A private elementary school outside Tokyo on Thursday remembered the victims of a stabbing rampage one year ago, with local residents also joining their hands in prayer at the crime scene, where many children were attacked while waiting for a bus.
The governing body of Caritas Elementary School held a Mass for about 70 people to pay tribute to a girl and a man who were killed in the attack. Students of the school in Kawasaki participated in the ceremony online from their homes amid the spread of the new coronavirus.
"The year has gone so quickly. We should not forget about the two (victims) and cannot forget the incident," Teiko Naito, principal of the school, told reporters after the Mass.
School officials also laid flowers and prayed at the scene of the attack in the morning.
A civil servant in her 50s, a former student whose daughter also graduated the school, laid flowers at the scene along with her husband. "It has been a year since (the rampage) but I remember clearly as if it happened yesterday," she said.
"I feel sad as I cannot anymore hear the boisterous voices of children waiting for a bus since the incident," said Yukiko Iwasaki, 49, who passed the school on her way to work. "I hope they feel safe to go to school."
The attack left Hanako Kuribayashi, an 11-year-old student of the school, and Satoshi Oyama, a Foreign Ministry official and father of another girl, dead. Eighteen others, mostly children waiting for a bus to the school with their parents, were also injured.
"We still live in deep sorrow. We will need to bear this lasting pain for a long time to come," the school's governing body said in a statement released Wednesday, in which it also voiced gratitude for the expressions of support it has received from across Japan.
The school created two full-time counselor positions after the attack on the morning of May 28 last year. The counselors were also available to speak to pupils with worries over the phone during last year's summer holidays.
Yoshiki Tominaga, an expert on children's mental care at the University of Hyogo, said children vary in the level of trauma and stress they suffer, which means the length of time for healing also differs.
"It is necessary for parents, teachers, counselors and psychiatrists to team up and provide care in the long term," the professor said.
The attacker, who wielded knives in both hands, has been identified as 51-year-old man Ryuichi Iwasaki. He killed himself at the scene shortly after the rampage.
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