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Terauchi interview transcript, Dick Gordon, 2 Jan 1987

FAA via National Archives / The Black Vault · 20 pages · text from the file's own layer

This FAA record of interview documents a January 2, 1987 session in Anchorage, Alaska, in which Inspector Richard O. Gordon of FSDO-63 questioned JAL Captain Kenju Terauchi about his crew's November 17, 1986 sighting. Terauchi describes two small craft with exhaust-like lights that flew near his aircraft and a much larger mothership, and says the target appeared green on his onboard radar. He also reports VHF interference and says the objects matched his 360-degree turn and his descent.

R. Gordon Yeah, let's see what would you estimate the size of the small
ships to be?
K. Terauchi Ah ••• (unintelligible), up here equal to (unintelligible) we
saw, ah, second (unintelligible), square, but I saw this on here,
ah here, for so I guess this one is maybe separate, separate,
then move to here. So ah, ah, (Japanese).
R. Gordon Right, yeah, ah uh.
S. Mimoto if this one was two stacked together, how large was one?
K. Terauchi This here ah fuselage, fuselage of DC-8, DC-8 fuselage.
R. Gordon DC-8, okay • • • yeah ah uh, in other words this part right here
would be like fuselage of a DC-8.
K. Terauchi Oh yes •
R. Gordon Like this .
K. Terauchi Yeah, yeah, yeah
R. Gordon Okay
K. Terauchi Maybe, maybe about like this
R. Gordon Uh ah, yeah I understand, okay, I got it. That's good.
F. Fujii Any other lighted or unlight objects, any other lights?
K. Terauchi Yeah, we saw ah, some unusual light from ah, top of mothership.
R. Gordon Uh ah
K. Terauchi Ah, it was not regular, but - not regularly, but white -
silverish lights, not in equal span of time, but occasionally
flashed, irregularly lighted at all times.
S. Mimoto Occasional flash
K. Terauchi Flash, flash
R. Gordon And since I've got this on tape, if you will help me later, you
know when we write this down, because I can't remember all this
stuff. Thank you.
K. Terauchi (Japanese) First time we cannot see ah, this (unintelligible) so
ah, ah, we saw this light, this light, and •
R. Gordon Ah uh, okay, thank you very much.
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Hearing transcript, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 20 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.