By
Scott Schwartz
Although
devastating when they hit their targets, the Ohka was deployed too late to
affect the course of the war. Even so,
the Ohka and “conventional” kamikaze
attacks exacted a terrible toll, with over twelve thousand American servicemen
killed as a result of these attacks.
And
what became of Ota, Miki, and Ichikawa?
Ota actually stole an airplane three days after the war ended,
supposedly intending to mount a suicide attack.
He wound up ditching in the ocean and was picked up by a fishing
boat. Fearing that he would be arrested
as a war criminal, he hid out in a fishing village – surfacing only
occasionally to borrow money (which he never paid back) from other surviving
Ohka pilots. He was last seen in
1949.
Tadanao
Miki refused to discuss the development of the Ohka and refused to release any
of his documents after the war ended.
That changed when he happened to see an American documentary entitled Test Pilot, which chronicled the
development of the Bell X-1 rocket plane.
Something about the X-1 being carried aloft and released by its large
mother plane seemed familiar to him, and he decided that his war-time work
might have some scientific value.
As
for Petty Officer Ichikawa, he died in 1980, after his aerial survey company
went bankrupt. In poor health, he spent
his last days living alone in a run-down room.
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