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KMID : 0608619940040010034
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Korean Journal of Aerospace and Environmental Medicine
1994 Volume.4 No. 1 p.34 ~ p.36
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Airline Medical Director's Experience of the Aircraft Hijacking
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Masaomi Hokari
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Abstract
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Thank you very much for your kind welcome and introduction.
It is a great pleasure for me to have the opportunity to speak before such a large and
distinguished audience.
I would like to begin by saying that Dr. Kay and I have known each other for many
years now : we met on the 31th of March. 1970 at Kimpo Airport.
You may be surprised that I can recall the date so exactly, even after 23 years have
passed, but apart from having had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Kay for the first time
that date also the marked my involvement in my first aircraft hijacking. An
involvement. 1 hasten to add, that was a completely innocent one.
My connection with Japan Airlines dates from 1963 when I began working on a
part-time basis in the clinic, My involvement with the company gradually became closer
over the years and in 1974 I assumed my present role of medical officer working mainly
in the area of preventive care. Initially, our medical office had a staff of 2 doctors and 3
nurses, and our equipment did not go much beyond stethoscopes and sphygmanometers.
At that time I did not even dream that we would have the staff or the kind of medical
facilities that are available to us today. One day, as I was thinking how we could go
about building up our medical infrastructure, 1 received word that another doctor and 1,
together with two captains, were being sent to Kimpo to serve as hostages in exchange
for the passengers on board a JAL aircraft, the "Yodo" which had been hijacked while
on route from Tokyo to Fukuoka. The fact that the aircraft was carrying a large
number of doctors planning to attend a conference in Fukuoka may explain the reason
my colleague and I were selected for this role but to this day I am not really sure why.
In any event. we went to Kimpo with the prospect of coming face to face with the Red
Army hijackers, Fortunately, the situation was resolved without our involvement and we
were able to return to Fukuoka with the released passengers. It was during my stay at
the Kimpo airport that I first met Dr. Kay who was kind enough to take very good
care of me.
Although hijackings had become rather common all over the world during the 1960's
owing to political disturbances in the Middle East and Cuba, that was the first time for
the Japaness people, and for myself, to think of hijacking as something which could
affect us and not just something that we read about in the newspaper.
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KEYWORD
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