Reflecting on a Research Trip to Paris: The Paris Catacombs

Last week I took a two-day trip to Paris for research. There were a number of elements to the trip, and I am going to do a series of posts relating to each of them and this is the third (after the one about my visit to the National Library of France (Bibliothèque nationale de…

Reflecting on a Research Trip to Paris: The Concorde Memorials

Last week I took a two-day trip to Paris for research. There were a number of elements to the trip, and I am going to do a series of posts relating to each of them and this is the second (after the one about my visit to the National Library of France (Bibliothèque nationale de…

Post 524 – Remembering The Victims of the JL123 Plane Crash

This is blog post number 524. For many I suspect that there is no particular significance of this number. But like 123 and 520, I will always associate it with JL123, Japan’s and the aviation world’s Titanic, which has been one of my research areas since 2007. 524 is the official number of crew and…

Post 520 – Remembering The Victims of the JL123 Plane Crash

This is blog post number 520. For many I suspect that there is no particular significance of this number. But like 123, I will always associate it with JL123, Japan’s and the aviation world’s Titanic, which has been one of my research areas since 2007. 520 is the official number of victims on board JL123….

Webinar: Ypres and Hiroshima: Eye-Witness Testimony, Transnational Memory and Memorialisation Practices

Back in December I attended an excellent webinar on the topic “Ypres and Hiroshima: Eye-Witness Testimony, Transnational Memory and Memorialisation Practices”. The webinar was part of The Global Language-Based Area Studies research theme within the School of Modern Languages at Cardiff University. In the webinar there were two speakers – second year PhD students, Andrew…

Car Crash Memorials and Self-Driving Cars

One of the English language sites, Japan Today, that I use for keeping on top of the news in Japan (and what others who don’t speak Japanese might be seeing about Japan) had a story today (16 September 2021) talking about a memorial for a road traffic accident and touching upon the issue of self-driving…

Remembering 9/11

Today (11 September 2021) is the twentieth anniversary of the ‘9/11’ attacks. As with another recent post (All Accidents are Human Error), I have been inspired to write this post thanks to listening to the Take To The Sky Podcast. They have done a couple of podcasts recently in relation to 9/11 (on top of…

Peter Hood (1922-2021) – A Tribute

My dad, Peter Hood, passed away in 7 May. This post is a combination of text prepared by my brother, Barry, for an obituary that appeared in The Daily Telegraph (ironically appearing on the 80th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Hood) (the comments on the obituary have been particularly touching to read) and my…

The Avro Lancaster

On 7 May 2021 I was watching the first episode of the 30th series of the BBC series Top Gear. The main feature was the three presenters discussing and driving their ‘dad’s cars’ – not the actual cars themselves, but the type of car that their dad drove when the presenters were kids. It was…

Book Review: “Ken-chan no Momi-no-Ki (The Fir Tree)” by Kuniko Miyajima

There are certain things that are well known about the JAL flight JL123 crash – that it is the world’s largest single plane crash (520 fatalities), that amazingly there were 4 survivors, that the Search and Rescue took a long time, that final notes (isho) were written by some passengers and crew, that question marks…

“Crash: The Crash of Flight 401” and Remembering Eastern Air Lines Flight 401

In the next of my posts about movies which I studied for my article “Disaster Narratives by Design: Is Japan Different?“, I am writing about Crash: The Crash of Flight 401 (Berry Shear, 1978). Like my previous post about Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac, this movie is based on an actual crash. The following…

“Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac” and Remembering Air Florida Flight 90

Today (13 January) is the anniversary of the crash of Air Florida Flight 90, so it seems appropriate that, in the next of my posts about movies which I studied for my article “Disaster Narratives by Design: Is Japan Different?“, I am writing about Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac (Robert Michael Lewis, 1984). The…