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Japan tourist boat sinking: child among 11 confirmed dead

Fifteen remain missing as questions grow as to why the Kazu I sailed in rough weather off the hazardous Shiretoko peninsula

Rescuers searching since a tour boat carrying 26 people apparently sank off far north-eastern Japan have found the body of an 11th victim – a child – as questions intensify about why the vessel sailed in rough weather at a known hazardous location.

The child was found late Sunday and later confirmed dead, the coast guard said Monday. The bodies of 10 victims – seven men and three women – were found earlier Sunday.

The Kazu 1 with two crew was taking 24 passengers, including two children, on a scenic tour at Shiretoko national park on the northern side of Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost main island, when it sent a distress call Saturday afternoon saying it was sinking.

The location was near Kashuni Waterfall, which is known as a difficult place to manoeuvre boats because of its rocky coastline and strong tide.

The transport ministry said it was investigating the boat’s operator, Shiretoko Pleasure Cruise, which had two accidents last year, including one that also involved the captain of the sunken boat. The ministry said it was looking into safety standards and the decision to conduct the tour despite rough weather on Saturday.

Japanese media reported the coast guard was considering a criminal investigation on suspicion of professional negligence.

Shiretoko Pleasure Cruise had been instructed to improve its safety following the earlier accidents. In June, a boat ran aground without causing injuries, and in May, a boat collided with an object, causing three passengers to suffer minor injuries. The June accident involved the same captain of the sunken boat.

“We will thoroughly investigate what caused this situation and what kind of safety oversight was involved to allow the tour in order to prevent another accident,” the transport minister, Tetsuo Saito, who visited the area Sunday, told reporters.

Shiretoko Pleasure Cruise says its three-hour tour offers views of the western coast of the Shiretoko peninsula and a chance to see whales, dolphins and brown bears. The national park is a Unesco world heritage site known as the southernmost region to see drifting sea ice.

Average April sea temperatures in the area are just above freezing. Experts said the low temperature and strong wind make the chances of survival low.

The bodies recovered Sunday were found in the same area near the tip of the peninsula, about 14km (8.7 miles) north from where the boat sent a distress call. Some were plucked from the sea, and others were found where they had washed on to the rocky coast.

Orange, square lifesaving floats with the boat’s name on them were also found on the rocks, the coast guard said. The coast guard said the operator told them that everyone on the boat was wearing a life vest but some of the victims found were without them.

Experts and local fishermen and boat operators also said they believed the boat was likely to have run aground after it was tossed around in high waves and damaged.

High waves and strong winds were forecast when the boat left port, and Japanese media said fishing boats had returned to port before noon Saturday because of the bad weather.

Local fisheries cooperative head Kazuhiko Fukayama told NHK television that it was unthinkable for the tour to have gone ahead in weather that was so rough passengers would have found it difficult just to stand still.

A tour boat crew belonging to another operator told NHK that he warned the Kazu 1 crew of rough seas and told them not to go. He also said the same boat ran aground last year and suffered a crack on its bow.

Accounts of local fishermen and tour boat operators suggest Kazu 1 was the only boat in the area, where no other boat was around to help the sinking boat until the first coast guard rescuers arrived at the scene from elsewhere on Hokkaido three hours later.

Saturday’s tour was reportedly the first by the operator this season, and the accident just before Japan’s Golden Week holidays starting late April could dampen local tourism, which slumped during the pandemic. Japan is still largely closed to foreign visitors.

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Ten people from missing tourist boat confirmed dead, 16 remain unaccounted for off Japan's northern coast

Ten people from a Japanese tour boat missing off the country's northern coast have been confirmed dead, Japan's coast guard said, as the search for the remaining 16 people continues.

Key points:

• Seven men and three women have been confirmed dead in the incident
• 16 passengers and crew remain missing

The Kazu I tourist boat went missing on Saturday afternoon, just after its crew contacted authorities, saying water was flooding into the vessel 

The coast guard said on Sunday that the bodies of the 10 victims included seven men and three women.

The location where the vessel went missing is known as a difficult place to manoeuvre boats because of its rocky coastline.

The same tour boat had an accident there last year.

The coast guard heard from the crew on Saturday afternoon that water was flooding the vessel.

