A year later, Otsuka finally joined Asahi in 1934 and was sent to the company's Osaka branch. He was posted not as a photographer but as a reporter in the social affairs department. There, he learned to write news stories and take documentary photographs. He never used a staff photographer and covered various topics such as police, general interest, army-related, and travel stories. But only a few years into his career as a reporter, the Second Sino-Japanese war began. War years During the war, Otsuka traveled all over China for 55 months. He had several series about the everyday life of Chinese people, like Here and there along the Yangtze and Autumn on the Continent. He wrote many stories of his own volition and avoided battlefronts when possible, unlike his contemporaries. However, it is not clear if he was viewed suspiciously by the Japanese military police, who detained Otsuka for two nights. They questioned him about the content of his reporting and his lack of coverage of the war efforts, although they let him go after he promised to change his ways. In 1942, Otsuka was transferred to the Asahi Bangkok branch going to Saigon briefly before being sent to Singapore and finally Seoul in 1944, where he taught photographic and darkroom techniques to the staff of Mainichi Shinpo. But as American B-29s began to bomb Japan in 1945, he returned to Osaka. He was ordered to join a reconnaissance squad using the Shinshitei, Mitsubishi Ki-46 reconnaissance plane, to chase, photograph, and identify American bombers. These agile planes would climb up to 10,000 meters to photograph the B-29s, often drawing fire. He said: “It was highly unusual for a civilian like myself to be involved in such work, but in those days, the army could do whatever it wanted. I learned that I had been chosen because I was the lightest photographer the army could find. The Shinshitei was made to carry only two people, the pilot, and the squad leader, and so if they wanted to carry another person, they needed someone light… It was, for all intents and purposes, a draft order." As the strategic bombing of Japan shifted to napalm carpet bombing, Otsuka would watch the scene from above as cities were engulfed in flames. His parents, who had escaped to Wakayama, died in these fires. Even after his parents' death, he took pictures of the cities