Job Corps students build new JAL crash memorial
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Columbia Basin Job Corps teacher Scott Sewell oversees students Charley Hubble and Seep Miller as they work on the new memorial to a 1969 Japan Airlines crash at the Port of Moses Lake.
MOSES LAKE — It was very early on Monday as a group of about six Columbia Basin Job Corps students and their instructor gathered with their gear — shovels, trowels and buckets — inside the north fence of the Grant County International Airport.
And by early, it was 5:30 in the morning.
“Jump in, muckers,” said Scott Sewell, their instructor, who stood ankle deep in wet concrete.
“Nice and slow, George,” Sewell said as he directs one of his students. “You’re pushing that muck back.”
The students were there, not far from the former taxiway the Air Force now uses as an assault runway to practice short takeoffs and landing, smoothing out concrete, honing their skills.
And building a new monument to a 1969 airplane crash that took three lives.
On June 24, 1969, the training crew of Japan Air Lines Convair 880 — a four-engined passenger jet similar to Boeing’s 707 and McDonnell Douglass’ DC-8 — were practicing how to recover from engine failure during takeoff when their plane careened off the runway and burst into flames.
While two of the crew members walked away from the wreckage, three others — Junichi Murata, Kunitsugu Kawase, and Toshiaki Hoshida — died in the accident.
According to Rich Mueller, director of operations for the Port of Moses Lake, an original monument was built soon after the crash. However, with the Air Force regularly using the taxiway, the old memorial is now harder to get to, Mueller said.
So the new memorial will sit on the service road that rings the airport — out of the way of active traffic.
“This is still in line with the trajectory (of the crash), it’s still adjacent to the taxi way, which is now the Air Force assault strip, and that gave us an opportunity to put in a plan that makes it more accessible,” Mueller said.
“And it allows the Air Force to fly,” he added.
The JAL memorial is popular with Japanese visitors to Moses Lake, Mueller said.
The new memorial is being made with a tan-tinted concrete designed to look like the local basalt. Sewell said it will take about a month to properly cure and harden.
Sewell started teaching at Job Corps in 2009 only to leave again in 2014 when the economy picked up.
“At the time, I missed the daily sense of accomplishment,” he said. “But after I was out for a couple of years, I realized I missed the satisfaction of seeing these guys succeed.”
Tacoma native Caleb Nunley, who has been at Job Corps here in Moses Lake for six months, said he really likes the work.
“It’s very hard work,” he said as he smooths out concrete. “You get up really early in the morning, it’s tiring, but I love it.”
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