THE OSAKA SCHOOL MASSACRE (8 JUNE 2001)

            On this date, 8 June 2001, The Osaka School Massacre took place on June 8, 2001, at Ikeda Elementary School, an elite primary school affiliated with Osaka Kyoiku University in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. We, the VFFDP, will not forget the eight Japanese children murdered in the mass stabbings. The killer, Mamoru Takuma was executed by hanging on 14 September 2004. We got the information from Wikipedia.

The attack

At 10:15 that morning, 37-year-old former janitor Mamoru Takuma entered the school armed with a kitchen knife and began stabbing numerous school children and teachers. He killed eight children, mostly between the ages of seven and eight, and seriously wounded thirteen other children and two teachers.

Aftermath

Takuma was diagnosed with Borderline personality disorder, Antisocial personality disorder, and Paranoid personality disorder. He was later convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on September 14, 2004. The Osaka School Massacre was the second largest mass murder, along with the Matsumoto incident, in recent Japanese history, both crimes exceeded only by the fatalities caused in the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. This incident, however, was set apart by the young age of the victims, by its occurrence at a school, and by the murderer's history of mental illness. Because of these factors, the Osaka School Massacre raised questions in Japan about the country's social policies regarding the treatment of mental illness, the rights of criminals and victims, and the accessibility and security of Japanese schools.

After the attack, Yoshio Yamane, the principal administrator of the school, announced that it would receive a security guard, an at-the-time unheard-of feature in Japanese schools. Additionally, J-Pop artist Hikaru Utada rearranged her song Distance in honor of Rena Yamashita, one of the murdered schoolgirls (because of an essay contest she had won, talking about how she respected and wanted to become like Hikaru), retitling it Final Distance.

Deceased victims