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