Memorial Held for Fatal Osaka School Attack 25 Years Ago

Ikeda, Osaka Pref., June 8 (Jiji Press)–A memorial service was held on Monday to mark the 25th anniversary of a knife attack at an elementary school in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, western Japan, that left eight children dead. About 760 people attended the ceremony at Ikeda Elementary School, affiliated with Osaka Kyoiku University, including bereaved relatives, pupils and school staff. In the ceremony, eight bells were rung and silent prayers and flowers were offered at a monument inscribed with the names of the children who lost their lives in the attack. “We will become the ones who build a society where everyone is safe and secure,” three sixth graders said in an address at the ceremony. Noting that they are passing on the school’s safety initiatives to younger students, they said, “We will never let the incident 25 years ago fade from memory.” Given that an increasing number of teachers do not know about the tragedy, Shinichi Arakawa, principal of the school, said, “The fading (from memory) of the incident means a setback in school safety efforts to protect children.” He added, “I want you to view June 8 as an opportunity to think about the incident as your own.” In the afternoon, a lecture was held at the university’s Kashiwara campus to convey lessons from the incident to students aiming to become teachers. After a minute of silence, Hiromi Ueda, an associate professor at the university and an expert in clinical psychology, gave an outline of the incident and said, “The whole school was not able to grasp the situation and deal with it systematically.” “I learned the importance of preparing for unexpected situations on a daily basis,” a 21-year-old third-year student in the Faculty of Education at the university said. “I want to be a teacher who always puts the safety of children first.” In the stabbing rampage, which occurred at 10:12 a.m. on June 8, 2001, Mamoru Takuma, then 37, entered the school with two knives, killing a first grade boy and seven second grade girls, injuring 13 other students and two teachers. Takuma was executed in September 2004, about a year after his death sentence became final. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]