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Kuniko Miyajima, 77, had been expecting a day like any other, with her family gathered around the dinner table, smiling and enjoying the meal she lovingly prepared. But her life changed forever when her 9-year-old son Ken died in the 1985 Japan Airlines jumbo jet crash.
The mother has since led an association of the families bereaved by the world’s deadliest single-aircraft accident, which started off as a mutual support group and has, over the decades, become a beacon for others in Japan dealing with similar tragedies.
Taking part in a U.N. aviation agency symposium on Tuesday in the Netherlands that brought together families of aircraft accident victims from various countries, Miyajima hoped her experience would again light the way for others — this time across borders.
Kuniko Miyajima (2nd from L), who leads an association of bereaved family members of the 1985 Japan Airlines jumbo jet crash, during a symposium organized by the International Civil Aviation Organization in Haarlem, the Netherlands, on Nov. 26, 2024. (Kyodo)
“I believe other families are already focusing on what’s next…and I like to think that I helped them in some small way,” she said after speaking about her past 39 years at the event, which was aimed at promoting global cooperation in supporting those mostly affected by aircraft disasters.
It has not been an easy journey for Miyajima since JAL Flight 123, while en route from Tokyo to Osaka, slammed into a mountain in an area northwest of Tokyo on Aug. 12, 1985, claiming the lives of all but four of the 524 passengers and crew aboard.
While coping with her own deep regret over letting her son fly alone, on what was supposed to have been a reward trip for his achievement of swimming 25 meters in a pool, Miyajima took on a central role in the victims’ relatives association “8.12 Renrakukai,” meaning liaison group, launched about four months after the accident.
At a time when there was no such thing as the internet and scant public recognition of the importance of supporting the bereaved, the group’s activities were “a trial and error process,” Miyajima had earlier recalled.
With many of the bereaved families scattered across Japan, newsletters the group published and delivered by mail helped create a bond among them, serving as a key venue to exchange information, including on compensation issues and memorial events, and an outlet to share their emotions.
Miyajima remembers thinking she must “pull myself together” when a reporter’s question about who she had lost caused her to choke up and retreat to the restroom — an episode that occurred less than a year after the accident.
“I wondered regretfully how somebody as pathetic as me had taken on this (leading) role. But I decided to fulfill my responsibility and instead asked the media not to pose questions about Ken, knowing it would make me tear up.”
After largely devoting the first five years to campaigning for thorough accident investigations and an unsuccessful attempt to seek justice for the victims, the 8.12 group has carried on with its efforts to keep the tragedy alive in the public consciousness and advocate for air safety.
From its inception, the association vowed to work toward improving the safety of skies worldwide. The term “bereaved families” was deliberately left out of its name to avoid the perception that its members were simply people overwhelmed with grief.
Its persistent calls to preserve the wreckage of the crashed plane bore fruit as Japan Airlines Co. in 2006 opened a publicly accessible center in Tokyo displaying parts of the aircraft blamed for the accident, as well as other debris and actual notes and photos of the last messages written by those who were on board.
Kuniko Miyajima stands before a memorial for her 9-year-old son on Osutaka Ridge in the Gunma Prefecture village of Ueno, northwest of Tokyo, in July 2018. (Kyodo)
In 2011, nearly 26 years after the crash, the bereaved families’ push for accountability led Japan’s accident investigation board to release a guidebook for the original official accident investigation report released in 1987, which spanned around 400 pages and was rife with technical terms.
The 8.12 group has also interacted with other families of the victims of transportation accidents and natural calamities, including the 2005 fatal derailment of a commuter train in western Japan, at times helping them cope with the grief and sharing experiences on ways to run associations.
Christopher Hood, an academic based at Britain’s Cardiff University whose research has included the JAL accident and Japan’s bullet train, said Miyajima and the 8.12 group deserve “recognition” not just in Japan but also internationally for their activities that continue until today.
“Mrs. Miyajima and the Renrakukai have almost become a model for other families when there have been other events, and this is not necessarily now limited to transportation accidents,” he said in a recent interview, touching on her exchanges with the bereaved families of the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan in March 2011.
He also suggested that the weight of the Renrakukai stems from the scale of the accident involving a single plane — the deaths of 520 people across 401 households — which was “almost like nothing we’ve really seen before” and enabled “a critical mass of people to come together.”
Annual memorial pilgrimages to the 1,565-meter crash site, the Osutaka Ridge in Gunma Prefecture, have been joined by families impacted by other accidents and disasters who have come to know Miyajima and hope to strive for a safer society together.
The Japanese government, meanwhile, has become more inclined to reflect the voices of the victims and their families to improve their assistance to people in transportation disasters.
Following a survey of families affected by Japan’s major airline and train accidents, including the JAL crash, the government in 2012 launched an office for public transportation disaster victims aimed at assisting the affected in the immediate aftermath, such by offering necessary information, as well as in the longer term by coordinating psychological and other care.
After participating in Tuesday’s symposium organized by the International Civil Aviation Organization, Miyajima appeared encouraged to see families of aircraft disaster victims around the world raising their voices for better support in future tragedies.
“Definitely, it’s that anger, grief and suffering that can bring changes to societies. I’ve always thought so and still carry those feelings within me,” she said.
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