[birds tweeting faintly]
[man, in Japanese] I am the high priest of the Enmyoin Temple.
The 29th chief monk.
Many visitors have spotted UFOs at this temple.
I've seen one here too.
It was a huge UFO.
[unsettling music playing]
It was hovering right above here.
And it was moving like…
[imitates heavy, dull sound]
I was surprised by how big it was.
I was stunned.
Mm-hmm. But I saw it with my own eyes.
Mm-hmm. It was undeniably real.
I saw it before the earthquake, so about 12 or 13 years ago.
[reporter 1, in English] Breaking news.
A large earthquake has just struck off the east coast of Japan here.
[reporter 2, in English] A big quake, magnitude 8.9. It struck at 2:46 p.m.
Sendai was the closest population.
[tense music playing]
[monk, in Japanese] That's the ocean over there.
There used to be lots of houses here, but the ocean swelled up very high.
[reporter 3] The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami warning for Japan,
Russia, Marcus Island, the Northern Marianas…
[man, in Japanese] Waves are rushing through.
[reporter 4, in English] Devastated by the tsunami
was the port city of Sendai, the closest city…
[reporter 5] People near the coast should evacuate to higher ground.
Whoosh!
[people shouting]
[reporter 6] Nuclear officials are warning of a possible nuclear reactor meltdown.
[reporter 7] We keep hearing that the coolant system is not working.
[reporter 8] A "China syndrome" meltdown and radiation leaks are…
[reporter 9] The clock is ticking.
Every minute that passes,
we come closer to the time when there could be a secondary…
[mysterious music playing]
[monk, in Japanese] The UFOs came after the explosion.
[tense music playing]
There were so many of them.
I was shocked.
[tense music continues]
[music stops]
[mysterious music playing]
[man 1, in English] From the beginning of recorded time,
men have been seeing unexplainable things in the sky.
[woman] Are we alone in the universe?
[man 2] Somewhere in the data will be something worth real inquiry.
We have not been hiding anything.
There are such things as interplanetary spaceships.
I thought it was an alien, and he had big eyes.
[man 3] There's something profoundly important going on here
that is authentic and real.
[music fades out]
[mysterious ambient music playing]
[Geiger counter crackles faintly]
[mysterious ambient music continues]
[Keisuke Udagawa, in Japanese] I came here on March 14th,
right after I heard about the Fukushima nuclear accident
because I wanted to help my friend.
They lived further away, towards the sea.
But, still, I thought, "I have to come and help them."
Unfortunately, my friend passed away.
However, I knew I couldn't go back without helping,
even though I had lost my friend,
so I stayed here as a volunteer.
Many people lost their lives.
Many others ran away and left everything behind.
I saw so much in those five years,
and I heard so many mysterious stories.
[mysterious ambient music continues]
Many people had been swept away by the tsunami,
so we'd come and search the beaches to see if we could find anyone.
It was right after the disaster.
So, when you looked in this direction, it was just a lot of debris,
and over there, there were all kinds of things scattered around.
It was a tsunami after all.
It took people, houses, anything it could reach.
One day, a group of us came here,
looked up and saw these balls of light out over the ocean.
They were these bluish-whitish balls of light,
off in the distance.
There were so many of them, and they were all lined up in a row.
It was beautiful. They were such beautiful lights.
[somber music playing]
[man, in Japanese] Ishinomaki is a small town.
A simple port town.
Truthfully, I don't think anyone ever imagined
it would be hit by a tsunami,
much less destroyed by one.
This is where my mom was born.
She actually became a teacher and taught at the elementary school here.
She really loved the elementary school.
She talked about her students here all the time.
The tsunami destroyed the school.
Everything has gone.
[somber ambient music playing]
It wasn't long after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima
that many people began to see UFOs near the facility.
We didn't exactly know what they were or what they were doing,
but there they were, in broad daylight,
and they were clearly working on something.
[tense music playing]
[man speaking Japanese indistinctly]
[woman, in English] I think there is a very clear connection
between UAP activity and nuclear power plants,
and I think that this has gone back for decades.
