The Hakkōda Mountains incident (八甲田雪中行軍遭難事件, Hakkōda Settchū Kōgun Sōnan Jiken) occurred on January 23, 1902, when a group of Imperial Japanese Army soldiers became lost in a blizzard on the Hakkōda Mountains in Aomori Prefecture in northern Honshu, Japan, en route to Tashiro Hot Spring located in the Hakkōda Mountains. The 199 deaths during a single ascent make it the most lethal disaster in the modern history of mountain climbing. Jirō Nitta wrote , a semi-fictional account of the disaster. James Westerhoven translated the book into English.