Music’s Aviation Tragedies: Kyu Sakamoto

Tweet

Today we have a lot of history to cover in this monthlong look at aviation incidents that took the lives of musicians. Some of the young folks will shrug and the older folks will go, “Oh, I remember that song!” It’s a great song and a massive tragedy, so here we go. Kyu Sakamoto Hisashi Sakamoto was his given name. Actually, “Kyu” was short for “Kyu-Chan,” which means “little nine,” as he was the youngest of nine children. At the age of 20, Sakamoto became an international sensation with the song “Ue o Muite Aruko.” Because executives thought it would be too difficult to pronounce, they gave it the name “Sukiyaki” (after the beef dish), because most English-speaking people were familiar enough with that word. The lyrics have NOTHING to do with food, but it rather a lost-love lament. It didn’t matter that people didn’t understand the language. “Sukiyaki” went to #1 all over the world. (The song was just over 20 years removed from Pearl Harbor; however, I can’t find any evidence in newspapers that anyone protested against a song by a Japanese singer being played on American radio. Good!) “Sukiyaki” was the first, and remains to date the ONLY, song recorded in Japanese to hit #1 in America. Fast forward to August 12, 1985, when Sakamoto and 523 others boarded Japan Airlines flight 123 for a flight from Tokyo to Osaka. It was Obon festival time, a mixture of cultural and religious (both Buddhist and Confucian) traditions honoring ancestors. It’s a very heavy travel time (think Thanksgiving weekend here). As such, a plane with over 500 individuals on it wasn’t unusual. In 1978 the plane that served as flight 123 had been involved in a tail strike upon takeoff. No problems resulted at the time; however, the plane’s tail section had to be repaired. As they discovered after August 12, 1985, it had been repaired incorrectly. Just twelve minutes after takeoff the plane’s tail broke off (because of the improper repair in 1978). It caused rapid decompression in the cabin and a loss of controls in the cockpit. The crippled plane managed to stay in the air for 20 minutes until it crashed into the side of a mountain, the pilots unable to steer it away or control the descent. Four people were found alive when the search crew reached the crash site the next day. Postmortem examinations determined that a number of people had actually survived the initial crash, but succumbed either to their injuries or exposure while waiting for rescue. With a total of 520 fatalities, the crash of Japan Airlines flight 123 is the single one-plane disaster in history. For perspective, the worst disaster was the collision of two planes at the airport in Tenerife, Spain in 1977, which took 583 lives. Kyu Sakamoto was a star in his native land, and he took one beautiful song to the entire world in his career. Kyu Sakamoto Born Hisashi Sakamoto December 10, 1941 - August 12, 1985 (age 43) Place of crash: Mount Takamagahara, Ueno, Gunma, Japan Commercial airline: Japan Airlines flight 123, intended route Tokyo - Osaka Here’s that beautiful #1 hit “Sukiyaki” (with translation on the screen):