Who were the disabled people killed in Tokyo?

Last night I saw a social media link to a story that included photos of people killed in recent mass shootings.

I clicked on it, thinking for a second that it might include photos of the 19 adults killed in a Tokyo home for people with multiple disabilities while they slept in the early hours of Tuesday Tokyo time.

It didn't.

A quick search showed that when 49 people were killed in a gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12, their photos, names and details about who they were as people, appeared in media two days later.

Do you think there's a news outlet that covered the Tokyo massacre that has attempted to secure photos of the victims as a way of telling their stories?

I don't think so.

To be honest, the social and mainstream media reaction to the deaths has been muted relative to coverage of other mass killings.

Yesterday, science writer Emily Willingham suggested why that might be the case in this Forbes piece: This Is What Disability Erasure Looks Like.

Willingham notes that the suspect, who had worked for years at the home he targeted, made no secret of what he intended to do, even warning the country's parliament back in February.

"I envision a world where a person with multiple disabilities can be euthanized," he wrote, outlining his plans to "wipe out 470 disabled" people at night time, when staffing was low. He tried to pass the letter to the speaker of the lower house of Japan's parliament and was hospitalized for two weeks as a result.

But the facility that housed the vulnerable people he threatened to kill, Willingham says, appears to have not been adequately warned and prepared.

"What if his letter had instead referenced his intention to kill children or teachers or restaurant-goers?" she asks. "I'm guessing that authorities would have paid a lot more attention to it."

The reason, she suggests, is that as a culture we are quick to accept messages that suggest people with disabilities are less than human. Messages such as: "Better dead than disabled."

The reason we post photos and tell stories of innocent people killed in massacres like this is to assert their humanity.

I wonder how far news outlets will go to do that in this case? I, for one, am waiting.