It was last heard from about two hours later, when it contacted its operating company to say it was keeling at a 30-degree angle, Kyodo news reported.

Footage on NHK showed one of the rescued people arriving on a helicopter and being transferred to an ambulance on a stretcher, while rescuers held up blue plastic shields for privacy.

The coast guard said the search continued through the night involving six patrol boats, several aircraft and divers.

The Transport Ministry has launched an investigation into the boat's operator over its safety standards and its decision to conduct the tour despite rough weather on Saturday.

"We will thoroughly investigate what caused this situation and what kind of safety oversight was involved to allow the tour, in order to prevent another accident," Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito, who visited the area on Sunday, told reporters.

The ministry will also investigate if or how Saturday's accident was related to two previous accidents involving the same boat last year, he said.

The operator had been instructed to take steps to improve its safety following the incidents.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who was attending a two-day summit in Kumamoto in southern Japan, cancelled his program for the second day and returned to Tokyo.

He told reporters in the early hours of Sunday that he instructed officials "to do everything they can for the rescue".

The cause of the accident is still under investigation, but experts suspect the boat ran aground and was damaged.

High waves and strong winds were observed in the area around noon, according to a local fisheries cooperative.

Japanese media reports said fishing boats had returned to port before noon because of the bad weather.

A tour boat crew belonging to another operator told NHK that he warned of rough seas when he spotted the Kazu I crew and told them not to go.

He also said the same boat went aground last year and suffered a crack on its bow.

The cold temperature and strong winds could cause hypothermia and put the passengers in severe conditions for survival, according to Jun Abe, vice chairman of the Society of Water Rescue and Survival Research.

"It's a very severe condition especially when they are wet," Mr Abe told TBS.

The boat can hold up to 65 people and tours around the Shiretoko area usually last around three hours, according to the tour company's website.

Kazu I left Utoro port around 10am on Saturday and was expected to return by 1pm, NHK said.

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Inquiries start into missing Japan tourist boat, with at least 11 dead

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters) -Inquiries began into what caused the disappearance of a tour boat off Japan's northern coast as search efforts intensified on Monday to find the vessel and its missing passengers, with the confirmed death toll rising to 11.

The "Kazu I" left harbour on Saturday for a sightseeing trip when it ran into trouble off the Shiretoko peninsula on the island of Hokkaido. The boat was carrying 24 passengers, including 2 children, and two crew members. Only a few orange flotation devices bearing its name have been discovered adrift by a rocky area along the rugged coastline.

One child is among the dead.

Searching resumed on Monday using aircraft and patrol boats, with media saying local fishing boats from the port of Utoro had also been mobilised. Searchers also walked steep cliffs along the shoreline.

The Transport Ministry sent officials to the site on Sunday to coordinate operations, and Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito also visited, calling for every possible measure to be taken in determining what went wrong and preventing a recurrence.

Hiroaki Okuma, an investigator from the Japan Transport Safety Board investigator, told reporters they were collecting information from bad weather to conditions of the vessel to find out the cause, and questioning staff at the ship operator.

According to media reports, waves were high in the area on Saturday and fishing boats that departed early in the morning returned to port quickly because of the conditions.

The Kazu I was the first tour boat to operate in the area this season, Kyodo news agency said. It added that the same vessel had collided with a floating object in May 2021, injuring three people, and ran aground in shallow water shortly after leaving port in June.

The coast guard said it would be difficult to say what exactly had happened to the ship until more evidence or debris was found, but so far there are no hints of its whereabouts. The boat company could not be immediately reached for comment.

The boat went missing on Saturday several hours after departing for a tour of the Shiretoko Peninsula, famous for its rugged coastal scenery and wildlife. The boat operator had called to report it was taking on water and listing at a 30-degree angle, local media reported, shortly before contact was lost.

Questions have arisen about why it took several hours after the boat's first distress call for rescuers to arrive, but Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihiko Isozaki said the nearest military aircraft were based 150 km away and on patrol at the time.

The sea and weather conditions meant it took longer than normal from coast guard ships to arrive, Isozaki added.

Drift ice can be seen in area waters as late as March, and water temperatures now would be 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (36-37 Fahrenheit), local officials said.