[tense music continues]
My personal view, on the basis of over 30 years of very extensive research,
is that there is an advanced extraterrestrial presence operating,
basically, here on Earth and in the oceans.
And one of the biggest things that we have to come to grips with
is the fact that this is happening.
[mysterious music playing]
[Jensine Andresen] Some of the declassified US government reports
that go back decades are amazing.
And they're not the least bit ambiguous.
FBI documentation. CIA documentation.
It goes back to the 1930s,
to when the science and research was being done to understand fission.
But then it really heats up in the 1940s,
in particular, right after the detonation of the two atomic bombs in Japan in 1945.
[music intensifies]
Then it is decisive. It's conclusive.
You see one after another event occurring
in proximity, specifically, to sites associated with nuclear weapons.
So, Los Alamos in the 1940s.
Sandia National Labs.
Kirtland Air Force Base where nuclear weapons were stored.
Just boom, boom, boom. They are thorough.
They, like, don't miss anything.
If you look at a lot of the UAP displays,
as they are recounted by witnesses, really credible witnesses,
there is a kind of signaling to us.
You know, in the Fukushima disaster,
there were many reports of UFO activity.
[unsettling music playing]
[Jensine Andresen] But not only in Fukushima.
In 1986, in Chernobyl,
when Unit 4 malfunctioned,
there was a lot of UFO activity reported there also.
At the height of the fire in Chernobyl,
the reading was 3,000 milliroentgens,
which is a unit of ionizing radiation.
And right at the height of the fire, many people observed a UFO come,
stayed for three minutes, shone a light right at Unit 4, departed.
They took another reading, and it had apparently dropped to 800.
Just in a few minutes.
That seems like a very conscious attempt
to remediate the danger caused by the malfunction there.
[men speaking Japanese]
[monk, in Japanese] When the plant exploded,
everybody began to panic.
Of course, I evacuated right away with everyone else.
"We're going to be exposed," they said. "Hurry!" So we did.
It was terrifying at first.
[reporter, in English] …24 hours ago was a town of 71,000 people,
now completely underwater.
No structure still standing.
[monk, in Japanese] But then I learned that, miraculously,
the temple was untouched.
That's why it's called the Miracle Temple.
I don't know if it was some god or some powerful being in a UFO,
but I believe that some invisible power really did come to save us.
[mysterious music playing]
[man, in English] UFOs and aliens and the whole question of outer space
were depicted in various ways in Japanese popular culture,
and many anime and manga stories take place in outer space.
You know, when people ask me about Astro Boy,
like, "How could they create this hero
powered by atomic energy
so soon after the nation was devastated by a nuclear bomb?"
And then the other more important aspect
is that Astro Boy is half-boy, half-robot.
His father, the doctor, created Astro Boy because his own son was killed.
So it doesn't take a very big leap to say,
"The father's family members were killed in the war."
And so, "Let's use technology to create something new
and give us a future."
So there was an enormous faith in technology,
born out of trauma.
[yells]
In a way, that was the…
expression of the subconscious of Japanese in the post-war period.
And what you see, you know, starting with Astro Boy,
is these characters that are half this, half that.
[ethereal music playing]
Ultraman's character is so wonderful because…
Ultraman is from a planet, another planet,
and he screws up
and has an accident,
and he crashes into a human ship,
which is piloted by this Science Patrol guy.
And Ultraman decides, "I'm so ashamed that I hit this guy's ship."
"I'm gonna merge with him."
So they merge together,
and that becomes Ultraman.
[upbeat rock music playing]
It's an alien merging with a human,
and, of course, Ultraman embodies that notion
that some aliens are really good.
They're actually trying to protect people.
And as a kid, I loved that idea.
[calm music playing]
[Jiyo Sakuma, in Japanese] When I was seven years old,
I became fascinated with aliens.
I can't really tell you why,
but even when I really couldn't picture what they looked like,
I could sense their warmth and kindness.
It was powerful.
They do exist.
I was certain of that by the age of seven, and I still believe it now.
They don't show themselves to us, but they're always watching us.
I know they are.
[in English] I don't know what you're hoping to get,
but I am a professor.
And I just…
I mean, I'm not a ufologist.
So, I'm a professor of religious studies.
And so I study religion.
