All Nippon Airways Flight 857 was a scheduled flight from

Tokyo Haneda Airport , officially , and sometimes called as Tokyo Haneda Airport or Haneda International Airport , is one of two international airports serving the Greater Tokyo Area, the other one being Narita International Airport (NRT). It serves as the primary ...

Hakodate Airport is an airport located eastAIS Japan
of

hijacked Hijacking may refer to: Common usage Computing and technology * Bluejacking, the unsolicited transmission of data via Bluetooth * Brandjacking, the unauthorized use of a company's brand * Browser hijacking * Clickjacking (including ''like ...

by a lone individual on June 21, 1995. The aircraft was boarded by police the next morning following an over-night standoff, in the first instance where force was used to respond to an aircraft hijacking in Japan, led by the Hokkaido Prefectural Police with support from the

Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department The serves as the prefectural police department of Tokyo Metropolis. Founded in 1874, it is headed by a Superintendent-General, who is appointed by the National Public Safety Commission, and approved by the Prime Minister. The Tokyo Metro ...

Special Assault Team The is a police tactical unit in major Japanese prefectural police departments, supervised by the National Police Agency. The SAT is a national-level counter-terrorism unit that cooperates with territorial-level Anti-Firearms Squads and Count ...

(then known as the Special Armed Police).

Hijacking and response

At around 11:45 a.m., a single hijacker took control of the

Boeing 747 The Boeing 747 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner designed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in the United States between 1968 and 2022. After introducing the 707 in October 1958, Pan Am wanted a jet times its size, t ...

aircraft while it was flying over

Yamagata Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Yamagata Prefecture has a population of 1,079,950 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 9,325 km² (3,600 sq mi). Yamagata Prefecture borders Akita Prefecture to the north, ...

, and took the 365 passengers and crew hostage. The hijacker claimed to be a member of the

Aum Shinrikyo , formerly , is a Japanese doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for the Matsumoto sarin attack the previous year. The group says tha ...

religious cult, which was then under investigation for its role in the

Tokyo subway sarin attack The was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated on 20 March 1995, in Tokyo, Japan, by members of the cult movement Aum Shinrikyo. In five coordinated attacks, the perpetrators released sarin on three lines of the Tokyo Metro (then ''Teito Rapi ...

s. The hijacker claimed to be in possession of

plastic explosives Plastic explosive is a soft and hand-moldable solid form of explosive material. Within the field of explosives engineering, plastic explosives are also known as putty explosives or blastics. Plastic explosives are especially suited for explos ...

and

sarin Sarin (NATO designation GB G-series, "B"">Nerve_agent#G-series.html" ;"title="hort for Nerve agent#G-series">G-series, "B" is an extremely toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound. After the aircraft landed in Hakodate at 12:42 p.m., the hijacker demanded the release of Aum Shinrikyo leader

Shoko Asahara , born , was the founder and leader of the Japanese doomsday cult known as Aum Shinrikyo. He was convicted of masterminding the deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and was also involved in several other crimes. Asahara was sentenced ...

, and that the plane be refuelled and returned to Tokyo. He only spoke through the cabin crew, and refused to allow food or drinks to be brought into the aircraft. In Tokyo, a task force was established consisting of Chief Cabinet Secretary Kozo Igarashi, Japanese Transport Minister Shizuka Kamei and the Public Security Commission chairman,

Hiromu Nonaka was a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party. Nonaka served as a local politician in Kyoto Prefecture from 1951 to 1978 and in the House of Representatives from 1983 to 2003, becoming one of its most prominent members in the 1990 ...

to oversee the incident. As the stand-off progressed that evening, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police led a nationwide background search of each passenger on the flight and concluded that the hijacker was the only suspicious individual on board. This conclusion was supported by communication from the pilot and from passengers with mobile phones, who told police that the hijacker was acting alone. One of the passengers in contact with police was folk singer

Tokiko Kato is a Japanese singer, composer, lyricist, actress and activist. She was born in Harbin, Manchukuo, to Japanese parents and graduated from the University of Tokyo. She worked as a visiting professor at Josai International University. While ...

, who was en route to a scheduled concert in Hakodate. The Japanese Self-Defense Forces were placed on high alert throughout the incident. The next day, at 3:42 a.m., at the direction of Prime Minister

Tomiichi Murayama is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1994 to 1996. He led the Japanese Socialist Party, and was responsible for changing its name to the Social Democratic Party (Japan), Social Democratic Party of Japan in 1996. Up ...

