Hijacker overpowered and captured at Tokyo

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33067, 7 November 1972, Page 1

Hijacker overpowered and captured at Tokyo

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) TOKYO, November 6. Police waiting in ambush today at Tokyo Airport captured an American attempting to hijack a Japanese airliner for s2m ransom and a flight to Cuba.

A spokesman at police headquarters identified the man as Henry Wong, aged 43, of San Francisco.

He was captured as he transferred from a Japan Airlines Boeing 727 that he had hijacked early today to a DCB provided to fly him and the money to Cuba. Police waiting inside the door of the second aircraft pounced as he boarded with three crew member hostages. In a scuffle one of the crew knocked down the man’s gun and he was quickly overpowered. The police on the ground raced swiftly into the interior to join in pinioning him. TURNED BACK The hijacker was seized at 4.05 p.m. local time, eight hours after he had captured the 727 en route to Fukuoka, turned it back to Tokyo and hefd.it there on the ground for more than five hours.

He released 121 passengers and three crewmen after J.A.L. officials had loaded the s2m aboard the waiting DCB. After refusing to surrender he forced the 727 captain and two other crew members to board the DCB.

The move from the parked 727 to the longer-range DCB which was to have taken the hijacker to Vancouver on the first leg to Cuba came after long and anguished negotiations. Police said that none of the three crewmen, one of them an American, held by the kidnapper had been hurt. LOADED PISTOL

Wong was carrying a .38 pistol, loaded with six bullets, with 50 more bullets inside his ■ suitcase.

Two packages containing 15 kilograms each of black gunpowder were found in the baggage compartment. The hijacker hid in the toilet at take-off and remained there until the plane reached Nagoya, a few minutes out of Tokyo. Then he bolted for the pilot’s cabin, put a pistol against the captain’s back and ordered him to fly to Cuba. The 727, however, was too short a range for the 13,000-mile flight.