Mother Placed on Probation in 2 Drownings

A mother, shamed by her husband’s betrayal, was placed on five years’ probation today for drowning her children during a death walk into the ocean, a child-parent suicide attempt called oyako shinju and deemed honorable in Japan.

Fumiko Kimura, 33, who emigrated from Japan 14 years ago, was also ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment and sentenced to a year in County Jail, although she was credited with time already served.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert W. Thomas imposed the sentence on Kimura, who pleaded no contest to two counts of voluntary manslaughter charges in October.

The Tarzana woman could have been sentenced to a maximum of 13 years in prison or she could have been placed in a state hospital.

‘Punishes Herself’

“The courts can never punish her as much as she punishes herself,” her attorney, Gerald H. Klausner, said.

Kimura was originally charged with murder and felony child endangering, but defense and prosecution attorneys agreed that her mental state was not that of a murderer when she carried her children into the Pacific Ocean on Jan. 29.

She walked into the ocean off Santa Monica, clutching her 6-month-old daughter, Yuri, and holding the hand of her 4-year-old son, Kazutaka. Kimura was pulled unconscious from the surf by a pair of teen-agers and survived, but her children died.

A few days before the attempted child-parent suicide, Kimura had learned her husband had kept a mistress for three years, investigators said.