An annual memorial service for a dozen young American soldiers and a Japanese pilot who died in two separate plane crashes in August 1945 will resume this month at a small stone monument erected for them in the town of Takachiho, Miyazaki Prefecture.
Over time, residents had all but forgotten the two crashes, which each occurred on a nearby mountainside. But in the autumn of 1987, the accidents came to fresh light when local historian Hiroshi Kudo came across parts of the crashed U.S. B-29 bomber while climbing Mt. Oyaji.
In the absence of local records or press reports from the time, Kudo began to look into the B-29 crash on his own. His discovery of the crash made him feel he was "destined" to study it, he recalled.