Word: tachikawa
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Like an eggbeater marching through a bowl of Wheaties, Air Force Lieut. Colonel Charles H. Platt Jr. led his wife and four children through the crowded, throbbing Military Air Transport Service terminal at suburban Tokyo's Tachikawa Airport, largest military airbase in Japan. MATS clerks straightened, for Colonel Platt was notable local brass: he was commanding officer of the MATS terminal. Off on a 14-day leave in Hawaii, Platt called for booking-six seats-on the Pacific Express, a 41-passenger C-118 due out within minutes on a U.S.-bound milk...
Grey -haired, cigar -chewing Bobby Burns, bemedaled 31-year Air Force veteran, heard Bell out, called the terminal to verify his story, then rang up Tachikawa tower. To the Pacific Express, already a hundred miles out, sparked a cryptic radio message: return to base. At first the pilot protested, but Tachikawa transmitted an unmilitary postscript: "You'd better do it, sir, or the general says he will have your plane brought back under air escort...
Broken rain clouds hung low over Tachikawa Air Base last week as the EUR-124 Globemaster, biggest of the Air Force's transport craft, lumbered to the end of the runway. Visibility was a safe 2½ miles, and the 122 Air Force and Army passengers chatted easily as the massive, two-deck plane made a perfect takeoff...
...assembly lines. But the Hellcats, Hell-divers and Avengers (perhaps also Corsairs and Dauntlesses) had other targets this day: the great complex of airfields around the capital, such as the Kasumigaura naval air base (used by both land and sea planes), 50 miles north of the city, and the Tachikawa army air base, 15 miles...
...Tachikawa Airport the flyers were met by a squad of police, headed by a highly indignant chief of foreign police. What did they mean by flying into Japan without permission? Well, they thought it would be all right. Would they please show on the map what route they had taken? Certainly. . . . Indignation rose to fury. They had flown over Tsugaru Strait, which is fortified; the naval post at Ominato; the concealed fortifications near Tokyo Bay. They had landed for a moment on the new airport at Haneda, not yet opened to traffic-all forbidden areas. And they had taken photographs...