Aseven-year-old boy, Yamato Tanooka who was abandoned in bear-infested
woods by his father as punishment, has been found alive and unharmed
after nearly a week of fending for himself in the dangerous forest.
The little boy was found in a building on a Japanese military base about 2.5 miles from where his father left him last Saturday.His parents left him by the side of a road to punish him for throwing
stones at cars but he went missing and they couldn’t find him when they
returned to pick him up..
His disappearance sparked a massive hunt involving over 130 police and
school officials descending on Hokkaido, Japan’s largest northern
island.
“One of our soldiers was preparing for drills this morning and opened
the door of a building on the base, and there he was,” a member of
Japan’s Self-Defence Forces
“When he asked ‘are you Yamato?’ the boy said yes. Then he said he was
hungry, so the soldier gave him some water, bread and riceballs.”
Yamato said he “walked through the mountains” until he found the
building the soldier found him in, which was unlocked. He drank water
from a nearby tap and slept on mattresses spread on the floor.
Yamato was taken to hospital for a check up and apart from having a low
body temperature, he is healthy and would be kept overnight as a
precaution, a doctor said in a news conference.
The boy’s tearful dad Takayuki Tanooka thanked rescuers for their efforts and apologised for causing trouble.
He said:
“We’ve reflected on what we did and it was really excessive.
“We – well, we loved him before, but I hope to give him even more attention now.”
The Island is home to the deadly Ussuri brown bear , which can grow to a massive 550kg – almost 90 stone.
The boy fortunately managed to survive for nearly a week in the densely
forested area, where night temperatures fell as low as 7 degrees and
heavy rain had fallen, despite wearing only a t-shirt and jeans.
His father said when they left him there as punishment, they
almsot immediately returned to the exact place they had left him but
couldn’t find him. And because he was too embarrassed to admit to what
he did to his son, he initially told people that the boy had gotten lost
while they were all on a walk but later admitted his mistake and went
to the police to request a search on Saturday.
Brown bears have a history of killing humans – with more than 140 people killed in the first 57 years of the 20th century.
Source: UK Mirror