To focus on whether it's real or not is actually focusing on the wrong thing.
We really should be looking at the meaning of these events for people.
Because it has completely shifted not only individual lives,
but also the belief in UFOs is now a new global belief system.
It's different than a religion, but it's religious-like.
If you look at my research, there's a continuation,
a theme, of looking up at the sky and seeing things that are unknown
and then trying to identify them.
And today, we're still seeing that people see things in the sky,
but what they're seeing in the sky today
is what they believe to be, like, advanced technology.
Whereas a thousand years ago, they would think, "Maybe that's an angel."
Or, "Maybe that's a demon."
Today, they look up, and they say, "Well, that's a UFO."
[Tanaka Kazuo, in Japanese] Personally speaking,
I wish there were aliens,
but I dislike the feeling that I'll be deceived
by people making up stories.
I hope to find true evidence one day,
but as far as I can tell, there's been no definitive proof yet.
The urban legend of the UFO began in America
with the first sighting in 1947.
No photographic evidence had been found prior.
However, during my research,
I found another urban legend in Japan dated much earlier,
the legend of the Utsuro-bune, or the hollow ship.
[ominous music playing]
They were in these kawaraban, each dated to 1803.
During the Edo period, a kawaraban was a tile-block print
that was like a modern-day newspaper.
At first, I thought the story was about a foreign shipwreck.
But that's not what it was.
In my research, I've yet to discover any ship in this period
that matches the descriptions in these documents.
Every account of the ship's appearance
makes a note of these three windows.
And perhaps most notably,
many of the incidents make reference to the presence of a strange woman.
[woman muttering rapidly]
[muttering continues]
[woman, in Japanese] Some people call this "space language,"
but the proper term is "light language."
When I speak it, I take the wavelengths I receive
and output them into sound.
Sometimes it's musical. Other times, it's words, like…
[making staccato sounds]
This is how to make contact.
Both with space and with the aliens.
[tense music playing]
I am an alien. [laughs]
I have been to many stars.
Currently, the Earth is going through a great ascension,
and so I came here to satisfy my curiosity.
[tense music continues]
Here we go.
Ready.
[tense music continues]
[Roland Nozomu Kelts, in English] Japan doesn't really have a religion
the way we use the word in English.
An institutionalized religion. There's nothing like the Ten Commandments.
Ethical characteristics in Japanese culture
are learned through school and through family.
So behavior and identity is rooted in context.
In this context, you behave a certain way, you can be a certain identity.
And then in this other context, you can be something else.
And not blink an eye.
You could be a teacher, you could be a performer,
and at the same time, you can speak light language
and be channeling the aliens,
and know, perhaps, that you're one of them.
[Miho Ninagawa, in Japanese] Now I want you to recall
how you came to Earth
and what you wanted to do when you got here.
[in English] It's a mystery, but it's also a strength
in that Japan can embrace what we think of as paradox
and go forward.
-[water running] -[tranquil music playing]
[Jiyo Sakuma, in Japanese] Three months after the earthquake,
my wife and I had a close encounter ourselves.
That was a big turning point for me.
Our entire perspective towards life changed.
It was a complete 180 in how we saw things.
How we saw everything.
It was some time after two in the morning.
My wife had woken up in the middle of the night
and felt someone was watching us.
I woke up when I heard her scream,
so I immediately got out of bed and went to look outside,
and right in front of us was a real UFO.
[mysterious music playing]
[woman, in Japanese] The first thing I saw was this round, bright light,
and then it just got closer and closer to us.
Of course I was blown away.
A gold UFO was hovering right in front of our eyes.
[Yuko Sakuma] He began to speak to the UFO,
and then the UFO would respond by flashing its lights.
[mysterious music continues]
[Jiyo Sakuma] Suddenly, it began to change colors.
Its gold light changed to this deep pink shade
I had never seen before.
It was almost as if they were saying, "You are all right." You know?
"You are welcome." Or something like that.
[Yuko Sakuma] I think the aliens were able to understand us
because we believed in them.
[mysterious music continues]
[music fades out]
[waves lapping]
[Tanaka Kazuo, in Japanese] For a long time, no one knew
exactly where the Utsuro-bune had been spotted.
