SOS incident

The SOS incident occurred in Mount Asahidake in Daisetsuzan National Park in Japan in 1989. Two lost mountaineers were located and rescued after search teams spotted a large SOS message built from fallen birch logs, but the mountaineers had not created this message, which was determined to have been in place since at least 1987. After returning to search the area for more missing people the next day, police found skeletal remains in the vicinity (initially determined to belong to a female) in addition to personal belongings of a presumed-male hiker found stuffed into a tree root not far from the sign. The items included an ID (belonging to Kenji Iwamura, a man who had been missing since 1984), 2 cameras, a notebook, and a tape recorder with tapes featuring a distressed man calling for help. It is still not known who constructed the sign.