Uchikura & Co., LLC

They Stayed with the Plane

 

On November 22, 1999, a Japan Air Self-Defense Force T-33 training aircraft developed trouble as it returned to Iruma Air Base. The aircraft was losing thrust. Below it were homes and public facilities.

 

The two men aboard were Lieutenant Colonel Hirofumi Nakagawa (中川尋史), 47, and Major Yoshihiro Kadoya (門屋義廣), 48. They faced a choice no pilot would want to make. Ejecting while the aircraft was over a residential area could leave it to crash into the people below.

 

Nakagawa and Kadoya continued flying toward the Iruma River riverbed. A Japanese government account concludes that they delayed ejecting to reduce the danger on the ground. They did eject just before the aircraft struck power lines, but by then it was too late for either man to survive. No one on the ground was injured.

 

In 2000, the two pilots were recognized with a Japanese award for their actions in an emergency. Yet an award cannot return them to their families. They were two people, with names and lives, who died while trying to protect others.

 

When I hear this story, I think about the seconds between the decision to eject and the decision to keep flying. We cannot know everything Nakagawa and Kadoya thought in those moments. We do know that they stayed with the aircraft until it reached a place where a crash would pose less danger to the neighborhood.

 

Hirofumi Nakagawa and Yoshihiro Kadoya. Their names deserve to be remembered., a Japan Air Self-Defense Force T-33 training aircraft developed trouble as it returned to Iruma Air Base. The aircraft was losing thrust. Below it were homes and public facilities.

 

The two men aboard were Lieutenant Colonel Hirofumi Nakagawa (中川尋史), 47, and Major Yoshihiro Kadoya (門屋義廣), 48. They faced a choice no pilot would want to make. Ejecting while the aircraft was over a residential area could leave it to crash into the people below.

 

Nakagawa and Kadoya continued flying toward the Iruma River riverbed. A Japanese government account concludes that they delayed ejecting to reduce the danger on the ground. They did eject just before the aircraft struck power lines, but by then it was too late for either man to survive. No one on the ground was injured.

 

In 2000, the two pilots were recognized with a Japanese award for their actions in an emergency. Yet an award cannot return them to their families. They were two people, with names and lives, who died while trying to protect others.

 

When I hear this story, I think about the seconds between the decision to eject and the decision to keep flying. We cannot know everything Nakagawa and Kadoya thought in those moments. We do know that they stayed with the aircraft until it reached a place where a crash would pose less danger to the neighborhood.

 

Hirofumi Nakagawa and Yoshihiro Kadoya. Their names deserve to be remembered.