Yes he was shot through the eye by the tail gunner on a Dauntless. A .30 cal. bullet through the eye would stop most people but Sakai made it back home even tho he was passing in and out of consciousness.
He was based at Lai and I remember him saying at one time that a fellow pilot told him American Marines had landed on New Guinea and were fighting like demons.
I read his book, and sometime after that I saw a sit-down interview of him on the History Channel, probably made in the 70’s ( It seems like there’s a lot these WWII interviews from around the same time. )
You could hear him speaking in japanese, but they had an english voice-over. He described his near shoot down and said what was going through his mind. As I recall, “Now I was to meet the fate I had dealt to so many others. I could only say to myself, ‘Killed in action! Killed in action!’ “