When Hiroshi Mizuno last saw his son, the teenager’s eyes were filled with hope as he waved cheerfully before boarding a plane to Australia.
Taiki drowned alongside another student, Shinnosuke Kimura, at K’gari, formerly Fraser Island, off Queensland’s coast in March 2019.The pair had been at Lake McKenzie on a tour with a group from Kanagawa University High School.He has lived with the memory of knowing his son decided at 13 years old to become a doctor after losing his mother, Mizuno’s wife, to cancer.
His older brother, who was days away from starting university and had bought a suit for the entrance ceremony, instead wore it to his little brother’s funeral.Before their deaths, Taiki and Shinnosuke had been playing in the water and discussed swimming across the lake. Just before 3pm, a teacher alerted other adults after noticing the two boys were missing.
The tour operator, Huckleberry Australia, was charged after the deaths with failing to comply with health and safety duties.Magistrate John Costanzo handed down a reserved decision last week in the Brisbane Magistrates Court, where he said Huckleberry should have known or identified the risks with swimming at the lake, and it failed in its duty to provide information to protect people from those risks.