A short clip from the movie "Nankai no Hanataba" (Bouquet of the South Seas), features a majestic Kawanishi H6K "Mavis" taking off and alighting.
The particular aircraft, c/n52, was nicknamed "Sazanami" (rippling waves) and had the civilian registration J-BFOY.
It belonged to the fleet of the Dai Nippon Koku and had a rather short career operating from Palau Islands. On February 1, 1941, after taking off from Saipan had engine trouble and was forced to make an emergency alighting at Chichijima Island.
On March 8, 1942, a repetition of the previous incident found the flying boat having to make an emergency alighting at Chichijima Island. After fixing the plane, the crew tried to take off but the waves were strong and the plane was seriously damaged.
"Nankai no Hanataba" (Bouquet of the South Seas) is a Japanese film produced by Toho Film in 1942. Based on Ryuichiro Yagi's play "The Equator," the film depicts the branch chief and pilots who develop a civil air route across the equator in the South Seas Islands, which were under Japanese mandate at the time. With the support of Dai Nippon Airways, the film features actual aircraft such as the Type 97 flying boat (Mavis) that was actually in service on the South Pacific route, and the film also uses footage of the actual aircraft in the maintenance scenes and takeoffs and landings.
According to assistant director Kon Ichikawa, filming took place in Palau, which was under Japanese mandate just before the Pacific War began. They left Yokohama in August 1941 on a large Kawanishi four-engine seaplane, but Abe did not like the script, and filming did not progress even in November. Ichikawa, fed up with the staff's anxiety over the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States, urged Abe to quit, and filming finally began. Filming was completed on December 8, just one week before the war, on a cargo ship. Ichikawa later testified, "If filming had been delayed even a little longer, we might not have returned alive. We were lucky to escape with our lives."