Hi All...

All good things come to those who wait, and while the silly Chinese/Roswell/Penthouse ET picture story has taken far too long to be resolved, at last we have closure.

In recent correspondence with Mr Jun-Ichi Takanashi, MUFON's national representative in Japan, Johsen Takano, a local planning officer in the small Japanese costal town of Hakui City, has admitted that he took the pictures of the "ET" dummies on display at the Roswell International UFO Museum and Research Center that recently ended up in "Penthouse" magazine.

Takano is probably better known as the "Director" of the so-called Japanese "UFO" Museum which, according to crop circle promoter Colin Andrews, was to be part of a world-wide program to "educate the world about UFOs." Andrews has often promoted Takano as being a "Japanese government official", and was with Takano in "Alien Autopsy Film" owner Ray Santilli's office last year when Takano claimed to have seen pictures of Santilli's "ET" when he allegedly visited CIA headquarters in 1993. Takano even claimed to have been given 80 pictures of this "ET" by "a superior officer of the CIA" and he provided several of these pictures to Taiwanese UFO researcher, Prof. Hoang-Yung Chiang, who included them in a book he published late last year. These pictures were "lifted" from Chiang's book and reproduced in a Hong Kong newspaper from where they quickly reached the Internet and, many months later, the pages of "Penthouse". How these pictures eventually ended up in Guccione's hands is still a mystery, as is the claim that they were supplied to him by the daughter of a German scientist who'd worked at the Roswell crash site, but there's no doubt that Takano's "ETs" are the rubber models made by Steven Johnson for Paul Davids' "Roswell" telemovie.

On the surface some people might see the CIA's alleged involvement with this affair as a deliberate act of disinformation. Others might wonder why a UFO researcher, and a "UFO" Museum director at that, didn't recognize ET props from one of 1995's most popular UFO-related TV programs. But now, according to Takano, he never claimed to have visited the CIA, never claimed to be a Japanese government official, a "UFO" Museum director, an official of the Japanese Ministry of Education, etc. It seems that Mr Takano has been "misquoted" or "misrepresented" by just about every person he's ever met...

A complete copy of Jun-Ichi Takanashi's "Bulletin No.ML-1/96 'Urgent Preliminary Report' So-Called 'UFO Museum' and Mr. Johsen Takano" can be obtained from The Japan UFO Science Society (JUFOSS) at CPO Box 1437, Osaka, 530-91, Japan. Please include 3 International reply coupons if you'd like a copy of this Bulletin.

Appended is a scan of three images printed in Mr Takanashi's bulletin which compare the Chinese/Penthouse "ETs" with the Takano-supplied pictures that appeared in Prof. Chiang's book. The quality is only fair but good enough to see that the pictures are identical, right down to the hospital bed chrome-steel frame in the background. Note that Takano is credited with these pictures and one caption reads "Submitted by Japan Ministry of Education UFO Museum Builder, Johsen Takano." As already noted, Takano denies ever claiming to have been associated with the Ministry of Education.

Perhaps we should leave the last word on Takano's "UFO" activities to Professor Chiang. Quoted in Takanashi's bulletin he says "Although I had been in good terms with him (Takano) for a long time, I now regret it very much."

I wonder how Mr Guccione feels about him?

Thanks,
John

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