List of Famous people who died in 1997

Richard Wayne Mullins was an American contemporary Christian music singer and songwriter best known for his worship songs "Awesome God" and "Step by Step". Some of his albums were listed by CCM Magazine in their ranking of the 100 Greatest Albums in Christian Music, including A Liturgy, a Legacy, & a Ragamuffin Band (1993) at No. 3, The World As Best As I Remember It, Volume One (1991) at No. 7, and Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth (1988) at No. 31. His songs have been performed by numerous artists, including Caedmon's Call, Five Iron Frenzy, Amy Grant, Carolyn Arends, Jars of Clay, Michael W. Smith, John Tesh, Chris Rice, Rebecca St. James, Hillsong United and Third Day. During the tribute to Rich Mullins' life at the 1998 GMA Dove Awards, Amy Grant described him as "the uneasy conscience of Christian music.”

Kazumi Kawai, was a Japanese actress. She committed suicide by jumping from an apartment building on May 9, 1997.

François-Henri de Virieu, marquis de Virieu was a French journalist and television presenter.

Elena Vladimirovna Mayorova was a Soviet and Russian film and stage actress, Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1989).

Gerd Wenzinger, known as The Havel Ripper, was a German doctor and suspected serial killer, thought to have killed between 2 and at least 17 women in Germany and Brazil between 1991 and 1996. He committed suicide shortly after his extradition to his home country was approved.

Vladimir Leonidovich Gulyaev was a Soviet actor of theater and cinema.

Nobuo Fujita (藤田信雄) was a Japanese naval aviator and warrant flying officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy who flew a floatplane from the long-range submarine aircraft carrier I-25 and conducted the Lookout Air Raids in southern Oregon on September 9, 1942, making him the only Axis pilot during World War II to aerial bomb the contiguous United States. Using incendiary bombs, his mission was to start massive forest fires in the Pacific Northwest near the city of Brookings, Oregon with the objective of drawing the U.S. military's resources away from the Pacific Theater. The strategy was also later used in the Japanese fire balloon campaign.

William Joseph Brennan Jr. was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1956 to 1990. He was the seventh-longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history, and known for being a leader of the Court's liberal wing.

Marie-Soleil Tougas was an actress and TV host based in Quebec, Canada.

Major-General Chaim Herzog was an Israeli politician, general, lawyer and author who served as the sixth President of Israel between 1983 and 1993. Born in Belfast and raised predominantly in Dublin, the son of Ireland's Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1935 and served in the Haganah Jewish paramilitary group during the 1936–39 Arab revolt. As an officer in the British Army during World War II, he was called "Vivian" the direct English translation of "Chaim" - because his first commanding officer would not say "Chaim." He returned to Palestine after the war and, following the end of the British Mandate and Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948, operated in the battles for Latrun during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. He retired from the Israel Defence Forces in 1962 with the rank of major-general.