It appeared to be a fictional place.
And so the logic follows
that if the place where the ship was spotted doesn't exist,
then the story would have to be fictional.
That's what I believed at the time.
[ominous music playing]
However, a new document was discovered in 2014.
One of the most famous ninja families in Japan, the Ban family,
is known for their historical record keeping.
And in 2014, another record was discovered
and cited the location as Hitachihara, Sharihama.
When I saw that, I was certain that was the name I'd been searching for.
The Utsuro-bune was washed ashore on this beach in 1803.
[ominous music continues]
It had been spotted in the distance,
and so a group of local fishermen used their boats to grab the Utsuro-bune
and drag it to the shore.
The legend says that when they reached the shore,
they opened it,
and to their surprise, they discovered a beautiful woman inside.
[ominous music continues]
The first UFO sighting is still accredited to the American pilot.
However, this sighting has been dated
all the way back to the late Edo period in 1803.
Therefore, the Utsuro-bune is probably the world's first that involves
an otherworldly visitor riding in a UFO.
[unsettling music playing]
[Miho Ninagawa, in Japanese] One time when I was sleeping and lucid,
five aliens appeared to me.
The one in the center was a green alien,
and on either side of them were these luminous white aliens.
I had been waiting for them for so long,
so I said, "Oh, you're finally here."
And then I told them, "Do what you want."
So I opened my hands and spread my arms out like this.
I let go of everything and gave everything to them. I felt happy.
Like I'd been reunited with a long-lost friend.
The green alien beamed a light at me
and beamed my chakras here.
All five of them did, and then…
I was enveloped in this supreme bliss.
I think that the five beings appeared to me in the form of aliens
so that I would be able to recognize them.
They were light itself,
but they appeared to me in the form of aliens.
[mysterious music playing]
-[in English] Um, okay. [chuckles] -[music fades out]
So, this question of what we see in the sky,
is this objective, or is it just subjective?
Did we just actually just see that? And is it real?
And if you go back into the historical record,
especially in the West,
you see that there are things in the sky
that actually do produce real effects on people, okay?
So one case would be the Stigmata of Saint Francis.
[ethereal music playing]
Saint Francis sees what he calls a torch.
And it emits some sort of light.
It basically zaps him with this light.
And he gets what in the Catholic tradition are called the stigmata,
or the wounds of Christ.
So he gets burned.
[ethereal music continues]
The things of religion are also unbelievable.
Angels coming down and speaking to people.
Walking on water.
These are also things that are unbelievable,
and we only have eyewitness accounts of those.
And we tend to believe those without question.
So why do you separate the categories of belief?
You believe this unbelievable thing,
but we don't believe in things that we actually have some evidence for,
which are UFOs.
[music fades out]
[squeaking]
[crickets chirping]
[Keisuke Udagawa, in Japanese] I find that people are usually frightened
by ghosts and mysterious stories and spirits.
They view these spirits as something to be scared of,
but they shouldn't be.
The people in Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate,
those who were directly affected by the earthquake,
still feel the presence of their loved ones,
as if the ones they had lost are coming back to them.
When we were searching for people in the aftermath,
usually when we checked cars,
we would see these bright blue-white lights
kind of hovering above a spot like this.
They seemed to be floating over where someone had died.
So, if it was here, that meant someone had died in this driver's seat.
If it was up here, then it meant their spirit would be right here.
So you can kind of imagine it like that.
In Japanese folklore, there's something called a hitodama.
It's like a fireball or a bright ball of light
that floats in the air.
At the time, I saw a number of them out there.
It's believed that when a person dies,
their soul ascends to heaven as a hinotama, a fiery ball of light.
[tense music playing]
[waves churning]
[Keisuke Udagawa] I find it hard to believe
that, in the aftermath of catastrophes like these
where so many lives are lost,
most people would see these balls of light as UFOs.
I think most of us would interpret these things as hinotama,
the lingering presence of the human soul.
To me, these mysteries are just normal experiences
that are a part of our regular, everyday lives.
And I think it's important to remember that.
[birds tweeting]
[Tomonori Izumi, in Japanese] I was born and raised here.
