Remembering The World’s Deadliest Single Plane Crash in Unexpected Ways

Christopher P. Hood

(Cardiff University, HoodCP@Cardiff.ac.uk)

12 August in Japan is Obon, the festival of the dead. It was on this day, in 1985, that flight JL123, a Boeing 747 with 524 crew and passengers, crashed into mountains north-west of Tōkyō. By the time search and rescue teams reached the crash site, all but four of those on board were dead. To this day it remains the world’s deadliest single plane crash. But this is not why it tends to be remembered.

One of the features of this crash is that some on board wrote final messages, isho. These notes provide an insight into those of those who knew that they may be facing death. Nearly 40 years after the crash, there is much interest in the notes, and this interest is not restricted to Japan. There are many around the world wanting to read the notes. Novels and dramatizations related to the crash all feature the notes in some way. Some of the notes themselves are on display in JAL’s Safety Promotion Center. This paper explores the reasons for the interest in the notes and analyses their contents.

Today when a major event occurs, it will be discussed widely on social media. What is perhaps surprising is that there are people making YouTube videos, for example, of events that occurred prior to the internet being widely developed. This is true also about JL123. In the second half of the lecture, I will look at the contents of some of these videos and consider what the implications are for those who may turn to YouTube for learning about historical events and the ‘truth’ about what really happened.

Christopher Hood is a Reader in Japanese Studies at Cardiff University and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society (CDAS), University of Bath. His books include Japan: The Basics, Osutaka: A Chronicle of Loss in the World’s Largest Single Plane Crash, and Dealing with Disaster in Japan: Responses to the Flight JL123 Crash. He is the author of articles and chapters including ‘Depicting the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: History and Continued Significance’, ‘Truth and Limitations: Japanese Media and Disasters’, ‘Japanese Disaster Narratives of the Early Twenty-First Century: Continuity and Change’, ‘Disaster Narratives by Design: Is Japan Different?’, and ‘Developing a Model to Explain Modifications to Public Transportation Accident Memorials’. Between 2016 and 2022 he was the President of the British Association for Japanese Studies. In 2016 he received a Certificate of Commendation from the Ambassador of Japan in the UK in recognition of distinguished service to contributing to the deepening of mutual understanding and friendship between Japan and UK.

He is also the author of the novels Hijacking Japan, Tokyo 20/20 Vision, and FOUR.

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