The discrimination against non-Japanese employees working for JAL might hopefully be brought into the spotlight, by this action.
One only has to read some of the inhouse reports submitted by the Japanese, to start to understand it eg. "the Flight Engineer was non-Japanese, and didn't seem to understand what was going on" has been published more than once over the past 12 or 18 months.
We (the non-Japs) are often treated as second class POW's by other Japanese cockpit and cabin crew members (one learns how this is done in their "cultural" way after a period of time working with them), and JAL does NOTHING to discourage it.
They obviously feel that if you are employed by them, then they OWN you.
Their inability to think "outside the square" (lateral thinking) is almost begs belief, to the point where it sometimes costs them MORE to do something "as programmed", than to recognise a situation that has changed and to change their train of thought.
My bet is that if Jeff Bicknell had been Japanese, this scenario would never have developed to the point it did.
Plain and simple discrimination.