Filing a lawsuit in Civil Court and Press Conference

On December 14^th, 2012, we filed a civil lawsuit for damage in District Court in Naha City.

After the criminal lawsuit judged the daycare as not guilty, we asked for the signature for “re-investigate”, and we received 38000 signatures from all over Japan, with warm messages. We really appreciate their support and kind messages.

On August 2012, we went to Hyogo Japan to for National Child Support convention and spoke about our baby’s incident.  There were about 10000 people were gathered. Some people were crying listening to our story, and could not believe the children were unattended at the daycare.

On November 2012, we went to another convention in Tokyo, and spoke about our story.

Although our incident has been on newspapers, TV, and all kinds of media, it happened again. We really have got to stop and create an environment where parents can feel comfortable raising their kids.


Original Japanese version of this article

Civil Trial

This picture was taken 2 hours before Hirotake died. The picture was used for communication notebook between parents and daycare.

They performed autopsy to find out the cause of his death, and the result was death from an illness.

At that time, they did not know what caused the illness. After the autopsy, they took one of Hirotake’s organ and did further investigation for what caused an illness. After a month later, University of Ryukyu Medical gave us a result, said The cause of illness was pneumonia by infection. When he took X-ray at yaeyama hospital, there was nothing on his lungs.  But Police keeps saying he died from infected pneumonia. Usually, people perform further research for how he got infected, however, they did not do further research for Hirotake. Then the case was closed.

In this photo, does he look he had pneumonia? We could not believe it thus, we asked for 2^nd opinion to the different doctor. And the Doctor at Chiba and Aomori disagreed that baby had pneumonia, however the police keep saying “He died from pneumonia”

We do not want this kind of incident to happen to anyone anymore, so we spoke to the city office, and the City Office told us, in Ishigaki City, no one ever registered for running the daycare.

From now on, they make it mandatory for every daycare to register to the city office.

We thought every daycare had to register, but last month, 6months old baby was laid facing down and his heart stopped beating. It was exactly like Hirotake’s case, they took him to Naha and the baby survived, however, his brain got damaged and today 12/13/2012, the baby passed away.

We spoke to the parents of that baby, and they said, we need to stop having irresponsible daycare to run the business.

The daycare that killed that baby was also unauthorized daycare.

Tomorrow, December 14^th, 2012, we are going to Naha City to file the lawsuit against the daycare in civil trial, and after that we are going to give a  press conference.

It has been 2 years and 10 months since Hirotake died, and we are going to start civil trial.

We do not want to hear the tragedy news anymore.


Original Japanese version of this article

The decision is announced from the prosecutor’s office

The article about the Daycare's not guilty was on the Okinawa Times Newspaper on 12/1/2012. The police and the public prosecutor’s office judged the daycare's action as not guilty.  If they are not going to be punished, I want my baby's life back. We are very mortified for the decision. If my son was alive, he would have been 3years and 2months old today.

(Translation for the article)

“Daycare not guilty. 

Ishigaki Baby Death, Parents lawsuit against daycare at the civil trial. 

In Feburary, 2010, three months old baby boy was laid facing down and it caused cardiopulmonary arrest to death. Parents sued against the daycare for Abandonment by a Person Responsible resulting in death. However, Naha District Public Prosecutor's Office in Ishigaki gave the daycare representative Not Guilty. The parents of the baby claim lawsuit in the civil trial against the daycare for damages . The parents are also claiming the result of not guilty as an unjust decision to the Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution.”

Original Japanese version of this article

12 infants were left alone and unattended by any adult

The owner of the daycare submitted the incident/accident report to the Ishigaki City Office, the story was written for their convenience that everything had happened in a closed room, as they were innocent.

About a week passed after Hirotake’s death, Someone told us that the owner of the daycare was often seen at the fitness club, and we found out the fact that she was at the fitness club when that accident happened, leaving 12 infants alone at the daycare.