"Just a few minutes in that sort of water would start clouding your consciousness," a local fisheries official said.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies and Mariko Katsumura; Additional reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Jacqueline Wong)

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Documentary reveals new details on what happened to missing tourist Atsumi Yoshikubo

The missing tourist airs tonight at 9 p.m. on cbc-tv.

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 A filmmaker is promising more details on the case of Atsumi Yoshikubo, a Japanese tourist whose 2014 disappearance sparked an extensive search in Yellowknife before police received information suggesting she'd planned to disappear all along.

Yoshikubo, 45, was a doctor who liked to travel solo.

On Oct. 22, 2014, security footage showed Yoshikubo leaving her Yellowknife hotel at 9:15 a.m. with a backpack and a bag, dressed in a pink coat. She was last seen walking along Highway 4 away from the city.

A week after her hotel reported her missing,  RCMP called off the search  and said Yoshikubo was presumed dead. At the time RCMP said they had information that she "planned to go into the wilderness alone and become a missing person" and that she had taken steps to avoid detection.

Confused by the RCMP's cryptic statements,  volunteers questioned the decision to stop the search  and continued efforts to locate Yoshikubo, well into the summer of 2015. 

That was before Japanese media outlets reported that Yoshikubo had written a suicide note before she left Japan. 

In August 2015, a  hiker stumbled across bone fragments  and items belonging to Yoshikubo. DNA testing later  confirmed the bone fragments  belonged to Yoshikubo.

Geoff Morrison, who directed The Missing Tourist , said his never-before revealed information will aid in adding greater closure and help people understand "really what happened in the end."

"It was quite rewarding to find that," said Morrison.

"A lot of the new information I learned was towards the very final stages of this documentary."

"I think what really compelled me more than anything was the difficulty in finding closure," he said.

"Some of the facts were grey, or unreported. Some of the messaging the RCMP used was quite cryptic in describing Atsumi Yoshikubo's activities and what had happened."

In the film, Morrison interviews the lead investigator of the RCMP in Yellowknife.

Atsumi Yoshikubo at Yellowknife visitor's center

'nervous' travelling to yellowknife and japan.

Morrison said he felt "a little bit nervous" coming to Yellowknife for the film.

"To come to Yellowknife for the first time, and start poking around and asking questions particularly as an outsider, it was difficult."

Although he encountered a spectrum of voices, he said the response was overwhelmingly positive.

What he discovered was that people in Yellowknife "care deeply" about visitors.

"I think this story really affected people in Yellowknife. People really cared about this person," he said.

Morrison also travelled to Japan to interview Yoshikubo's family, friends and even former patients.

"Everyone had very fond memories of her and spoke of her being a very smart and caring and diligent doctor who cared deeply about her patients."

A personal attachment to Yoshikubo

Morrison says the project became "a very peculiar journey" for him.

"It's not hard to develop an attachment to someone who is not safe," he said.

"My partner kind of pointed out to me a few months ago when we started editing. She's like, 'Jeez, I sense you really want to protect her.'"

This was a first for Morrison, who says he's never been emotionally involved in a project before.

"The film ends on a message of hope," he said.

Morrison says his team is working on a Japanese translation for the film for Yoshikubo's family in Japan.

The film will air Thursday at 9 p.m. on CBC-TV, or you can watch the full episode later online on CBC's FirstHand .

• Yellowknife RCMP say foul play not indicated in disappearance
• Watch Atsumi Yoshikubo at Yellowknife visitor's center

With files from Loren McGinnis

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26 Missing From Japanese Tour Boat After Distress Call off Hokkaido

The sightseeing vessel was on a three-hour round trip tour to the tip of Cape Shiretoko. The Japan Coast Guard had dispatched rescue boats and aircraft to the area near the Kashuni Falls.

By Motoko Rich and Makiko Inoue

TOKYO — All 26 people aboard a sightseeing boat were reported missing off the coast of Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island, on Saturday after the boat made a distress call to the Japan Coast Guard early in the afternoon saying it was sinking.

The Coast Guard dispatched rescue boats and aircraft after the crew of the tourist cruiser called to say that the vessel was tilting at 30 degrees near the Shiretoko Peninsula on Hokkaido’s eastern coast.

According to NHK, the public broadcaster, the first rescue call came around 1:15 p.m. from the KAZU 1, a sightseeing vessel that was on a planned three-hour round trip tour to the tip of Cape Shiretoko. A regional unit of the Coast Guard in Hokkaido told NHK that the crew had reported the boat was taking on water. A final call came in to the company at 3 p.m.

