Families of Crash Victims Pay Respects From the Air

Dozens of bereaved relatives in chartered helicopters circled a forested mountaintop today and tossed out flowers, chocolates and love notes over the site where a Japan Air Lines 747 jumbo jet crashed 10 days ago, killing all but four of 524 people aboard.

Two twin-rotor helicopters circled for 15 minutes at midday above 5,408-foot Mt. Osutaka, 70 miles northwest of Tokyo.

About 80 people rode on the first four trips, the first of several flights by the helicopters, which were chartered by the airline at the request of families of victims whose bodies either have not been found or have not been identified.

“Rest in peace, I’ll take care of your children,” said a note dropped into the trees by a brother of one victim as the red, white and blue helicopters circled overhead.

“Come home soon,” another said.

Below, workers continued to search for bodies and pieces of the Boeing 747 that might help explain commercial aviation’s worst single-plane disaster.

Kyodo News Service said Sumiko Ono asked a helicopter pilot to pour whiskey from his cockpit because her husband “liked it very much.”

The news service quoted Masako Akashi, whose husband and daughter were killed, as saying, “I would have liked to jump from the window.”

At Fujioka, the city 25 miles to the east where bodies have been collected and identified in a temporary morgue, airline spokesman Yoshitaka Kuchiba said JAL arranged the flights in response to “strong requests” from about 400 relatives of the more than 100 victims still not accounted for.

JAL Flight 123 crashed after its tail fin disintegrated and its hydraulic systems failed during a flight from Tokyo to Osaka. Only four female passengers survived.

As of today, Gumma prefectural police spokesman Yoshinobu Shibukawa said in a telephone interview, 489 bodies had been recovered and 412 had been identified. Doctors say some of the bodies may never be identified.

A spokesman for Fujioka’s Tano Hospital said two of the survivors, Hiroko Yoshizaki, 34, and her 8-year-old daughter, Mikiko, will be transferred tonight to Jikei University Hospital in Tokyo.

The third survivor, Yumi Ochiai, 26, remained at Tano and the fourth, Keiko Kawakami, 12, was still at a hospital in nearby Takasaki.