As a result, this irresponsible action led my son to death; he was laid facing down and was suffocated to death.

During this 40minutes period, the daughter of the owner also left the daycare to go home to fix the lunch for her husband.

However, the false report was made and submitted to the City Office, that they were both at the daycare at whole time.

They did not mention about leaving the daycare unattended in the report, no police investigation took any further action and the cause of death was the illness of the baby.  Moreover, when police told them there is no criminal offense, a piece of evidence, the baby crib which my son was killed on, was burned to be dumped by the daycare.

When I heard there were no adults at the daycare, I could not believe my ears.

My body was shaking and could not say a word. How could anyone leave the daycare unattended by any adult?

According to the owner of the daycare,  “usually from 10:30 to 12:00, most of the kids sleep, so I thought it was ok to leave”  It was almost neglect and because such a irresponsible people that ran daycare, my son had to give up his life.

It is very hard to think logically of the situation that many people have no choice to put their baby to non-authorized daycare.  I thought we need to create the environment where parents can feel more comfortable about leaving their baby with the trustworthy daycare

After Hiro died, Police officer told us, that they had to perform autopsy to find out the cause of the death.

After the autopsy was performed, the police said, “the cause of the death was an illness of the baby, therefore there is no criminal offense.”  That was 49days after our son died.

The very first day at the daycare when my baby still could not flip turn by himself,

They put our baby facing down and left the daycare unattended for a long period of time, and he was suffocated to death.

And our baby’s dead body was cut to open for legally ordered autopsy, because of the daycare’s false report.

The result was no criminal offense because baby was died of an illness.

I could not take this outrageous result and, I could not just let it go, so I submitted a letter of complain against the daycare to the court, and collected the 38,600 signatures from the all over Japan to request the further investigation.

Then Okinawa prefectural police investigated the incident, however the result was not guilty.


Why Police believes daycare is not guilty even if the daycare put the baby facing down and left it for a long time?

What if this was your child, nephew/niece, or any family member, do you think you can understand that?

We will never give up disclosing the truth, for Hirotake’s sake.

Original Japanese version of this article

A baby was killed at the daycare where was unattended by any adult.

Our son Hirotake was born on 10/08/2009 which was exactly the expected date of birth.

He came out to this world with 2694 gram and was a healthy and fine looking baby.




My maternity leave from work was until 01/31/2010, therefore, we enrolled him for the daycare on the same day as when I started working on 02/01/2010


This Daycare had been running for 33 years, but they were non-authorized daycare ran by a Mother and a daughter, so called private mom and pop type of daycare.

On 02/01/2010 at 9:30AM, we first time took the Baby, Hirotake, to the daycare, and I told him “we will come pick you up in the afternoon” and I left for work.

After about 3 hours later, the owner lady called my cell phone and said, “your son was throwing up and we are at the hospital now, please come to the hospital ASAP”

When I arrived at the hospital and saw him, he looked a different baby from that morning when I left him at the daycare.

His face and legs were deadly pale. He was lying down on the Bed of the emergency room and getting life support.

When I saw a little Hirotake, I could not figure out what was going on, and then I became in panic.

The Doctor said, 

“The daycare lady came in with her car, without using ambulance, so I was also surprised to see her in panic, as soon as she came in with the baby, I immediately took X-ray and his pulse, but his heart had already stopped. I asked her how come she did not call the ambulance, she said she thought it was faster to take him to the hospital with her car than calling the ambulance.  According to her, her husband was a ex-paramedic, and she must be well aware of paramedic. I do not understand why she did not call the ambulance, the baby’s life might have been saved if she had called the ambulance.”

Few days later, after we investigated what really happened to our baby, we found out the fact that they not only put our baby, who still couldn’t flip turn, facing down, but also left other 12 infant babies alone, locked the door and went to a Fitness Club.  The daycare was totally unattended by any adult.

Original Japanese version of this article