Kazunori Kunizuka, who worked as an interpreter with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose from 1943 to 1945, is still alive and has recorded in graphic detail in his diary the last days of Bose and his death as a result of a plane crash at Taipei on 18 August 1945, claims a website.
The London-based site www.bosefiles.info, which has been coming out with serialised “revelations” backing the theory that the Indian revolutionary leader died in a plane crash, said it received information about the diary from the London correspondent of the Japanese Daily Sankei Shimbun.
The correspondent Noburu Okabe also handed over a copy of the diary to the website created by London-based journalist and Netaji’s grand nephew Ashish Ray.
“The diary is in Japanese. We will get it translated and post relevant portions from it in due course,” Ray said.
The site claimed that according to Okabe, Kanizuka is 98-years-old and lives in an old people’s home in Kobe city in Japan.
Okabe met Kanizuka and testified the diary unequivocally confirms Bose’s demise in a Japanese military hospital in Taipei after the air tragedy, according to the site.
It said Ray had met in Taipei Yukichi Arai, son of Captain Keikichi Arai, a Japanese army officer who was one of seven survivors of the crash.
{{/usCountry}}It said Ray had met in Taipei Yukichi Arai, son of Captain Keikichi Arai, a Japanese army officer who was one of seven survivors of the crash.
{{/usCountry}}An estimated total 14 passengers and crew, including Bose, were on the flight.
Captain Arai died in 1971. However, he, too, recorded in his diary that Bose succumbed to injuries suffered in the crash. As per his description, soon after take-off from Taipei the Japanese bomber carrying Bose “immediately lost speed, crashed and went up in flames”.
Of the seven survivors, six deposed before either the 1956 Netaji Inquiry Committee or the 1974 Justice GD Khosla Commission or both, including Bose’s most trusted aide de camp Colonel Habibur Rehman and Captain Arai. All six independently submitted Bose died consequent to the crash, said the website.