In the spring of 1916, Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, embarked for Japan. Invited by the Emperor’s government, he was to conduct a series of flights in that country, demonstrating the capabilities of the new flying machines. At the Panama Pacific Exposition, the year before, he had taken a Japanese flag with him on one of his many flights over the fair, commemorating, he announced, the ascension of the Mikado to the Imperial throne the next day. At 3,000 feet, in honor of the coronation taking place across the Pacific, he launched the banner. Attached to a “parachute,” a new device of his own design, the flag unfurled, the banner floating to earth in an impressive diplomatic display. A year later, back in San Francisco, Art Smith circled above the Embarcadero, composing this farewell message as on the ground below his second biplane was loaded aboard the Chiyomaru along with a half dozen miniature racers he christened his “baby cars.” In Japan, he would employ the speeders on the ground as part of his presentations. He completed several other aerial maneuvers that day, tracing with a trail of smoke as he emerged from the massive fog bank at the bay’s entrance, an arch that, years later, would be realized with the span of the Golden Gate Bridge. Art Smith landed his plane on a nearby dock and proceeded to disassemble the craft, packing it carefully for safe storage aboard the steamer for the voyage.
During the lengthy voyage across the Pacific, Art Smith kept busy preparing for the exhibition that lay ahead. Several times, he tore down and rebuilt the mechanism that produced the smoke needed to generate skywriting, adjusting the apertures of the various nozzles, calibrating the coiled heating elements, and experimenting with new formulas of dyes and paraffin. In the early morning, the sun rising roundly in the ship’s wake, he might be found on the fantail, launching any number of kites and gliders into the stiff prevailing headwind. The experimental craft, tethered to the ship’s stern, performed startling aerobatics, guided by the sure touch of Smith’s piloting, only to be reeled in later so as not to interfere with the late morning skeet shooting. Souvenir postcards were produced of Art Smith motoring one of his miniature race cars around the promenade deck of the Chiyomaru; copies would be sold later at the appearances in Japan. When not writing letters home, Smith busied himself sketching the schematics of his upcoming aerial compositions, reproduced here from the undated pages of his journal:
O
Sketched roughly on one page
o
and then revised on the following one.
0
And this image was found later in his notes.
This scribble above was thought by many to be an innocent doodle, though it could represent an attempt to visualize some heretofore unrealized aeronautic maneuver.
Fellow passengers reported that they witnessed Smith transfixed at the ship’s rail, observing through the circular frame of the ship’s life-saving buoy the framed image of the apparently stationary but roiling mountains of ashy clouds emitted by the many active volcanoes of the Hawaiian Island chain hard by the ship’s stately passage.
Upon landing at the Port of Yokohama, Art Smith oversaw the unloading of his crated biplanes. After the initial cursory customs inspections of the crates, the tarped and netted pallets of his cargo, Smith entertained a brief ceremonial welcome conducted by representatives of the prefecture’s government, presenting The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne with feathered leis, laurel wreaths, and nosegays of local flowers while a local industry band played a far eastern rendition of “On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away.” The welcoming crowd did not disperse but remained to watch the American aviator assemble one of his airships on the milling dock in the shadow of the Chiyomaru. Night fell as Smith worked to rebuild his craft, acquiring through such exertion his “land legs” once more. Upon completion of the task and after sufficient fuel was procured and delivered via a makeshift bucket brigade, Smith reviewed the working order of his engine in a static test there on the dock, the propeller revving loudly. And as the night came on, he decided to take a short shakedown sortie over the bay. In the gloaming overhead, Smith initiated his skywriting mechanism and in one continuous loop inscribed on the sky an O in a white smoke that appeared, to the amazed onlookers below, as black, backlit by the setting sun.
Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, was given special permission to fly over the Aoyama Itchome. Tradition in Japan held that no mortal could be “higher” than the Emperor who with the Crown Prince and his brothers admired Smith’s initial letter as it appeared overhead. That letter “O,” to the surprise of Westerners in the party, was the only one forthcoming. In the pristine air it floated there, expanding slowly above the imperial grounds while Smith went on to perform various other loops and rolls no longer punctuated by a trail of smoke. At one point dropping perpendicularly 1,000 meters and pulling up at an altitude where he could easily be seen, he tipped his hat to the enthralled royal party a stone’s throw below.
Immediately apparent to the enthusiastic and appreciative local audience, the circle of smoke was not a letter at all but a Japanese word, the enso, meaning circle itself and used in meditative calligraphy of zen to symbolize an “expression of a moment.” One continuous brushstroke, usually drawn with black ink on silk paper, was done here with the same elegance and grace in oily smoke upon the bleached blue sky over the Mikado.
The night sky in Kyoto was alive with fireflies. There above the sparks, Art Smith composed a new enso. This time he deployed the skywriting apparatus that used phosphorus to trace a blinding white circle in the inky sky. Later, it was reported in Asahi shimbun that Smith had said he performed the act while his eyes were closed. He had been blinded that night by the battery of searchlights on the ground following his every move.
This enso appeared over Osaka.
In Sapporo after inscribing an enso in a cloudless sky, Smith plummeted earthward in a “dead dive” from 400 meters, leveling overhead to race with the four midget cars jockeying below him when, suddenly, his engine seized. Gliding now, Smith attempted to steer clear of the crowd, avoiding injuring the startled spectators. His propeller stopped, Smith lost all control, and a gust of wind turned the biplane over into the ground. The fracture of his left leg would be a clean one. General Nagoake, his host, rushed to the disintegrated craft, scraps of the plane’s canvas skin skidding along the new mown grass of the field caught up in the wind as it freshened.
