"I have heard of cases," he went on to say, "where pilots intending to bomb a town stopped the attack and returned to their base, rather than to risk bombing foreign properties. Before leaving on a bombing expedition, pilots not familiar with foreign fags are shown pictures of them and I really sincerely believe that the Japanese naval and military authorities do everything possible to avoid unhappy accidents,'
Mr. Hirasawa stated, however, that it was impossible to avoid bombing third-party properties because it is very hard to recognize foreign flags at a glance and because enemy antiaircraft artillery and planes have to be coped with often and the pilots are consequently forced to "hit directly and escape."
At this point, the speaker emphasized the difficulties encountered by pilots, because they are not familiar with the topography of towns which they have to bomb and objectives are often hard to recognize, "I have flown myself and amongst other difficulties, atmospheric disturbances as well as the reflections caused by the rays of sunshine make things very difficult," Mr. Hirasawa continued, "and during one flight I asked the pilot whether he could recognize the objective and he replied in the negative.
Clouds must also be considered, and, whilst the weather is not always clear, the bombing must be done anyway," the speaker added.
He then said that flags on poles were impossible to recognize whilst due to the weather, flags painted on roofs were not always visible.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.