failed to recognize his right to a pension. In 1996, during a visit to Japan by the political secretary of Alleanza Nazionale, Gianfranco Fini, who had already expressed support for Raffaello's cause in the past, he was granted the right to a pension, with all arrears included. He died in Yokohama in 2011, aged 94 years old.