When Masashi Yamaguchi's mother threw her wedding ring into the sea, he believes it was so she could remain strong and move on without her dead husband.

Yamaguchi's father, Masakazu, was one of the 28 Japanese on Korean Air Lines flight 007 when it was shot down by a Soviet fighter jet on Sept. 1, 1983, near Sakhalin Island, Russia, killing all 269 passengers and crew members on board.

Four decades after the incident, Yamaguchi, 42, still feels the regret of not being able to fully repay the debt of gratitude to his now deceased mother, who raised him and his two sisters on her own following the tragedy.

Yamaguchi, who lives in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, western Japan, was just 2 when his father Masakazu, 32, was killed on the flight following a business trip to the United States. The plane had departed from New York and was en route to Seoul.

Masakazu, who worked for a housing appliance company in Nara Prefecture, had changed to KAL 007 after experiencing trouble with his original scheduled flight. The Korean passenger jet, which had stopped in Anchorage, Alaska, to refuel, widely deviated from its original route and was downed over Sakhalin Island for violating Soviet airspace.

The International Civil Aviation Organization later concluded that the aircraft made a navigational error and was mistakenly identified as a U.S. military spy plane.

Yamaguchi says life without his father was normal, and there were few pictures of him. When he would ask his mother Makiko about his dad, it was obvious that she did not wish to speak about him much, only saying, "He died in a plane accident."

"I think it was really hard for (my mother) to think about my father," Yamaguchi said.

One day in his third year of junior high school his mother took him and his two older sisters to Hokkaido in northern Japan. They arrived at Cape Soya in Wakkanai, near the crash site off Sakhalin.

She pulled her wedding ring out and tossed it into the ocean. "I thought, 'It's her wedding ring.' I think she did it to keep her from remembering my father," Yamaguchi said.

A 20-meter tall monument called the Tower of Prayer dedicated to the victims of KAL 007 stands at Cape Soya today.

Yamaguchi's mother raised her three children while working as a cosmetics saleswoman. Although she never complained, after he left home to attend college, she had a nervous breakdown, perhaps, he believes, because she was suffering from mental illness. When he started working, his interactions with his mother declined further.

But in 2013 when Yamaguchi opened his own cram school, he had some time to spare and began spending more time with his mother. When he would tell her about how his life was going, she was happy to hear that he was doing well and would sometimes share memories of his father with him.

Later, her mental issues appeared to clear up, but she died in 2017 at the age of 66. "I think I should've been able to help her more," Yamaguchi said.

Yamaguchi currently works hard as the representative of a bereaved family association to communicate what happened at the time of the KAL 007 incident. "I think the meaning of my mother working so hard to raise me was to tell people in the future about this incident. I want to contribute to society what I was not able to give back to my mother."

On Sept. 1, the 40th-anniversary memorial ceremony was held off the coast of Sakhalin, attended by around 200 people including Yamaguchi. At night, citizens lit dozens of lanterns at Wakkanai Port and other locations to console the dead.

==Kyodo

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