The SOS Sign Incident - An Unsolved Mystery

after a year like 2020 the idea of taking a nice hike and getting away from it all has definitely been an enticing prospect but after looking into today's topic i sort of have mixed feelings and as i'm sure many of you know countless hikers go missing in a wide variety of bizarre and mysterious circumstances not to deter you from taking that hike as we all know mother nature can be unforgiving but that being said today's topic should put into perspective just how little we know about the disturbing events that truly unfold when people find themselves away from civilization the world is both so small that crazy coincidences can occur but also too large that we often don't find what we're looking for and that being said this is the true story of the sos incident [Music] oh [Music] on july 24th 1989 two men had gone missing from daisetsuan national park in japan and shortly after the search had begun spanning the area surrounding mount asaidake and a helicopter had begun a searching throughout the day as the day had come to a close out of the corner of their eye the rescue crew had noticed something down below if it wasn't apparent from the footage already there was an sos signal that was visible from the sky measuring in at 18 meters in length and 5 meters tall made out of various precisely cut birch trees this sign was found about four kilometers south of the summit of mount saidaki where there was no trail and people rarely ever veered towards that location seeing this as a clear call for help the local police landed and patrolled the area in order to investigate and as it would turn out just a kilometer or so north the hikers ended up walking out of the woods and were rescued shortly after almost everything was back to normal and when the hikers were debriefed on the situation they had been told had it not been for that sos sign rescuing them would have been a hell of a lot more difficult when the hikers were told this they were puzzled because they had never created any sos sign in fact they had no idea what the police were even talking about making their initial rescue an insane coincidence that would lead investigators down an entirely separate mystery because if they never made that sign who did the next day police dispatched a second surge the new efforts yielded some very interesting findings for one the most notable finding was an entirely separate human pile of bones and this human skeleton was found 10 to 30 meters around the area of where the sos sign was to note some of the condition of the bones there some of them had gnaw marks on them likely due to wild animals in the area and some of the bones were broken as well indicating that whoever this was may have undergone some major injury however this wasn't the only thing found in the second surge and about 165 feet north of the sign buried in a hole just large enough to fit a single human under some tree roots a backpack was found containing three cassette tapes a sony tape recorder as well as some basic toiletries and other supplies after some time the bones were collected and then later sent to the ashikawa medical university who later declared that the bones belonged to a woman with a blood type of o this left the investigation even more puzzled as they soon recognized that none of the items found in that hole under the tree roots had seemed to correspond with anything belonging to a woman and to convolute things even further out of the things that were found on the tapes for the sony cassette player two of them were soundtracks for anime and the other one had been recorded over leaving a disturbing message with a man's voice on it foreign now what's apparent here is that this person is calling for help and the literal translation reads i can't move i'm on the cliff sos help me i can't move on the cliff sos help me the place is where i met the first helicopter i can't go up deeply sasa lift me up from here now i apologize if the translation is a bit rough however this person appears to be calling for help on a cliff and in case you're unfamiliar with what sasa is it is a type of dense bamboo which makes the context of this recording even more confusing because this person appears to be on a cliffside in this recording however this was found in the lower trenches of a valley continuing on one item that was found that i haven't mentioned yet in that pile of belongings was an id card of a hiker that had gone missing about five years prior and this man's name was kenji iwamora i will note that finding anything definitive on mr iwamora or the circumstances surrounding his disappearance is incredibly difficult the japanese reporting on the situation redacts his name in every public mention of this case and only a single story from the associated press at the time this event took place in an american newspaper even bothers to name him all i can say definitively about this guy is that he liked anime he was an office worker and he was staying at a hostel and it seems the only reason people knew he went missing was because he didn't show up for work a week later as a result of this man's name being redacted there's so many different versions of the story and the victim that it becomes a borderline frustrating some sites in this case will mention that he had become an outdoorsy type in his last months other tabloid websites will mention that he wasn't the type of person to go for a hike alone and even other tellings of the story mentioned the man was celebrating a promotion at work and decided to treat himself to a trip up the mountain but ultimately if you dig back in newspaper archives you will get one disturbing detail that is left out everywhere else and only told in the american side of reporting the associated press had reported at the time this occurred that when they had reached out to the family of iwamura they confirmed that the backpack was in fact his but get this they were not so sure about who the person on the recording was and they could not say that that was their son so we have a pile of bones a missing hiker's backpack a recording from another person asking for help in that backpack and an sos sign made out of birch trees that was somehow made by a person who may or may not have had broken bones at the time of the science creation not to mention these trees were cut however there was no ax or anything of the sort that could be found in the local area so naturally you have to ask what the hell happened on this [Laughter] [Music] mountainside well after some time only a few of those questions can really be answered the first course of action was to figure out what time that sign had appeared and a local newspaper had reported that on the 28th it was found that the letters sos were reflected in the aerial photograph taken by the forestry agency in the geospatial information authority of japan on september 20th 1987 to create a map this photo was taken from a point about 3 700 meters above the sky in the photo the width of the letters sos is about 0.9 millimeters the first s is a little unclear and difficult to understand but the last s can be confirmed it's barely noticeable in the photo but it's clear to the naked eye the agency and others that take aerial photographs take it every five years keep in mind this was roughly translated and i did look for the specific photo they're referring to but i don't know if this was released publicly but