Tetsuo Saito, Japan’s minister of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism, told reporters late on Saturday that the Coast Guard boats arrived at the scene around 4:30 p.m. and had not yet found any survivors.

Mr. Saito said 24 passengers, including two children, were on board, along with the captain and a deck officer. All were believed to be wearing life jackets, he said.

Early Sunday, NHK reported that four people from the boat had been found, but it gave no information about their condition.

According to NHK, the Coast Guard dispatched five patrol vessels and two aircraft in rough winds to the area of the famed Kashuni Falls, where the boat was when the first call came in and where reefs are hidden under the sea. The public broadcaster reported that there had been warnings of waves of up to 10 feet on Saturday.

A man who answered the telephone late Saturday night at Shiretoko Pleasure Cruiser, the owner of the tourist boat, said he could not answer questions as he needed “to put a priority on talking to the families first.”

The website of Shiretoko Pleasure Cruiser advertises the three-hour Shiretoko Cape tour as a chance for sightseers to see the Kashuni Falls as well as brown bears, eagles, dolphins and whales. “It is a truly unexplored region that can only be reached by boat,” the tour description reads.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was returning early to Tokyo from Kumamoto, where he had been attending a conference, according to NHK.

Hikari Hida contributed reporting.

Motoko Rich is the Tokyo bureau chief, where she covers Japanese politics, society, gender and the arts, as well as news and features on the Korean peninsula. She has covered a broad range of beats at The Times, including real estate, the economy, books and education. More about Motoko Rich

Makiko Inoue covers news and features in Japan. She reported extensively from the Tohoku area hit by the earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Before joining The Times’s Tokyo bureau in 2002, she worked at the Tokyo bureau of The Los Angeles Times. More about Makiko Inoue

Missing tourist boat found underwater off Hokkaido

A tourist boat that went missing six days ago off Hokkaido was found underwater on Friday, the Japan Coast Guard said, as 12 of the 26 people aboard remained unaccounted for.

The coast guard will search inside the boat in the belief that some of those missing were trapped, while the government expressed hope that the vessel will be salvaged with its operator bearing the costs.

The 19-ton Kazu I was located after the Maritime Self-Defense Force conducted a search with an underwater camera off the Shiretoko Peninsula. So far the bodies of 14 people have been found since contact with the boat was lost on April 23.

The boat was found at a depth of around 120 meters near Kashuni Falls, a popular scenic site near the tip of the peninsula, from where it issued a distress call.

The camera captured the boat's name written on the bow. The vessel was found lying on the bottom of the sea where sunlight does not reach and visibility is poor. The authorities will continue to investigate with unmanned vehicles.

Salvaging shipwrecks is typically expensive and owners are not liable.

But a senior transport ministry official visiting the site told reporters the government is hoping the Kazu I operator will "do it responsibly."

The operator, Shiretoko Yuransen, has said it will do what it can, according to the ministry.

Also Friday, a coast guard official said the Russian border security agency notified it of spotting a person drifting Wednesday in the water with a life vest west of Kunashiri Island off Hokkaido.

The Russian authorities said they were unable to mount a rescue and lost sight of the person due to stormy weather, according to the Japanese official.

Kunashiri is one of several disputed islands off Japan's northern main island of Hokkaido that are collectively called the Northern Territories by Tokyo and the Southern Kurils by Moscow.

The Kazu I was sailing despite bad weather forecasts and warnings. The Shiretoko Peninsula was designated as a World Natural Heritage site in 2005.

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Japan intensifies search for missing tour boat with 26 on board

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Chicago woman who vanished traveling in Japan has been found, family says

A Chicago woman who had been missing for nearly two weeks while she was traveling abroad in Japan has been found safe, her family said. 

“We’re relieved to share that we’ve obtained our beloved daughter, sister and cousin Kandace Schipper’s location,” the missing woman's sister, Nicole Willea, wrote Wednesday night on Facebook.

“We’re grateful for every email, call, and share and are now focused on bringing her home safely,” Willea said.

