Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the tragic crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123, which occurred in my home prefecture of Gunma, as fate would have it. I learned of the crash one day when I suddenly decided to ride my bicycle 40 km to check out some caverns I’d heard about. (I had lots of free time for random stuff before I started J-List.) My wife shuddered when I told her where I was headed, and she said, “I could never go out there, that’s where that plane went down in 1985.” JAL flight 123 took off from Haneda airport headed for Osaka, but suffered a massive failure of its hydraulic system, which made it impossible to control the plane. After an agonizing 32 minutes in the air, it crashed. Adding to the tragedy, an American military unit arrived on the scene to aid the survivors of the crash but was ordered to stand down by the Japanese military, who then didn’t arrive until the next morning. The disaster was the largest loss of life in a single aircraft crash ever, and it’s even more legendary because of one very famous passenger: Kyu Sakamoto, who sang the Sukiyaki Song, the first Japanese language song to hit #1 in the U.S. Here’s a link with many different versions of this epic song: http://www.jbox.com/sukiyaki. The man also sang another epic song from the 20th century, Ashita ga Aru (There Will Be a Tomorrow), the unofficial theme song of recession-ripped Japan.
Kyu Sakamoto was one of the victims of JAL Flight 123.
