日航 123便

Supreme Court Judgment      
                                                         Tohko Aoyama　　

For more than 10 years, I have been supporting Ms.Motoko Kibi, a Japanese bereaved family member, in filing a lawsuit requesting information disclosure. I would like to inform Foreign bereaved family members that the Supreme Court's decision was made 23th May. The appeal was dismissed. This means that there is no need to let her family listen to the voice recorder. This is clearly an unfair judgment. This is a lawsuit demanding disclosure of information about the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123 39 years ago, so non-disclosure would be unjust from a global perspective. In fact, except for this accident, voice recorders have been made public in Japanese court cases.

So why is this JAL flight 123 the only one not open to the public?
The six books I have written make this clear. However, since it's not English, I don't think a bereaved family has any idea why. The reason why they did not want the bereaved families to listen to the raw data (voice recorder) of JAL Flight 123 is the cause of the accident is different from what was announced. The cause of the accident officially announced was Boeing's mistake in repairing the pressure bulkhead, and Japan Airlines' responsibility for overlooking the repair mistake. However, the case did not go to trial due to insufficient evidence, and no one took responsibility.

An official document released online in 2013 states that ``the plane crashed due to an abnormal external force landing on its vertical tail.'' I immediately did a detailed investigation. Scientific analysis of the wreckage of Japan Airlines Flight 123 discovered from the Osutaka ridge at a university research institute revealed that the military was involved. It is now possible that a missile being tested in Japan may have fired by mistake. However, neither the Self-Defense Forces nor the U.S. Forces in Japan disclose military secrets. Japan Airlines knew this, but remained silent for many years.      The National Accident Investigation Committee has left it alone without conducting a re-investigation.

It is natural for bereaved families to want to know why their loved one had to die and the cause of death. Ms. Motoko Kibi, a bereaved family member whom I support, was determined to do just that, and has been fighting the case in court for six years. However, the Japanese government still kept it private. Until now, none of the foreign families wanted to know the cause of the accident. Taking advantage of this, Japan Airlines has continued to cover up the matter in collusion with the government. There was only one bereaved family member who wanted to know the cause of the accident, living in the UK, so I went there to see them, but because she had lost someone she was not married to at the time. She could not take the case to court.
We need to uncover the truth behind JAL Flight 123. Ms. Motoko Kibi also says that she wants to fight again in court together with the   a bereaved families.　（Photo from Jomo Shimbun)