Schipper, 29, had been traveling in Tokyo since May 8, and had been communicating with her family "every day" before she suddenly stopped sending messages on June 4, her sister had said. Her last known location was reported to have been in the Shibuya City area in Tokyo on June 5, Willea had said.

Willea said her family had a missing persons report in Chicago and had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. Chicago police and the U.S. Embassy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

People across the U.S. and Japan joined in the effort to search for Schipper as days went by without any word from Schipper, 29.

“After going through this process, we’re overwhelmed by the kindness of so many strangers. From Chicago to Tokyo, we were met with so much support and eagerness to help us find our loved one and have empathy for anyone seeking missing family members,” Willea said. “It’s a complicated process trying to find information and it wouldn’t have been possible for us without the generosity of so many.”

Willea did not share where or how her sister was found. She also did not share what condition Schipper was in. Willea did not immediately respond to an overnight request for comment.

Chantal Da Silva is a breaking news editor for NBC News Digital based in London. 

One dead, seven missing after two Japan navy helicopters crash in Pacific

Search operation under way after the SH-60 patrol helicopters possibly collided with each other during antisubmarine exercise off Izu Islands.

Two Japanese navy helicopters carrying eight crew members crashed into the Pacific Ocean during a night-time training exercise after possibly colliding with each other, killing one person, the defence minister said on Sunday.

Rescuers were searching for seven others who were still missing.

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The two SH-60 patrol helicopters were conducting antisubmarine exercises on Saturday night near Torishima in the remote Izu island group, off the southern coast of central Japan.

Defence Minister Minoru Kihara said rescuers “spotted what are believed to be part of the aircraft in the sea, and we believe that the two helicopters crashed”.

“At this point the cause is unknown, but firstly we do our best to save lives,” Kihara told reporters. Hours later, Kihara told reporters that the crew member who was rescued “was confirmed dead”.

He also said the ministry “discovered the flight recorders in places close to each other”, and so the “possibility is high that [the two helicopters] collided”.

“The flight recorders are being analysed,” Chief of Staff Ryo Sakai of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) told reporters, as officials are interviewing the crew of a third helicopter that was joining the drill but was not involved in the accident.

Communication with one chopper was lost at 10:38pm (13:38 GMT) off the island of Torishima, and one minute later an emergency signal was received from this aircraft, broadcaster NHK reported.

Approximately 25 minutes later, at about 11:04pm, the military realised that communication with the other aircraft was also lost in the same area.

The Mitsubishi SH-60K helicopters from the JMSDF are mainly based on and operate from naval destroyers.

The JMSDF said as there were no other aircraft nor vessels in nearby waters, involvement of another country in the incident is unlikely, NHK added.

US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said in a message on social platform X that the United States had offered to help with the search and rescue.

“We will stand together, side by side, with our friend and ally, Japan. My thoughts are with the crew members, and their families and friends during this challenging time,” he said.

The crash comes a year after a Ground Self-Defence Force UH-60 Blackhawk crashed off the southwestern Japanese island of Miyako, due to an engine output problem known as “rollback”, leaving all 10 crew members dead, which shocked the nation.

In 2017, a Japanese navy SH-60J, an earlier generation Seahawk, crashed during a night-time flight training off Aomori due to human error.

Two Japan Navy Helicopters Crash, One Body Found, 7 Missing

A Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) vessel conducts a search and rescue operation at the site where two JMSDF helicopters crashed into the sea during a training exercise near Torishima in the remote Izu island group, off the southern coast of central Japan, April 21, 2024, in this photo released by Kyodo. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS

TOKYO (Reuters) -Two Japanese navy helicopters crashed into the sea during a training exercise, killing at least one of the eight crew members on board, the defence minister said on Sunday.

The two SH-60 patrol helicopters were conducting anti-submarine exercises on Saturday night near Torishima in the remote Izu island group, off the southern coast of central Japan.

Defense Minister Minoru Kihara told a press conference the cause of the crash is under investigation. The two flight recorders had been discovered in close proximity to each other and the probability was high that the two helicopters had collided, he added.

Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) and Coast Guard are searching for the remaining seven crew members.

Earlier on Saturday, MSDF Chief of Staff Yoshitaka Sakai indicated he did not believe there involvement from another country in the crash.

In a post on X, U.S. ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel offered his country's assistance in search and rescue efforts.

(Reporting by Kevin Buckland; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters .

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