The Forgotten Japanese Victims of the Khalistani Terror Plot
- authored by CoHNA Canada Leadership
On the same day that Air India Flight 182 was destroyed over the Atlantic Ocean, a separate bomb blast at Tokyo’s Narita Airport killed two Japanese baggage handlers—Hideo Asano and Hideharu Koda—and injured four others. These victims, whose names and stories have largely faded from public memory, represent a crucial but often overlooked dimension of the Khalistani attacks of June 23, 1985.
The Narita bombing was not a separate incident but part of a coordinated terrorist operation. The bomb had originated in Canada on a Canadian Pacific Airlines flight and was being transferred to Air India Flight 301, which was bound for Delhi via Bangkok. The explosive device was intended to detonate aboard the Air India aircraft, not at the airport, demonstrating the true scope and ambition of the conspiracy.
The timing of both bombs was intended to be synchronized—they were meant to explode simultaneously aboard their respective Air India flights. However, the conspirators made a critical miscalculation: they failed to account for the fact that Japan does not observe daylight saving time, while Canada does. This timing error caused the Narita bomb to detonate prematurely at the airport rather than aboard Air India Flight 301 as planned.
Had the perpetrators got their timing right, the bomb would have exploded aboard the Delhi-bound flight to Bangkok, potentially killing hundreds more passengers alongside the 329 who died on Flight 182. The deaths of Asano and Koda serve as a stark reminder of what the terrorists had planned—multiple simultaneous attacks on Air India flights that could have claimed even more lives.
The tragic irony is that Asano and Koda, two Japanese airport workers who had no connection to the political disputes that motivated these attacks, became victims of a terror plot conceived and executed by Khalistani extremists in Canada. Their deaths underscore the indiscriminate nature of terrorism, claiming innocent lives across nationalities and communities.
As we remember the victims of Air India Flight 182, we must not forget Hideo Asano and Hideharu Koda, whose lives were cut short by the same extremist ideology. Their deaths remind us that the true scope of the June 23, 1985 conspiracy was even more devastating than many realize, and that terrorism’s reach knows no boundaries.
To learn more, we encourage you to read original coverage from the time: