KOCHI -- Some 30 years ago, a U.S. military plane crashed into a Kochi Prefecture dam near a child care center under the "Orange Route," a training path for low-altitude flights by U.S. military aircraft in western Japan. For one former police chief, this is an unforgettable incident.

"It could have led to a tragedy," reflected 82-year-old Yoshiyuki Nakamura who now lives in the city of Kochi. At the time Nakamura was the chief of Motoyama Police Station (now the Motoyama office of Kochi Higashi Police Station), in Kochi Prefecture. He was one of the first officers to arrive at the scene after a U.S. military aircraft conducting low-altitude flight training crashed into the Sameura Dam lake in the nearby village of Okawa.

At around 3 p.m. on Oct. 14, 1994, during a regular Friday meeting in the police station chief's office, Nakamura heard the deafening roar of a jet flying overhead. "They're flying again," he thought.

The police station was located in the center of Motoyama, directly under the Orange Route, where U.S. military planes sometimes fly lower than the ridges of the Shikoku Mountains. The roar of jets was not unusual, but Nakamura that day felt something was amiss. The sound seemed to reverberate more than usual. "Is it flying low?" he wondered. There was no sound of a crash, however, and the noise was not enough to interrupt the executive meeting.

Shortly after 5 p.m., Nakamura went out for dinner with a few station officials to a restaurant in a neighboring town after work, but as soon as they arrived, he received a phone call from an on-duty officer. He was informed that a U.S. military plane had disappeared from radar nearby. "That must be it," Nakamura thought, recalling the noise he had heard from his office. He issued an emergency summons for officers, and in a vehicle driven by an officer, they headed upstream along the Yoshino River to the predicted crash site.

They eventually arrived at a spot near the Okawa village office facing the upper reaches of the Yoshino River. It was still light there, but there were no signs of smoke or trees knocked down, as typically seen in aircraft crashes. The residents they passed showed no signs of panic.

They had been traveling along the road on the left bank of the river (the north side). Nakamura instructed the officer to cross over to the right bank. The road on this side was narrower, about 3 meters wide, with few passing vehicles. There they noticed multiple metal and plastic fragments scattered on the road, each about 5 to 6 centimeters long.

"Stop the traffic here," Nakamura said, instructing his staff to regulate general vehicle traffic to preserve the scene. However, there were no abnormalities with the nearby power lines or trees, and there were no unusual smells either.

The next day, Oct. 15, a parachute and parts of the pilot's body from the crashed aircraft were found nearby. It turned out that the plane had crashed into the lake, piercing through its surface.

That year, rainfall from early spring had been low, and the water storage rate of Sameura Dam dropped to 0% at one point, revealing the old village office from the lakebed. By fall, the water level had recovered somewhat but it was still lower than usual. Nakamura believes the plane crashed into the lakebed, and that this prevented the aircraft's debris from scattering over a wide area.

It was a normally peaceful jurisdiction, with election violations and storehouse burglaries being about the only cases police had to deal with. But now a U.S. military plane had suddenly crashed there. Apart from the two crew members who died, there were no other human casualties, but there were children at a village day care center about 200 meters from the site. Nakamura said, "If the aircraft's debris had scattered widely, it could have led to a tragedy." Even some 30 years on, the incident remains etched in his memory.

US military plane crash in the Sameura Dam lake

The plane, an A-6E Intruder U.S. Navy attack aircraft, was found to have crashed at around 3:35 p.m. on Oct. 14. The aircraft was en route from Naval Air Facility Atsugi in east Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture to Kadena Air Base in the southernmost prefecture of Okinawa with a fellow plane.

According to the report by the U.S. military stationed in Japan, the aircraft was flying at an altitude of 120 to 300 meters just before the crash. It had crashed while making a roughly 90-degree left turn at a bend in the dam lake with its left wing down. The crash report stated the pilot likely experienced "grayout," where vision dims due to insufficient blood flow to the brain, followed by a blackout and "G-LOC (g-force induced loss of consciousness)," due to the strong downward acceleration during the turn. The report concluded that the crash occurred because the turn maneuver within the terrain's constraints exceeded the operational capabilities of both the aircraft and the crew.

The crash site was directly under the Orange Route, set by the U.S. military. The area is said to resemble the mountainous terrain of the Korean Peninsula, and the aircraft was conducting low-altitude flight training, flying lower than mountain ridges, to avoid radar detection.

The repeated low-altitude training flights and past accidents along the Orange Route continue to raise important questions about their impact on local communities and the broader implications for Japan-U.S. security cooperation.

(Japanese original by Koichi Uematsu, Tokushima Bureau)