Photo/Illutration Flowers and bottled drinks are offered at a parking lot in Makinohara, Shizuoka Prefecture, to mourn the death of 3-year-old China Kawamoto on Sept. 12. (Jun Nakamura)

The death of a 3-year-old girl who was left alone on a school bus for hours in the suffocating heat in Makinohara, Shizuoka Prefecture, shocked the nation, but similar accidents occur frequently in Japan.

Although, luckily, they have not been nearly as serious.

“It was inconceivable to us that the accident that occurred in Fukuoka last year would happen under ordinary circumstances,” a school corporation in Aichi Prefecture told The Asahi Shimbun in a written statement. “That way of thinking was our problem that led to our accident.”

This incident occurred at a kindergarten in May this year.

A school bus carrying 16 kindergarteners, along with attendants, arrived at the school around 9:45 a.m. and about half an hour later, a guardian visiting the kindergarten noticed one pupil inside the bus beating desperately against the window.

The child was crying, and the face had turned red.

The kindergarten had implemented a safety measure to prevent an accident like that. Staff would collect a form from each child, where they write down their body temperature, when they board the bus, and then return it to them when they get off the bus.

Staff had checked the seats to see if any items were left behind on the bus while they were disinfecting the seats after the pupils disembarked.

But on that day, those measures were neglected as the kindergarten had scheduled practices for an athletic festival.

One staff member noticed a pupil was missing, but thought the child was probably just absent and did not send prior notice. But the staff failed to call the parent or guardian to confirm this.

The kindergarten looked into the cause and reviewed its school bus policies. It has implemented new measures, such as recording names of pupils scheduled to board the bus, checking up on pupils who are absent but did not give prior notice, and having multiple people double-check attendance lists and records.

But a woman whose child attends the kindergarten said she has developed feelings of distrust because the school did not immediately inform other parents and guardians after the accident.

The woman said she has told her child to “keep beeping the horn if something happens on the bus.”

She said that as a guardian, she felt it was too difficult for her to bring her concerns to the kindergarten. But the deadly accident in Shizuoka Prefecture changed her mind.

“All of society needs to keep an eye on whether kindergartens are able to manage safety on a daily basis,” she said.

Masaki Watanabe, a professor of safety education at Tokyo Gakugei University, said there are numerous near-miss cases aside from the recent serious accident, but they do not get enough attention.

“If information on such cases is collected and shared properly, it will lead to accident prevention,” he said. “But kindergartens and nursery schools have been late in building such crisis management systems.”

Watanabe said related government agencies should take charge and establish those systems.

(This article was written by Chika Urashima and Natsumi Nakai.)

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