It was past 6 a.m. on May 2, 1972, when Yoshikuni Horiuchi, the first deputy manager of the Bank of Japan’s Naha Branch, rushed to the Naha military port to welcome the Maritime Self-Defense Force transport ships that were carrying ¥54 billion in cash from Tokyo.
From the fourth floor of a BOJ staff apartment in Naha, the pair of ships — the Osumi and the Shiretoko — looked like two matchboxes on the horizon as dawn broke.
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