Woman whose husband died in 1985 plane crash advocates safety to JAL employees
Machiko Taniguchi, who lost her husband in the 1985 crash of a Japan Airlines jumbo jet, spoke in July directly to young JAL employees involved in flight safety, her first such opportunity since the tragedy.
“The safety of the skies rests on your eyes and your hands,” she told them.
A week later, Taniguchi, 77, climbed to the crash site on Osutaka Ridge in the village of Ueno, Gunma Prefecture, and stood before the memorial marker for her husband. “I told him I had asked them to make sure the same accident never happens again,” she said.
On Aug. 12, 1985, her husband, Masakatsu, who was 40 at the time, boarded Japan Airlines Flight 123 bound for Osaka, heading home after attending the funeral of a superior at work in Tokyo. Shortly after takeoff, the plane lost control and crashed in the mountains north of the capital, killing 520 passengers and crew, including him.
As the aircraft shuddered, he scrawled a brief note to his wife. “Machiko, please take good care of our children,” reads the note, which was found in a pocket of the pants he was wearing.
“Unable to believe my husband’s death, I was in a daze and couldn’t eat or drink,” Taniguchi recalled.
Several months after the crash, the persimmon tree her husband had planted in the garden of their home in Minoo, Osaka Prefecture, bore fruit for the first time. That small harvest became a turning point for Taniguchi and her two children as they began to look ahead.
Years later, inspired by her granddaughter’s words — “I wanted to see my papa’s papa while he was alive” — she self-published a picture book in 2016, “My Papa’s Persimmon Tree,” capturing the family’s memories. Wishing for safety in the skies, she has since given readings in many places, totaling about 40 to 50 sessions.
The former transport ministry’s aircraft accident investigation commission, predecessor to the Japan Transport Safety Board, concluded that the crash was caused by an improper repair of the jet’s pressure bulkhead by Boeing, the aircraft’s manufacturer. The inquiry also found shortcomings in JAL’s inspection procedures.
“If it had been repaired correctly, those 520 lives would not have been lost,” Taniguchi said. “Nor would the lives and destinies of their families and friends, many times that number, have been upended.”
She had long hoped that JAL’s maintenance staff would hear her plea. That wish was fulfilled on July 9, when Taniguchi read her picture book aloud and shared her thoughts with about 150 new maintenance employees from JAL and its group companies.
“A day like today will come again tomorrow and the day after. Please protect such days,” she implored. Participants listened intently, many taking careful notes, according to Taniguchi.
On July 16, Taniguchi climbed to the crash site on Osutaka Ridge, step by step, gasping for breath. At her husband’s memorial marker, she set down a picture book she had just revised to make it easier to read, along with the beer and coffee he loved.
For Taniguchi, Osutaka Ridge is “one place where I can talk with my husband.” On this visit, as always, she spoke to him with a smile, “Please watch over your family.”
Forty years have passed since that summer. “My husband, too, lived for 40 years. Having the opportunity to give a lecture (at JAL) this milestone year, I feel it was some kind of fate,” Taniguchi said.
“Summer doesn’t end for me unless I come here,” she said of Osutaka Ridge. “I managed to come again this year.”