There has always been strong chi energy in this place.
You can feel how strong it is.
Some people believe this place leads to heaven,
that's how nice it feels.
I believe that the frequent presence of UFOs here
is because they want to come and feel the energy for themselves.
Because it feels so good to be here.
[man, in English] Take a deep breath.
-[inhales] -Hold it.
[Roland Nozomu Kelts] Japanese folklore is full of these stories
of the spirits in the world around you.
Hayao Miyazaki, one of his most popular films in the world
is My Neighbor Totoro.
And Totoro is this big, fuzzy creature that could be terrifying.
[yawns deeply]
[Roland Nozomu Kelts] You see his mouth is full of these huge teeth.
But when I've interviewed Miyazaki himself and asked him,
"Mr. Miyazaki, what is Totoro?"
You know, his answer was very quick. He just said, "Totoro is Totoro."
"It's just Totoro."
I would say that the supernatural and the natural in Japanese art,
in Japanese sensibility,
are both interconnected and intertwined.
But at the same time,
you wouldn't even think of them as separate entities.
So they don't need to be intertwined.
They're not two things that need to be together.
They are of a piece. One thing.
[woman 1, in Japanese] Call the newspapers! There are UFOs!
-[baby crying] -[woman 1] Here's a UFO!
[woman 2] I can't see anything.
[woman 1] Look! There's the UFO again!
I've never seen a UFO before! There are so many of them!
[in Japanese] There have been numerous eyewitness accounts of aliens and UFOs.
But that's just it. Eyewitness accounts.
It's tricky because even if a witness does see something,
they could be confusing an aircraft with a UFO.
This likely applies to the sightings from March 2011.
[in Japanese] I don't need evidence.
I don't need anything materialistic to believe.
To me, it's… [in English] we better to feel, the echo.
[in Japanese] I try not to talk too much about aliens.
I don't want people to think I'm even crazier. [chuckles]
Honestly, I don't mind if people think I'm crazy,
but it would be a shame if they don't get the message.
[reflective music playing]
[Miho Ninagawa] In March 2011, there was a light.
UFOs came in order to help protect this world,
probably in hopes of preserving the balance.
There was so much going on at the time.
[reflective music continues]
It is not strange for this to happen.
I think if I were an alien, a life-form beyond Earth,
and I saw such a massive, almost catastrophic amount of energy,
I would want to have a look. [chuckles]
[tense music playing]
[Jensine Andresen, in English] If you have hundreds
of well-documented UAP events
around your nuclear sites,
that's a really clear message.
[tense music continues]
My name is Robert Salas.
In, uh, March of 1967, I was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana,
uh, as a missile launch officer.
I was downstairs 60 feet underground, in a capsule,
monitoring and, uh, controlling ten nuclear-tipped missiles.
I looked at 39 accounts from the '40s to the '90s.
So about a 50-year time period.
All of the witness accounts have a certain degree of consistency to them,
which is, a UAP arrives at the site…
I got a call that morning,
uh, that they were seeing strange lights flying in the sky.
Uh…
I disregarded that call, uh,
told them to call me when something more significant happened.
It doesn't matter if it's Malmstrom Air Force Base
or F. E. Warren or Minot…
It just doesn't matter.
I got another call, uh, subsequent to that call.
And this time, it was a more, uh, intense tone in the guard's voice.
He was very… clearly very frightened.
Um, he said there was a, uh,
a bright, glowing, red object hovering outside the front gate.
It's in restricted airspace. It hovers.
It shines a light on these nuclear weapons.
[Robert Salas] Right after that call, my weapons start going down,
uh, one after the other.
They went into a no-go condition.
What we call a "no-go condition." They were unlaunchable.
And that's not the only site where that has occurred.
Uh, again, that morning, we were… after reporting it to the command post,
we were informed that a similar, very similar incident happened
at Echo Flight.
They lost all ten of their weapons, in… under similar circumstances,
very similar circumstances,
where UFOs were sighted over the launch facilities.
[eerie music playing]
[Tomonori Izumi, in Japanese] Radioactive energy was leaking everywhere.
I believe the UFOs came to readjust the flood of radioactive energy
in order to save us.