this does mean the sign was potentially undetected for some time passed in 1982 and while this seems to match up with the timeline of mr iwamura what couldn't be explained at the time was the woman's bones that were found as a result the remains were reassessed by the ashikawa medical university and they had later come out and stated that they had made a mistake and the bones instead belonged to a male with a blood type of a this was enough for investigators to deduce that this was mr iwamora and with no deliberate signs of foul play the case was closed however that's not to say that all of our questions could be fully answered and to say that we're missing a few details regarding the situation is a bit of an understatement so let me start to break down what law enforcement believed happened and you'll start to fully understand how none of it makes sense here is a map of the hiking area and the mountain and it's believed that he hiked up from the ropeway along the ridgeline this hike isn't very long or particularly advanced by any means now the only thing you really have to pay attention to on this hike are the two landmarks that let you know when you cross over this ridgeline that main landmark is the safe rock which looks like this however there is another rock along this ridge that looks deceptively similar and that is the fake safe rock to which two hikers from the beginning of the story made the same mistake and landed themselves a couple kilometers north of the sos sign as a result of this incident they ended up putting up ropes to prevent this from happening but back in the 80s they didn't have this however our guy is believed to take in the wrong safe rock as well and trekked along the hill haphazardly until he wandered some time down into the marsh and based on my look on the japanese discussions on this topic many people are quick to point out that had he simply followed the river and walked along the edges he was only about nine or so miles away from civilization the terrain definitely wasn't easiest and it's definitely some place that people can get lost however the fact that he decided to dedicate his time and energy to cutting down trees is another mystery especially when you factor the geography here really only gave him one direction that he could head and that was downhill but i digress and now that you sort of have a lay of the land we can start to get into the nitty-gritty in regards to the rest of the bizarre details of this case so let's start with the recording like i said it's really bizarre that the parents weren't certain that that was their son on the recording and i've yet to find any amendment to this initial statement you'd think that a parent would be able to recognize their son's voice without much hesitation but it is worth considering this only appears in the american reporting of the situation and perhaps i didn't get all the details right in this initial article it appears they didn't even get his age right however i will note it is actually quite common for initial reports on subject matter to get the age wrong because everyone is rushing to get the story out but your guess is good as mine regarding the other details and something to consider is if iwamoro wasn't on this recording is it possible that he met someone on the way up to the mountain and to tell you the truth the evidence doesn't point to iramora making this sign by himself in fact the person who did the autopsy on this case stated that he wasn't even physically capable of doing it solo now you might be thinking well aren't birch trees super flimsy and not exactly i selected this video to show you because this tree has roughly the same diameter as many of the other trees that were found there and keep in mind that the tree he's cutting isn't birch and birch is a hard one and i already mentioned this but he never brought an axe with him or a knife so it wasn't even fully clear how 19 birch trees were chopped and moved 100 meters into the clearing moreover the skeleton was found fractured on the left shoulder and right leg if we are going to argue that he made the sos signal we sort of have to make the argument that he got these injuries after animals got to him and even if he somehow managed to do this while injured where'd the axe come from what happened to it and why wasn't it found with his belongings i will note no other records show he was with anyone during any of his travels and no other reported persons went missing in the park during this time but that's not to say something like this couldn't go unreported and furthermore you have to ask if this guy had the strength to build an sos sign why wasn't he able to go down the mountain like i said this area isn't super remote in fact where he was located basically only gave him the option to follow the river that leads directly to civilization at around eight and a half miles or so now once again you could say that he had broken bones so he couldn't go down the river and while i totally understand that people with their life at risk probably aren't going to be thinking 100 clearly the fact that police close this investigation without understanding what happened to the acts is sort of questionable this mystery has a catch-22 at almost every single theory and usually when you have situations like that you're missing some details and five plus years of this site being left to the elements doesn't help either so things can easily go missing perhaps there's more to the site that's waiting to be unearthed getting back to the recording however many people have theorized that the man may have used the cassette player as a way of calling for help if he was out of breath and lost his voice after all the battery would outlast you yelling however one thing that some of the people on the japanese side of discussion have pointed out is that there is almost no background noise on the recording you would assume that someone yelling for help on a cliffside might result in a little bit more reverb or wind or even the helicopter that he's referring to in the background but there really isn't anything of the sword speaking of that helicopter mentioned in the recording it does appear that police searched for iwamora and as far as the recording also mentioning sasa that can be found growing sideways along the improper trail with the fake rock but just like everything else with this case we're not 100 certain this is what's being referred to in the recording sasak can be found in a variety of locations throughout the park and perhaps this helicopter being referred to on the mysterious message wasn't even the particular search helicopter searching for iwamora and just another passerby i can imagine that if you were stranded out in the middle of nowhere and you saw a helicopter you'd probably have proper bias to think that that was coming to look for you so once again it's hard to be sure what i can say for certain about this topic is that it really leaves a lot of room for interpretation and i'd love to know what you guys have to say down in the comments personally i think the biggest gap in the story is the missing tool used to cut down the trees and giving how police rush to close this case in a week definitely seems like some details are missing when it comes to the great outdoors if there's something i've learned is that only mother nature knows the full extent of what goes on this is barely sociable have a good night you

