The narrator discusses the SOS incident, a mysterious case from July 24, 1989, where two men went missing from Daisetsuzan National Park in Japan. The men were found by a rescue crew who noticed an SOS signal made of precisely cut birch trees. The hikers were rescued and later debriefed, revealing they had not created any SOS signal. The police found a human pile of bones and a backpack containing cassette tapes and a Sony tape recorder. The bones were later identified as belonging to a woman, which led to further confusion as the items found did not seem to correspond with anything belonging to a woman. The tapes contained soundtracks for anime and a disturbing message recorded over. The message, translated, reads "I can't move, I'm on the cliff, SOS help me." The narrator then discusses the case of Kenji Iwamura, a hiker who went missing about five years prior. The narrator notes that finding definitive information about Iwamura or the circumstances surrounding his disappearance is difficult due to the Japanese reporting on the situation. The narrator concludes by stating that the case leaves a lot of room for interpretation and speculation.
1. The text discusses the enticing prospect of taking a hike and getting away from it all, but also mentions the risks and dangers involved, such as the possibility of getting lost or encountering bizarre and mysterious circumstances.
2. The story of the SOS incident begins with two men going missing from Daisetsuzan National Park in Japan on July 24th, 1989.
3. The search for the missing men began the same day they went missing, with a helicopter searching throughout the area surrounding Mount Asaidake.
4. The rescue crew noticed an SOS signal visible from the sky, made out of various precisely cut birch trees, about four kilometers south of the summit of Mount Asaidake.
5. The hikers were found and rescued the next day, almost a kilometer north of where the SOS sign was found.
6. The hikers were puzzled when told that the SOS sign was not something they had created, and that their rescue would have been more difficult without it.
7. The next day, police dispatched a second search effort, which yielded some very interesting findings.
8. The most notable finding was a separate human pile of bones, found 10 to 30 meters around the area where the SOS sign was.
9. The bones were found in the lower trenches of a valley, and some of them had gnaw marks on them, likely due to wild animals in the area.
10. About 165 feet north of the sign, buried in a hole just large enough to fit a single human, a backpack was found containing three cassette tapes, a Sony tape recorder, and some basic toiletries and other supplies.
11. The bones were collected and later sent to the Ashikawa Medical University, which declared that the bones belonged to a woman with a blood type of O.
12. The recording found in the backpack was a disturbing message with a man's voice, calling for help on a cliff.
13. The ID card found in the pile of belongings belonged to a hiker named Kenji Iwamura, who had gone missing about five years prior.
14. The backpack was confirmed to be Iwamura's, but his family was not sure about who the person on the recording was.
15. The SOS sign was potentially undetected for some time, as it was found on an aerial photograph taken by the Forestry Agency in the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan on September 20th, 1987.
16. The remains were reassessed by the Ashikawa Medical University, which stated that they had made a mistake and the bones instead belonged to a male with a blood type of A.
17. The case was closed with no deliberate signs of foul play, but many questions regarding the situation remain unanswered.
18. The text suggests 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.
19. The text also raises questions about the missing tool used to cut down the trees, and how the police rushed to close the case in a week.