A memorial service was held Saturday to mark the 23rd anniversary of a stabbing rampage at an elementary school in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, that left eight children dead.
About 770 bereaved relatives, teachers and students attended the ceremony at Ikeda Elementary School to remember the tragedy and pledge to keep the school safe. The eight bells in a small monument, on which the names of the eight people who died are engraved, were rung, and everyone observed a moment of silence.
The eight -- seven girls in second grade and a boy in first grade -- were fatally stabbed, while 15 others, including two teachers, were injured on June 8, 2001, by Mamoru Takuma. He was sentenced to death in 2003 and executed in September 2004. At his trial, he said that he committed the crime because he wanted to be executed.
The rampage led many schools in Japan to step up security such as locking gates and installing surveillance cameras.
At the service, school principal Takumi Sanada, who was the sixth-grade teacher at the time, said, "Twenty-three years have passed since the incident. We use this day as an opportunity to reflect on the incident and make improvements so that our school safety efforts do not become a mere formality, and that our school is a safe and secure place to learn," NHK reported.
© Japan Today
13 Comments
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Daninthepan
The number of murderers who say, "I did it because I wanted to be executed", makes me think the death penalty might not be such a good deterrent after all.
Quo Primum
What is that number?
I just wonder because of all the murder stories I read in the news, very few murder suspects actually say that.
Need a better anti-death penalty argument than that.
Quo Primum
Japan executed this guy a year after sentencing him - unlike the decades it takes in the US states that have capital punishment.
And Japan has a rather low murder rate.
So, I would say that is evidence of a pretty good deterrence effect.
NOMINATION
Even that one year is not all that common here either. It took 11 years for the Akihabara mass killer and the Sagamihara care house murderer is still alive 8 years later.
itsonlyrocknroll
I would rather Mamoru Takuma had been incarcerated, in an isolation cell 24/7, for him to be dragged out in chains on the memorial of such horror, to be tied to a post over the graves of the young lives he took.
Rot in hell
wallace
30-40 years is not uncommon for convicts on death row.
Eugene
It's the appeals process that usually keeps convicts on death row for so long. This guy opted to forgo all appeals because he wanted to die.
wallace
The government only executes 2-3 convicts in a year. Justice Ministers sometimes don't want to sign the execution order.
Haaa Nemui
Except the US has a murder rate around 30 times that of Japan, so taking that into consideration I would say... nah.
Mr Kipling
in the US.
The world is not the US.
China, Iran, and the Saudis dispatch those that no longer deserve to breath much, much sooner.
wallace
Mr Kipling
Iwao Hakamada. He spent over 45 years on death row, predominantly in solitary confinement. Released and having a retrail.
TokyoLiving
Well done, rot in hell
rosujin
I remember this. It happened just as I started study abroad in Tokyo. If I remember correctly, Utada Hikaru recorded Final Distance as a tribute to the victims.