Channel: Barely Sociable

Views: 1,235,959

Rating: 4.9501019 out of 5

Keywords: sos mystery, sos incident, missing 411, unsolved mysteries, mystery, barely sociable

Id: snWvNkJCCs8

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020

Reddit Comments

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[u/Anianna]

Some curiosities I have that weren't mentioned in the video:

Was it a tape recorder or a tape player? It is referred to as either in the video, but I don't see mention in the one article about what it actually is. If it is just a player, he would not have been able to have made that recording in the field as it would have to have been made with another piece of equipment.

Would a Japanese person in Japan use English SOS? I know it's fairly universal and I would expect most people from around the world outside of their country of origin might use it, but he's in Japan. I'm not saying a Japanese person in Japan wouldn't use English SOS, I'm asking if they would.

This happened near a river. Did the articles comment on the toolmarks on the trees used? Perhaps they were trees felled by beavers and all he had to do was drag them into place. I've been in areas with lots of trees downed by beavers waiting for them to drag them into place, especially in areas with a high beaver population, so I think it's feasible for a man lost near a river to have access to already felled birch trees.

[u/Fresh-Package2284]

Thank you it was great. David Pauildes: I have watched both films and have read 3 of his books. His passion to give the missing and their family a voice.

To read and watch other than the 411 helps me to see from different perceptions.

Anyway Stay Safe Stay Alive

[u/detailedfiles]

Watched it last night, not bad. But Barely Sociable has much better content out there.

[u/SnooFlake]

15:38 do you see the guy on the right, waving?