That's my theory anyway.
And I think that's why the Fukushima nuclear power plant
was not totally devastated.
Mm-hmm.
[Roland Nozomu Kelts] When Japanese people talk about extraterrestrials,
or UFOs, or why they're here,
a lot of it is about achieving or restoring balance.
That life, modern life, is out of harmony.
And the benevolent view is that aliens, whatever you wanna call them,
are coming in, or are concerned,
and are trying to restore a sense of balance to the world.
[Jiyo Sakuma, in Japanese] If we could hear them, they'd say,
"Oh, earthlings, our brothers and sisters."
"You've begun to use nuclear energy, haven't you?"
"That's wonderful," they'd say,
"that you earthlings have evolved so much with your technology and all,
but we can't leave you unsupervised."
[reflective music playing]
Nuclear power can be very dangerous.
Think of it like this.
Say there's a kitchen and a child who goes to the stove
to cook with a frying pan.
We all see how dangerous that is.
The parents have to make sure it's safe.
I think that's why the aliens came. To look after us.
[interviewer] Should we be scared?
[in Japanese] Of aliens? You don't have to be scared of them.
Think of aliens as being on the side of humans.
I've never met one that was mean.
[in Japanese] I think they came at that time
to make sure things were properly in balance.
I believe that's how they expressed love for us.
[Jensine Andresen, in English] I think this is an intelligence that recognizes
the depth of human creativity
and wants to preserve it.
I think this intelligence cares about us.
I think this intelligence does not want us to go extinct.
[exhales]
That's what I think is really being communicated.
[shakily] "We're, we're right here with you."
"Just open your hearts, open your minds."
[sniffles] "We'd like to help you."
"And, you know, let's get to know one another."
I think that's really what the message is.
[Jiyo Sakuma, in Japanese] The earthquake was a very painful experience for me.
The encounter we had with the UFO was so vivid that it transformed me.
It both transformed me and completely healed me.
So, to me, their presence is really… comforting.
Kind and comforting.
[Diana Pasulka, in English] A UFO is an event.
When a person has an experience, say they see a UFO,
they're different afterwards.
I know this sounds really strange,
but the relationship to the cosmos changed for these people.
Almost like a religious conversion experience.
It changes their worldview. It changes the way they work.
It changes their relationships to people.
It fundamentally, completely changes them.
[somber music playing]
[Jiyo Sakuma, in Japanese] In 2016, I experienced an "astral abduction."
That is the abduction of one's astral body,
where it enters a UFO.
[somber music continues]
There was a screen in front of me.
I'll tell you what they taught me inside the UFO.
The Earth is alive.
So much happens to us. Everybody experiences trauma.
In the midst of trauma, people can learn to hate each other.
We feed off of the negativity and feel negative ourselves.
And it's because of that, all that negative energy,
that we lose sight of what's important.
-So we all need to change our perspective. -[music continues]
We need to remember what we felt like as young children.
We need to remember our innocence and return to that unbiased state of mind.
We need to clean up our consciousness and cleanse ourselves
to lead humanity to cosmic civilization.
And at the very end, I saw the Earth aglow with golden light.
I saw it on the screen, and I understood.
The future of the Earth is bright.
And I could see
a Golden Age is coming to Earth.
[uplifting music playing]
[music fades out]
[Tomonori Izumi, in Japanese] Human beings are born into this world for a reason.
I believe that we have to work hard with one another
to bring peace to the world.
And with the support of invisible power, gods and UFOs, peace is possible.
[mysterious ambient music playing]
[Roland Nozomu Kelts, in English] When you talk about UFOs,
I think the Japanese story about it
is the ability to embrace mystery and let it be.
It's not that what is seen is different.
It's the way the story is told about the experience
that I think differs between Americans and Japanese.
It's much less about this complete otherness.
The mystery of the UFO and of the alien
just is.
And that's enough.
[mysterious music playing]
[Keisuke Udagawa, in Japanese] When I looked at those lights,
I saw how beautiful the human soul is.
How beautiful we as humans are.
That goodness resides in each of us.
At least, I think that's what the lights showed me.
[music intensifies]
[mysterious music playing]