The following article appeared in the Nobeoka Yūkan Daily on
July 1, 2004. This article covers my visit on June 24, 2004, with Toshiyuki Nagahama,
a former member of the Thunder Gods Corps (Jinrai Butai) who flew twice in 1945
toward Okinawa on ōka (piloted rocket-powered glider) missions. He was 18 years old at
the time. On the first mission from Kanoya Air Base, he returned because of zero visibility around Okinawa. During
the second flight, American Grumman fighters fired on his Type 1 (Betty)
bomber that carried the ōka, and he barely made a forced landing on the small
island of Kikaijima. Out of the nine planes in his squadron that day, only his plane
returned.
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