from Haneda AFB, now
Tokyo International Airport, in Japan. Since the sighting came from
outside the U.S., we couldn't go out and investigate it, but the
intelligence officers in the Far East Air Force had done a good job,
so we had the complete story of this startling account of an
encounter with a UFO. Only a few minor questions had been unanswered,
and a quick wire to FEAF brought back these missing data. Normally it
took up to three months to get routine questions back and forth, but
this time the exchange of wires took only a matter of hours.

Several months after the sighting I talked to one of the FEAF
intelligence officers who had investigated it, and in his estimation
it was one of the best to come out of the Far East.

The first people to see the UFO were two control tower operators who
were walking across the ramp at the air base heading toward the tower
to start the midnight shift. They were about a half hour early so
they weren't in any big hurry to get up into the tower--at least not
until they saw a large brilliant light off to the northeast over
Tokyo Bay. They stopped to look at the light for a few seconds
thinking that it might be an exceptionally brilliant star, but both
men had spent many lonely nights in a control tower when they had
nothing to look at except stars and they had never seen anything this
bright before. Besides, the light was moving. The two men had lined
it up with the corner of a hangar and could see that it was
continually moving closer and drifting a little off to the right.

In a minute they had run across the ramp, up the several hundred
steps to the tower, and were looking at the light through 7x50
binoculars. Both of the men, and the two tower operators whom they
were relieving, got a good look at the UFO. The light was circular in
shape and had a constant brilliance. It appeared to be the upper
portion of a large, round, dark shape which was about four times the
diameter of the light itself. As they watched, the UFO moved in
closer, or at least it appeared to be getting closer because it
became more distinct. When it moved in, the men could see a second
and dimmer light on the lower edge of the dark, shadowy portion.

In a few minutes the UFO had moved off to the east, getting dimmer
and dimmer as it disappeared. The four tower men kept watching the
eastern sky, and suddenly the light began to reappear. It stayed in
sight a few seconds, was gone again, and then for the thi