Playing the Victim

The air is misty and cool at the top of the mountain. The sisters and their mother breathe it in hard after their hour-long hike, which followed a four-hour drive north from Tokyo, which followed a 12-hour flight from London. Cassie Yukawa, 20, clutches a fistful of wildflowers for the father she last saw when she was four. It was here that Akihisa Yukawa was killed 16 years ago this day, Aug. 12, in a Japan Airlines 747 crash along with 519 others, the worst disaster in history involving a single plane. Weeks after his death, Yukawa's second daughter Diana was born.

The anniversary happens to fall during the holiday of Obon, when the souls of the dead are said to return home. Crowds of mourners scale this mountain on this day every year to remember the disaster. They all fall silent as Diana Yukawa, 15, picks up her violin. She shuts her eyes and plays a tune by the singer Kyu Sakamoto, who also died in the crash. The song topped charts around the world in 1963 (in the U.S., it was called Sukiyaki) and is popular again in Japan thanks to the plaintive rendition Diana plays in sold-out concerts and on a best-selling debut CD, which is dedicated to her father and other victims of the crash. When she finishes, she walks calmly into a log cabin and bursts into tears.

Though much of Japan knows the sad story of how Diana Yukawa was orphaned, few are aware of the more complicated side of the tale. She and her mother and sister never asked for financial compensation from JAL and Boeing, the U.S. maker of the plane, until a few years ago. (Batches of compensation, worth a reported $300 million, were given to families of other victims.) Dissatisfied with negotiations, the two sisters traveled to Japan from their home in London last month not only to pay tribute to their father but also to announce they may sue. "We have waited long enough," says their mother, Susanne Bayly. "It's time to tell the whole story."

The saga began in 1978, when Bayly, then 21 and a ballet student, met Yukawa, a London-based executive for Sumitomo Bank. They fell in love, though Yukawa, then 49, had two grown sons and a wife, who was confined to a hospital with brain damage after a car accident. When Yukawa was reassigned to Tokyo, he brought along Bayly and their newborn daughter Cassie.

Bayly remembers Aug. 12, 1985. Eight months pregnant and jittery, she pleaded with Yukawa not to take a last-minute business trip to Osaka. He placated her over a boxed sushi lunch. "We walked together to Cassie's ballet school," Bayly recalls. "He kissed me, patted my stomach and said: 'Take care of my last creation.'" A few hours later, the TV flashed news of the crash.

Akihisa Yukawa left no will; he had informed his parents but not his sons or wife about his second family. The wealthy Yukawa clan offered Bayly a sum of about $400,000 on condition that she hide the existence of her daughters and forfeit any claim to the family estate. Secrecy meant she could not apply for compensation from JAL. Shocked, grieving and nursing a newborn, Bayly signed. Back in London, they lived on the payoff and with some clandestine help from Yukawa's mother.

But when the grandmother died in 1998, Bayly and her daughters called in the lawyers. They say JAL representatives told them to sue the Yukawa family instead. (Yukawa's wife and sons got $750,000 from JAL and Boeing.) JAL said that the daughters were ineligible because they were illegitimate. The family submitted DNA samples and in March 2000 received a declaration of paternity in British courts. JAL then offered about $80,000. Meanwhile, Diana shot to musical fame. In late July, JAL offered about $200,000. Bayly and her daughters rejected it. "We are not asking for much," says Bayly, "but after a third goes to lawyers, it simply isn't enough for Diana and Cassie to finish their training." Cassie is in piano studies at the Royal College of Music and Diana is studying with violinist Ruggiero Ricci in Salzburg, Austria. Last year Diana had to sell her 1656 Amati violin so the family could get by. "It was either that or the house," says Diana.

The family wants JAL and Boeing to pay up. (Boeing had admitted liability for a faulty repair job and paid 80% of the earlier settlements.) But they admit money can't heal all wounds. At the spot on Mount Osutaka where Akihisa Yukawa's body was found, his family fusses over a makeshift memorial. Bayly leaves a cake from his favorite bakery, Diana her second CD. Says Cassie: "Nothing can ever truly compensate us for having to grow up without him."