, the aircraft was stormed by Hokkaido and Tokyo police units that had previously been monitoring the aircraft from outside. The hijacker was arrested, with only him and one passenger injured. Some of the officers from the Hokkaido Prefectural Police masqueraded as airport employees when they made the arrest. The hijacker apologized for his actions and said that he had to do it when he was detained by police.

Aftermath

The hijacker initially used the name "Saburo Kobayashi," but was found to be Fumio Kutsumi, a 53-year-old Tokyo bank employee from Toyo Trust & Banking on leave for a

mental disorder A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...

. The "plastic explosives" in his possession were found to actually be made of

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

, and his plastic bag of "sarin" was found to actually contain plain water. The hijacker was ultimately sentenced in March 1997 to imprisonment for 8 years, and ordered to pay 53 million yen in civil damages to All Nippon Airways. On appeal, the Sapporo High Court lengthened the criminal sentence to 10 years. The hijacked aircraft remained in operation with ANA until July 2003 when it switched to a

Boeing 747-400D The Boeing 747-400 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, an advanced variant of the initial Boeing 747. The "Advanced Series 300" was announced at the September 1984 Farnborough Airshow, targetin ...

until the airline retired the 747 in 2014. ANA still operates the flight number 857 but it currently operates to

Hanoi Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...

from Haneda, utilizing a

Boeing 787 The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is an American wide-body jet airliner developed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. After dropping its unconventional Sonic Cruiser project, Boeing announced the conventional 7E7 on January 29, 2003, ...

Boeing 777 The Boeing 777, commonly referred to as the Triple Seven, is an American long-range wide-body airliner developed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. It is the world's largest twinjet. The 777 was designed to bridge the gap bet ...

. Within a year following the incident, the Special Armed Police, which were then an unofficial unit of the Tokyo police, were upgraded to official status as the Special Assault Team, and similar teams were established in Hokkaido and other prefectures. The government was criticized in the wake of the incident for failing to disband the Aum group more quickly following the Tokyo subway attacks, on the basis that this may have prevented the hijacking from taking place at all.

News coverage

The incident generated a great deal of live news coverage within Japan while it was ongoing.

Nippon TV JOAX-DTV (channel 4), branded as , is the flagship station of the Nippon News Network and the Nippon Television Network System, owned-and-operated by the which is a subsidiary of the certified broadcasting holding company , itself a listed su ...

carried live coverage following the end of a scheduled baseball game, while

TV Asahi JOEX-DTV (channel 5), branded as (also known as EX and and stylized as TV asahi), is a television station that is owned and operated by the subsidiary of certified broadcasting holding company , itself controlled by The Asahi Shimbun Compan ...

pre-empted halftime of a live

J-League The , known as the for sponsorship reasons, is the top level of the system. Founded in 1992, it is one of the most successful leagues in Asian club football. Contested by 18 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the J2 ...

soccer match for live coverage of the incident.

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestr ...

shipped a newly-developed video camera from Tokyo to Hakodate in order to provide clearer news footage of the incident, and provided live footage of the aircraft's landing in Hakodate from a robotic camera positioned at the airport. This was said to be the first live coverage of a landing of a hijacked aircraft. Several major newspapers published extra editions on the morning of the hijacker's arrest, as it occurred shortly after the deadline for their usual morning editions.

JASDF involvement in response

F-15 fighters were dispatched from the

Japan Air Self-Defense Force The , , also informally referred to as the Japanese Air Force, is the air and space branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, responsible for the defense of Japanese airspace, other air and space operations, cyberwarfare and electronic warfa ...

Chitose Base to escort the hijacked aircraft to Hakodate. SAP forces were carried from Haneda to the site by JASDF

Kawasaki C-1 The Kawasaki C-1 (川崎 C-1) is a twin-engined short-range military transport aircraft developed and manufactured by the Japanese conglomerate Kawasaki Heavy Industries. It is solely used by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF). Developm ...

transport aircraft based at

Iruma Air Base is a Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) base located in the city of Sayama, Saitama Prefecture, north of western Tokyo, Japan. It was the airfield for the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force Academy until 1945, when it became Johnson Air Fo ...

References

Bibliography