The Kera UFO (Japanese: 介良事件) was a UFO sighted August 25th, 1972 A mysterious silver hat shaped Mini-UFO was encountered, photographed & captured by a posse of junior high school students in the Kera Neighbourhood of Kōchi City, Japan. it's probably the most well-documented encounter in Japan. Our story begins One warm August Day, towards the end of summer vacation, 13 year old junior high student Michio Seo was strolling home, when out of the corner of his eye something amazing caught his attention: what appeared to be a Dull-silver-metal, floating Hat was haphazardly hovering, darting around a nearby rice field, he stood awestruck watching the mysterious object zoom & zigzag about from a distance. (He would later describe that 'it was like how a bat in flight chases insects.') – As he approached, his curiosity quickly turned to terror as the UFO glowed blue, and shot a beam of light at him, not wanting to provoke the thing further, the young man fled home.
Overview[]
The silver hat-shaped craft was about 1.3kg and measured roughly 3 inches tall by 6 inches in diameter. - It had dirty, circular grill-like ridges around the 18.2" flat bottom, 37 holes in the centre like a stereo (or a drain) it was surrounded by Japanese style, imprinted pictures of "waves", what looked like birds & a fork or trident shaped object (often said to be a flower.) Something rattled around inside when it was shaken, looking through the holes there were parts similar to a radio inside. That night, Biking home Hiroshi realized that the craft had escaped from his backpack. - it vanished into thin air!
--But not before too long, the boys had encountered the object again, They once again captured it, but again, it soon vanished. - This happened repeatedly about five or six times over the next two weeks. so the order of things get pretty fuzzy after this:
At One point they experimented on it, apparently smashing it with a hammer but it just wouldn't break. (not even a scratch.) - They also filled it with a 3lb bucket of water (it didn't over flow.) The object emitted a loud cicada-like buzzing sound and glowed brightly inside, something gooey like paste came out the bottom... At one point they had kept it under some pillows and it vanished, later being found by the road outside. They had wanted to try & keep it in the stove, microwave or keep it in their freezer so that it couldn't get away, but their mom would not let them! - ( Later the mom was interviewed and said that she saw it glow too, The mother one evening coming home after doing groceries, apparently saw the ufo fly away. )
One of the boy's fathers was a teacher who also served as the chief science education officer at the Kochi City Science Center refused to believe the kids, it looked like a vintage ashtray so he figured they where pulling a prank on him... The father tried hitting the object with a paperweight, it made a metallic sound like hitting brass. (He was later interviewed as well and said it was like iron, but light, not heavy like iron, The father would come to later regret not investigating it further.) Finally In late September (some accounts say 14th, others the 22nd) Hiroshi was biking home from a friends house (some accounts say shopping) with the craft in his backpack, when it once again, vanished, after which: it was sadly never seen by them again…
A few months later, they were interviewed by Mr. Junichi Yaoi on the national radio about their experiments & the encounter, as a result of which, Mr. Yaoi said that there were no discrepancies in they or their parent's accounts: he fully believed them. - According to one interview, At one point in 1972 the city also instructed a gag order on them to keep quiet! (The price of the land would be lowered if a UFO scare occurred.)