大阪おおさか 児童じどう殺傷さっしょう事件じけんから24年ねん 附属ふぞく池田いけだ小しょうで追悼ついとうの集つどい

June 8th marks 24 years since the incident in which eight children were killed at Osaka Kyoiku University Ikeda Elementary School in Ikeda City, Osaka.

At the school, a memorial gathering was held attended by the bereaved families and children.

On June 8, 2001, Mamoru Takuma, a former death row inmate, broke into Ikeda Elementary School attached to Osaka Kyoiku University, killing eight children and injuring thirteen children and two teachers.

On the 8th, marking 24 years since the incident, about 770 people including bereaved families, children, and school staff attended a memorial gathering. At the beginning, everyone rang the bell of the tower engraved with the names of the eight victims and observed a moment of silence together.

Next, Principal Shinichi Arakawa said, Incidents and accidents in which schools or students become victims occur every year, and there are times when I feel the powerlessness of schools and society.

Even so, if we give up on preventing incidents and accidents, a school would cease to be a school.

I hope that June 8th will serve as an opportunity for people across the country to think about school safety, so that we never let this tragic incident fade from memory and continue to speak about it properly.

After this, a sixth-grade student representative said, The reason we are able to live safely and securely at school is because many people have thought about safety and security, created systems, and passed them down to us.

We pledged, Inheriting those feelings, each of us will think about what we can do now and continue to make efforts to carry on life.

At school, we conduct annual training to respond to suspicious individuals, incorporating new scenarios each year. In addition, learning from past incidents, we have established a class called Safety Studies to continue educating children on how to protect their lives.

At Osaka Kyoiku University Ikeda Elementary School, where none of the teachers from the time of the incident remain, the former principal who was the homeroom teacher for the sixth grade at the time of the incident transferred to another school this April, and for the first time since the incident, not a single teacher who was working there at that time remains.

Principal Shinichi Arakawa responded to the press after the memorial gathering, saying, I always thought that a time like this would come someday, but what we have built up until now still remains, and we are continuing efforts such as inviting teachers who were at the school at the time of the incident to come and talk.

We want to continue passing this down to our generation and the generations after us, and make our school a safer place, they said.

On top of that, more and more local governments want to focus on school safety, and we are also receiving requests asking us to teach them how to handle suspicious individuals.

We want to share the know-how we have developed at our school as widely as possible so that schools across Japan can become even a little bit safer, without letting the incident fade from memory, they said.

I hope it never happens again. A flower stand was set up on the school grounds, where graduates, parents, and local residents offered flowers and put their hands together in prayer.

The parents, a couple in their 40s, said, Last year we attended the gathering as first-year students parents, so this year we came to offer flowers as we wanted to remember those feelings again.

I never want something like this to happen again.

The school is working on various safety measures, and my child proudly goes there saying, Its the safest school in Japan. As a parent, I also want to do whatever I can to help ensure their safety.

Also, a 59-year-old woman who lives nearby and visits every year to offer flowers said, I can never forget what happened that day.

I learned that an incident had occurred from the news on TV and the sound of helicopters flying overhead. When I heard that a child had died, I felt the blood drain from my face, and I was shocked that the perpetrator was able to enter the school grounds.

I hope that the faculty and staff will continue to teach the children the importance of life, he said.