Asahidake: The Giant SOS Sign and the Person Who Never Returned

On July 24, 1989, Hokkaido police used a helicopter to search for two hikers lost in Daisetsuzan National Park. From the air they saw a giant SOS sign made from fallen birch trunks on Mount Asahidake. The two hikers were rescued because of it. When police returned, they found a second story nearby: a hollow containing a recorder, cassettes, human remains, and identification belonging to Kenji Iwamura, who had disappeared in 1984.

The SOS sign had not been built by the hikers who were rescued. The logs had been there earlier. Each letter was several metres long and required many trunks and considerable effort to arrange so that a helicopter could read it. Someone had done this work in a cold forest far from a main road, then left without a name.