History and airplane fans, pen this in for your Tuesday, May 31 schedule.
Ishitsuka Masahide, 55, an entrepreneur who renders sheep into flight jackets (company Website here http://www.thefewmfg.com/top.html ), has lived in Christchurch, New Zealand for 30 years, so he certainly is no stranger to earthquakes. His business has apparently been sufficiently lucrative to afford him the purchase in 2010 of one of the few remaining functional Zero fighter planes from a collector in America (the photo at the link shows the plane flying over California; more photos here http://tinyurl.com/hgnm2b8 ). After being transport back to Japan, the plane took its first test flight over Kagoshima in January of this year. He had planned to first publicly exhibit the craft in April, but the Kumamoto quakes caused a rethink.
Instead, the plane is now scheduled to make the 30-minute flight from Kagoshima to Kumamoto airport, arriving around 11:30 on Tuesday, May 31. After checks, the plane is expected to depart at 13:00 for a flight over Mashiki and Minamiaso. Ishitsuka-san, whose factory suffered damage in the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake, said, “I know that the continuing aftershocks stain the soul with fear. Psychologically, it is a difficult time. I hope the sight of the Zero will be of some help to alleviate this.”
Kumamoto has a deep relationship with Mitsubishi, the builder of the Zero, and while that model was never built here, others were. I’ll introduce this in a future post. - William
