On May 19 of the same year, at 11:21 in the morning "Kuma" took-off from the airport of Fukuoka bound for Seoul with eight passengers on board. Just after leaving the ground at a height of about 50 meters, the aircraft lost speed and crashed at a pine grove 500 meters North West of the airfield. Pilot Ikeda Yasube (?), engineer Owada Takeo and three passengers died instantly. In the ensuing fire the rest were rescued but radio operator Akimoto Kenji and two passengers suffered serious injuries. Two more passengers escaped with slight injuries but one last passenger was also seriously injured and died later at the hospital.
DNKKK decided to ground all aircraft of the same type the same day and start an investigation on the cause of the accident. An investigating group had a meeting six days later in the Communications Ministry but without any results. On June 15 an engineer from Lockheed called Lawrence F. Holt (any help with the spell of his name and perhaps more info about him?) travelled to Japan aboard Tatsuta Maru to help with the investigation.
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