In Memoriam: 40 Years after the Crash of the JAL Jumbo Jet… “Memories of Life” in Osutaka through Photographs and Testimonies

The 520 passengers and crew on board must never be forgotten…

That night, I heard a tremendous popping sound coming from the sky, and I thought, ‘That’s strange, since it wasn’t thunderstorm weather,’ and then I heard an emergency broadcast from the town office saying, ‘If you hear any noise or notice anything, please call us. ……. I braced myself, thinking, ‘This can’t be normal.

At 6:56 p.m. on August 12, 1985, the 520 passengers and crew on board were killed. The precious lives of 520 passengers and crew members were lost on the southern ridge of Mount Osutaka in southern Gunma Prefecture. The crash of the Japan Airlines jumbo jet was the world’s worst single plane crash in terms of casualties. Forty years have passed since then.

Looking back on the time of the crash, Hideko Imai, 73, the proprietress of the Imai Family Ryokan in Ueno Village at the foot of Mount Osutaka, recalls, “The next morning, the Self-Defense Forces, the Gunma Prefectural Government, and the Gunma Prefectural Government all joined in the search and rescue operation. From the next morning, about 4,000 people, mainly from the Self-Defense Forces and Gunma Prefectural Police, were mobilized, and the news media swarmed into Ueno Village, which served as a search base. With helicopters flying overhead incessantly, Imai recalls, “It was such a chaos that some elderly people were reminded of the war.

At that time, a “drama of life” was unfolding on the Osutaka ridge, where life and death intersected. Yozo Soga, 76, who was a photographer for FRIDAY at the time, recalls, “I saw the emergency bulletin on the night of the 12th.

When I saw the emergency bulletin on the night of the 12th, I couldn’t stand still, so I grabbed my three cameras, jumped in my car, and drove to the site of the accident. Immediately after the accident, we didn’t know where the plane had crashed, so we left the radio on while we gathered information and searched the border between Nagano and Gunma prefectures. By the time I reached Ueno Village, the sky had begun to turn white. I left my car in the village and joined the local fire brigade on their way to Mount Osutaka.

At first, I had to cut my way through the animal trail to reach the summit of the mountain – and when I reached the halfway point, something clung to my feet. I looked and saw that one of the schoolboy’s shoes had fallen off. I thought to myself, “Why just one shoe in the middle of a mountain like this?” I thought, and turned it over to find that the shoe was filled with the flesh of a human foot.

I remember a nasty sweat trickling down my back. I thought to myself, “I’ve come to a terrible place. As I continued on, a strong smell of burning oil and something else hit my nose. I lost my balance and grabbed a tree branch, which was sticky, so I let go and found a black bandage-like substance threading from the branch to my hand – on closer inspection, it turned out to be melted skin. Human. I was terrified and reflexively shook it off.

Charred bodies were strewn about…the ridge turned into a hell.

When Mr. Soga arrived at the crash site at around 9:30 in the morning, he was struck by the devastation. Charred remains were strewn across the burnt-out ridge.

There were bodies with skulls cracked open and brains sticking out, and others charred in a sitting position. I turned my lens on the Self-Defense Forces personnel who were working so hard to search for the bodies in the hellish conditions and continued to take the shutter, summoning up all my courage.

(Mr. Soga) “The only hope in the horrific scene was the presence of four survivors, including a girl who was 12 years old at the time.

When it was almost 11 o’clock, we heard a cry of “Survivors found! I heard a shout of “Survivors found! We made a makeshift stretcher from pieces of wood and the wreckage of the aircraft and carried it to the heliport, where Self-Defense Force personnel carried it up to the helicopter. Everyone there was looking up at the sky with a feeling of prayer, just hoping that they would be saved,” said Mr. Soga.

After the interview, Mr. Soga participated in the memorial climb many times. While he frantically snapped his shutter at the site, he also began to feel regret and anguish over having photographed the bodies, even though he was covering the event. He had a bad leg, and his last memorial climb was about 15 years ago. There, he had an unforgettable experience.

I heard the voices of an adult woman and two or three children, who appeared to be mothers, coming from the woods near the cenotaph on the ridge. My companion also heard them, so there was no doubt. I couldn’t make out what the conversation was about, but it sounded like they were having a lot of fun. …… The experience made me think that the people who died that day must be living happily above the skies of Osutaka. Those who passed away are still watching over their bereaved families. I believe so.”

From the August 22 and 29, 2025 issues of FRIDAY