08-08-2025
Son of 1985 JAL Crash Victim's YouTube Anime Short Advocates Aviation Safety, Aimed at Education Younger Generations
Masayoshi Yamamoto, 45, who lost his father to a Japan Airlines passenger plane crash on Aug. 12, 1985, recently made an anime short to spread the message of learning from the accident and advocate for aviation safety, now available on YouTube.
Yamamoto is now a company employee in Chuo Ward, Tokyo, concerned about the aging of the crash's bereaved families.
As his goal, he expressed, 'I want to prevent the accident from being forgotten and pass on the lessons to younger generations.'
Titled 'Yonjunenme no Kioku' (Memories from 40 years go), the short is one minute and seven seconds long. It explains facts like how there were only four survivors, and that bereaved family members of the victims have continued climbing onto the mountain ridge where the plane crashed to pay their respects.
In the short, a farewell note from written during the plane's fall is shown, reading, 'It's a shame that it came to this. Goodbye.'
In the last scene of the anime, two child characters ask, 'Airplanes are safe. No more tragic accidents, right?' A female character who lost her parent to the accident replies, 'It's up to us.'
Yamamoto said, 'I want people to think about safety and understand it is not a given.'
At the time of the accident, Yamamoto was 5 years old. In his parents' house in Yao, Osaka Prefecture, he had been waiting for his father, Kenji, then 49, to come home from his business trip.
When a TV news program aired a list of passengers of the plane, his mother began to cry. Only a small child, he could not understand what had happened, though has memories of attending a funeral and the grief-stricken expressions of his relatives.
When Yamamoto was in elementary school, he climbed onto the ridge of Mt. Osutaka and found his father's name on a grave-marker. It was there that for the first time he really understood that his father had passed.
Since then, Yamamoto has continued to climb onto the ridge to pay respects to his father and tell him about his life milestones, such as enrolling in higher education, starting a job and having his child.
In feeling that over the years that more and more people were not aware of the accident, Yamamoto joined 8.12 Renrakukai, a liaison council of bereaved family members of the accident victims, in 2010.
As a member of the council, he has engaged in efforts such as producing manga centered on the accident and publicizing current scenes of the ridge of the mountain in Street View, the geographical image-distributing service of Google.
But with the number of emails to the association expressing, 'I will never forget the accident,' on the decline, he grew increasingly concerned.
Yamamoto thought, 'As video can convey [the message] with graphic images and voice sounds, it's easy even for children to watch.'
And so, he used a generative AI program to create the video, also adding English subtitles.
Last month, Yamamoto also established Memory Link 1985, a Tokyo-based general incorporated association for efforts to prevent the accident from being forgotten.
He plans to regularly post online video clips depicting reproduced scenes of search and rescue efforts at the time of the accident.
Yamamoto said, 'It is important to continue conveying the facts of the accidents. I want people to watch the anime and think about what can be learned from the accident and aviation safety.'
