Japan: Samurai Skyjackers

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Doubtful Welcome. Thus began an incredible standoff that continued for nearly three more days. The students refused to surrender the plane or release the passengers. South Korean authorities called in machine gunners and military jets to prevent the plane from leaving. For the passengers, crowded six abreast in the plane, the impasse was hell. The men's hands were tied behind them with twine; the air became sour; toilets reached the overflow point. The skyjackers kept the doors shut and window shades drawn.

Top Japanese officials flew to Seoul, where they bargained for hours by radio with the young radicals. Finally, Japan's Transportation Vice Minister Shinjiro Yamamura offered to accompany them to Pyongyang as hostage if they would let the passengers go. Eighty hours after the plane had been skyjacked, yellow steps finally were rolled up to it and 50 passengers debarked, many of them pausing on the way out to shake hands ceremoniously with their captors. Then Yamamura boarded the plane, after which the remaining 49 passengers were released. The free passengers were quickly flown to Fukuoka, where they were greeted with joyous cries of "Banzai" by friends and relatives. Flight 351 flew on to Pyongyang. Next day the North Koreans freed the plane, its crew and hostage Yamamura. They flew home, abandoning the samurai skyjackers to a doubtful welcome: Pyongyang Radio was already referring to them as "Trotskyite criminals."