By Chiara Fiorillo
The final photo taken inside a doomed plane minutes before it crashed into a mountain and killed 520 people has emerged nearly 40 years after the disaster.
Japan Airlines flight 123 departed from Tokyo's Haneda airport and was flying towards Osaka when it crashed on August 12, 1985, in the southern Gumma prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, Japan. The incident is one of the deadliest single-plane crashes in history. The plane had ascended to 24,000 feet when the first distress calls came from the pilot who reported losing altitude and difficulty controlling the plane.
The aircraft fell to around 10,000 feet as distress calls continued, with the pilot asking to be rerouted to the Tokyo airport. However, about 45 minutes after take-off the plane crashed into Mount Takamagahara near Mount Osutaka in the Kantō Range. Rescue attempts were made difficult by the remote location of the crash site - and it took emergency services 14 hours to reach the area.
Helicopters were involved in the search and volunteers reached the remote area on foot. The flight was fully booked with 509 passengers and 15 crew members. Of the 524 people on the plane, four survived. The crash was blamed on a missing tail fin that likely structurally weakened because of frequent landings and take-offs.
Now, a final photo taken before the tragedy has emerged, showing an air stewardess standing in the aisle holding an oxygen mask to her face. Tubes providing oxygen can be seen stretching across the rows of seats, which seems to suggest something had already gone wrong.
Other tragic photos taken by passengers and now shared on Reddit show the view from the plane before tragedy struck. Among the survivors were 35-year-old Hiroko Yoshizaki and her eight-year-old daughter Mikiko who shouted at her and urged her to stay awake during their long night in the wreckage. The woman said after the crash that she was on the edge of consciousness because of pain when her daughter shouted: "Don't go to sleep mother! Stay awake or you'll die! I'm hungry, mother!"
Ms Yoshizaki's husband and their other two children died in the crash. The other two survivors were off-duty stewardess Yumi Ochiai, 26, and 12-year-old Keiko Kawakami. They were all sitting in the rear of the plane. Ms Yoshizaki said the problem started with a "big bang", after which oxygen masks came down and some passengers fainted.
She said many people panicked as the plane pitched wildly. She reported that after about half an hour there was a shock and she lost consciousness. When she regained consciousness, the woman touched her husband's hands, which were cold, and she realised he was dead. Her surviving daughter, who was trapped in her seat with her seat belt fastened, continued to talk through the night to keep her mother awake. The survivors were found the morning after the crash and were evacuated by helicopter.
