Japanese boy’s forest ordeal
They dropped their son in the forest to punish him – but it backfired badly and could easily have ended in tragedy
IT CAUSED worldwide outrage and was the leading news item in Japan for days. The military and police force were mobilised and volunteers helped scour the bear-infested woods of the Japanese island of Hokkaido.
Day after day the 200-strong search teams beat back dense forest, braved thunderstorms and endured fluctuating temperatures – and returned without seven-year-old Yamato Tanooka.
“We still have no clue,” rescue team spokesman Satoshi Saito said on day four of the search. “We just don’t know where he went.”
And then the incredible happened: Yamato was found alive and as well as could be expected for a kid who’d had nothing but water for six days. He didn’t burst into tears, his rescuer said – he just said he was hungry and devoured two rice balls and some bread.
Yamato was discovered in a hut inside an old military training facility in the town of Shikabe, some 6 km from the spot where his parents forced him to get out of the car as punishment for throwing stones.
The boy said he’d walked to the military base and slept between two mattresses in the hut for six nights, drinking water from a tap.
“One of our soldiers was preparing for drills this morning and opened the door and there he was,” a member of the Japan Self-Defence Forces ( JSDF) said.
The boy was airlifted to hospital suffering from mild dehydration and malnutrition. He also had a rash and scratches and bruises but “was incredibly calm considering he’d been missing for a week”, a doctor said.
Yamato was reunited with his father, Takayuki Tanooka, at the hospital. “We’ve raised him with love all along,” he said. “I really didn’t think it would come to this. We went too far. I thought we were doing it for my son’s own good.”
Fighting back tears, he added, “I told my son I was sorry for causing him such pain.”
Takayuki was heavily criticised in the days his son was missing when he admitted he and his wife had left the boy in the woods. He’d told authorities Yamato had wandered off while the family foraged for wild vegetables, but later admitted the truth. He and his wife went back for their son a short while later but he was gone.
On day five of the drama Takayuki finally broke the family’s silence. “We have done an unforgivable thing to our child and we have caused a lot of trouble for everyone,” he said. “I just hope he’s safe.”
THE search gripped Japan. Thousands took to the internet to pray for Yamato’s return and to express their horror and disgust at his parents.
“Whatever the reason [ for being left behind] this is parental neglect,” one person said on social media.
Comparisons were made between Yamato and the four-year-old boy who fell into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo in the US. Michelle Gregg, the child’s mother, was criticised for not keeping a closer eye on her child, and for seeming uncaring about the animal, which was shot dead by zoo officials.
Japanese authorities are considering charges of neglect against Yamato’s parents. Naoki Ogi, a Japanese professor of education, says they should be charged. “Making children obey through fear or pain is bad parenting. It’s abuse.”