FLIGHT TO TOKYO

On 10 March 1942 two planes left the Bangkok airport for Tokyo. Aboard one were Fujiwara, Colonel Iwakuro, Mohan Singh, Lieutenant- Colonel Gill, N. Raghavan, S.C. Goho, and K.P.K. Menon. Fujiwara felt Headquarters had singled out Colonel Iwakuro to succeed him in the expanded and reorganized Kikan. Iwakuro had taken part in the Washington peace talks between Hull and Nomura just prior to Pearl Harbour and was renowned in army circles for his political acumen. He was a powerful figure in the Army High Command, so powerful that some officers believed Töjö had sent him to Malaya in command of an infantry regiment of the Konoe Imperial Guards Division to remove him from the scene in Tokyo. En route to Tokyo Fujiwara told Iwakuro of his hopes and plans for Japan's India policy and for co-operation with the Indian independence movement. Fujiwara was encouraged at the prospect of Iwakuro bringing his influence to bear on the military, the Government, and the Diet to impress on them the importance of India.

Fujiwara's plane left Saigon on 11 March, was delayed two days on Hainan Island, and stopped in Shanghai en route to Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Headquarters had arranged for the delegates to be taken to the Sanno Hotel, where the meetings were to be held. Some Indian delegates had already arrived from Shanghai and Hong Kong.

It had been arranged that the second plane carrying the party of Pritam Singh, the Swami, Captain Akram and F Kikan member Otaguro would arrive in Tokyo on the evening of 19 March.

On the morning of 19 March a violent wind swept over Honshu and became increasingly fierce as the afternoon wore on. The sky over Tokyo grew black and toward evening a torrential rain began to fall. Fujiwara assumed the flight from Shanghai would have been cancelled because of the weather, but in the afternoon he received a report that the flight had left Shanghai for Tokyo. The logical course would be then to land in north Kyushu or Osaka and lay over until the weather cleared. Fujiwara had a call from Haneda Airport with word that the plane had reported over Ise Bay headed east. This was the last communication from the plane.