The body of a newborn infant was discovered in the mountains near tsunami-stricken Ishimaki City in Miyagi Prefecture early Sunday morning, police said Monday. A passerby spotted the baby girl's body at about 7 a.m. and alerted authorities.
According to police, the baby girl was covered in fresh blood and still had her umbilical cord attached. Authorities said the child had been born only hours earlier and announced they will conduct a thorough autopsy.
The mountainous area where the body was left suffered no tsunami damage. Investigators believe the mother may be living in one of the nearby evacuation sites.
© Compiled from news reports
27 Comments
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Alexander Warrick
I have no words for this.
spudman
infanticide is the word you want. Happens in times of severe personal or financial stress. Most countries have examples of this in it's past, Japan too. The old way was to wrap an infant in swaddling cloth them place wet shoji paper on the child's face. Such a sad indication of how desperate times are that in 21st century Japan a young mother resorts to such measures. RIP little baby girl. Your mother will think about you everyday for the rest of her life.
my2sense
This should wake a few readers up or out of the do no wrong, the serenity, the divine, the strong trance we've seen. The ugly side is kicking in and I expect more of this. CNN and those other juiced up sites would be up in arms and their stories would come back to haunt them if this and the other infanticide and suicide reports came out.
Derailler
Yeah, this is the sign of things to come. We are going to see a hell of a lot more of this kind of thing from now on.
alladin
This is such a very sad thing to hear. I wonder how many others that are in the shelters thinking about doing the same thing. I hope that more of this kinds of things will not happen again.
nath
This has been happening all along, in less "shakey" times... Toilet stalls, trash bins, etc. This desperate scenario is just one more place to dispose of a miracle...
fishy
Japanese government should seek families that can temporarily take those babies to look after.. I would love to be one to take care of any baby that cannot be taken care of by their parents because of the disaster..
kwbrow2
This one is hard for me to understand. This mother made it through one of the worst earthquake/tsunami disasters in history and instead of celebrating life, she did just the opposite. Let us say she lost everyone in her family (grandparents, parents, siblings) then I could understand if she took her own life. This story is puzzling??
Livinginokinawa
None of us know the situation, only the results, speculating on why does no one any good. IMHO the thing that should be done now is help those in need keep living, and not fall into a pit of despair.
Pray for the mother, that she will find peace and not follow in her child's footsteps.
Mangaman
I guess no one considered that someone besides the mother may have considered the disaster zone a convenient place to dump the baby? We hear about kidnapping, sexual slavery and human trafficking all the time. Ever think the mother might be a victim of some sort?
I find it a little hard to believe that a pregnant woman climbed the mountain just in time to give birth, OR, climbed the mountain to dump the body just after giving birth. At the very least, someone else besides the mother is involved I wager.
Elbuda Mexicano
This is a sickening news, wtf was the mother thinking?? I do not thin the tsunami, earthquakes have anything to do with the murder of this innocent baby. RIP little baby girl.
Monkeyz
Wtf was the mother thinking? Maybe, "I don't want to try to raise a baby in an evacuation center" was somewhere near the top of the list ...
Tahoochi
Although the situation does looks as though the mother killed her baby in the midst of this disaster and all, there's always another way of looking at things. It's possible the baby was stillborn or died of natural causes shortly after birth. Given the lack of medical aid/facilities in the midst of the disaster, the chances of success in a childbirth with complications may be very low. If this were the case, then the only crime this mother committed would be neglecting to give the poor child a proper burial.
smithinjapan
You would think this disaster would have taught the mother something of the sanctity of life, instead it has done the opposite. I hope she is found and charged with murder.
whiskeysour
NO EXCUSES - This woman could have gotten help. She didn't have to do that. My guess is - she's nutzzzz, and/or teenager, or someone told her it's alright to do this.
If she was near an (a) person w/ mobile phone, evacuation center, the hospital or somebody would have sent her & baby to a Tokyo Hospital free ride and free care for 3+ years. People had babies during WW2, this is just an excuse or she didn't have a person that gave her good advice. Maybe her parents or somebody put her up to it. Or she was hiding the pregnancy before the earthquake.
PepinGalarga
Just check who was pregnant yesterday and who is not pregnant today. DNA clues will yield the rest of it.
Smokeyfuse
What kind of mother do such thing ? Not enof food. Not enof h2o. No place 2 live. Lost partner? Save them !
Derailler
Anywhere out of the cities in Japan are basically hicksville. I am not surprised by this at all.
ThonTaddeo
No excuses for this "mother". Especially not if she was living in an evacuation center. If there's one time in recent history when such a person could get all the help they needed, it's now. At a time like this, other evacuees could really rally around a newborn -- new life in the face of death and all that -- but now there's just one more death. Shame on this "mother".
adelina
one thing sure the mother is not in normal thinking on that time because she did this kind of unforgiveness action, whatever it was she should be punished.
Lizz
Babies are disruptive enough in a communal setting, I can't imagine the added pressures with little hygiene or money and few supplies...
nico00
Am I missing something?..
Mocheake
How horrible!! I was reading on CNN how many people feel Japanese are different and adhere strictly to a code of honor and family values because they didn't loot or riot in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. That's commendable but really, the world is made up of individuals, not groups. People do terrible things in every society as this case shows and we've seen a few of these types of cases here recently. I'm not going to speculate but one would think there was a better way to go about this if the child was unwanted, stillborn or died soon after birth due to some sort of defect, complication, etc. Leaving a newborn out in the cold mountains to die (if indeed that is found to be the case) is just awful. I wonder if that person can even sleep at night. RIP, little one.
Lizz
Looting is relatively rare after any disaster. I don't know why people keep bringing that up as a comparison. Altruism and increased cooperation are much more common responses.
thesecretjedi
All I can say is that this is such an inhumane act because the innocent baby did not have the chance to live just because she was born in an unusual circumstance, and this news really gives me a sick feeling and grief. :(
nico00
I think it's considerably sad and tragic when events such as this happen. However, due to the lack of information on how the baby died, or indeed how it got there in the first place, I find the accusations towards the baby's mother to be quite inconsiderate and impolite.
jonobugs
Hmm, it's interesting to see the conclusions drawn here. Perhaps indicative of what you expect people to be like.
Also interesting that no one has even considered that the child was stillborn.