Kurashi - News From Japan

Amazing images from April, 1937 as the Kamikaze-go landed at Croydon, London. From my new friends at the HCAT Archives, Peter Skinner and Ian Forsyth. Record breaking flight from Tokyo. Can you spot Tsukagoshi climbing out of the airplane in the first picture? That's the easy one. Finding Iinuma in the last image may be more difficult, what with all the London policemen escorting him. He smiles a lot, holding on to a bunch of flowers, and is rather sun burnt from the long flight over the desert. Don't you think he was the happiest man on earth, that day. It inspired my wish to write about his long flight from Japan to Europe. And you can order my novel about it here, Kamikaze to Croydon . Bonus image: I took this photo of Iinuma Masaaki's pilot licence at his museum in Nagano:

Just a few years before I first arrived on these shores, TV Asahi made a special dramatization about the events I cover in my novel, Kamikaze to Croydon . Order it here at Amazon The 1985 TV drama is a bit silly, but then so was a lot of TV back then. These scenes, however, are really beautiful, filmed with a model airplane, set to the music by Brahms. 美貌なれ昭和 (Bibonare Showa) means something like "The Beautiful Showa" and the dramatization included segments about the female Japanese violinist, Nejiko Suwa , who was studying and performing in Europe during the 1930s until 1945. Enjoy. Now, if seeing that makes you want to make a balsa wood model of the Ki-15 , there are the drawings and lots of helpful advice, from Mike Stuart in the UK! Thanks for finding, P.

It was just great to take the train and then the bus and suddenly it was there, way south of London, this airport that had been a fixture of my imagination for so long. The end of the journey for the two characters in my novel, and there it was. A much larger white Art Deco building than I had imagined, and as I took the tour, "Where is the airfield?" I had to ask. The Tower has been wonderfully restored and is also used for offices. You can take the tour and walk up into the Tower, and enjoy the displays. And, yes! There is a delightful collection of photos and other items related to the 1937 flight from Tokyo. Peter Skinner was my guide, and he invited me to the Archives, where I could go through their official file called "Divine Wind" - the translation of the Japanese word kamikaze. Remember, please, that the April 1937 flight that I describe in my novel happened before the end of WW2, when that particular word took on a completely different meani...