Ex-Wakkanai mayor Hamamori dies at 93+

ASAHIKAWA, Japan, Sept. 6 Kyodo -
Tatsuo Hamamori, who was mayor of Wakkanai, Hokkaido when a Korean Air jumbo
jet was shot down by a Soviet fighter jet over nearby Sakhalin in the Russian
Far East in 1983, has died, his family said Sunday. He was 93.
Hamamori died of pneumonia on Friday night at a hospital in Saitama Prefecture.
Hamamori, a native of Hokkaido, served as mayor of Wakkanai for eight
consecutive terms from 1959. As chief of Japan's closest municipality to the
site where the plane was shot down, he later contributed to raising a monument
for the victims.
All 269 passengers and crew aboard the KAL jet were killed when it was hit by a
missile fired by the Soviet fighter jet.
==Kyodo