One Man's Justice (18 page)

A light flicked on inside the house, then the door burst open and Terasawa ran out into the yard. As Takuya held the man's legs, Terasawa shouted to his wife, who stood silhouetted in the doorway, to wake Kameya and get him to bring some rope. In no time the younger man was by their side, dressed in his underwear, holding a coil of rope.

As Takuya held the thief down, Terasawa and Kameya bound the man's hands behind his back and tied his legs together with the same length of rope.

‘Go get the police,' said Terasawa, panting from exertion. Kameya ran inside, put on his trousers and rushed back out again to the truck. He jumped into the cab, started up the engine and the vehicle rumbled out onto the road.

Takuya watched the truck move off down the road and a frown came over his face at the stupidity of what he had just done. Catching the thief meant, of course, that the
police would become involved. They would come to ask questions, and as the person who had caught the thief in the act Takuya would be obliged to make a statement for their records. Giving a false name wasn't much of a concern, but the prospect of being recognised by someone at the police station terrified him. He was not at all confident that he could stay calm, and if he reacted the way he had when questioned on the road that time, he might very well arouse the suspicions of the police.

Maybe he should make a run for it now, he thought. The article about Colonel Oishi returned to his mind. Kameya had already been gone for a few minutes, but he still had plenty of time to escape before the police arrived. Maybe he should just stroll into the house, grab his rucksack and slip out of the back door. But then again, disappearing like that would alert the police to his real situation, and it wouldn't be difficult for them to trace his real name in their files on suspected war criminals. With the police stepping up surveillance at railway stations and street corners, it was obvious that they were doubling their efforts to close the net on the last fugitives. It wouldn't be wise to tempt fate by bolting at this stage.

Takuya considered his options. If he went to the police station, his chances of walking out again without attracting the police's suspicions were not good. Indeed, in the worst-case scenario he might very well be arrested and thrown behind bars.

He asked himself what Colonel Oishi would do in this situation, but the question merely reminded him of his own stupidity. The answer was simple: Oishi wouldn't have put
himself at risk by catching the thief in the first place. During his training as an officer cadet, Takuya had done his best to memorise the sections of the field service code that covered engaging the enemy. He remembered that the instructions had stressed that, for a commander of men in the field, hesitation or inaction was even worse than choosing the wrong course of action. In the present situation, with the police being the enemy, perhaps boldly facing them was best after all.

‘He's a big fellow, Higa. You certainly did well to catch him,' Terasawa said, looking down at the man lying trussed up in front of them. The thief had a prominent nose, set amid clear-cut features, and the service cap lying by his side suggested that he was a demobilised soldier.

Takuya brooded over his foolishness. If he had just moved out from behind the steel drum and yelled, the man would have dropped the girders and run away. Once the thief knew someone was guarding the building materials during the night, surely he wouldn't risk coming back. Takuya's task had simply been to prevent any further theft until the warehouse was built. That didn't necessarily mean catching the man to bring him to justice.

The stars faded and the sky took on a bluish tint.

Takuya vacillated between the two options open to him. Running seemed like a good idea, but he realised that if he fled now his pursuers would be much closer than ever before. Maybe trying to feign composure in front of the police was worth the risk.

The noise of an engine was soon followed by two faint beams of light rising and dipping as the truck approached
along the bumpy road. Takuya pulled the brim of his mountaineering hat down lower and pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

There were two policemen sitting in the back behind Kameya. When the truck stopped they jumped down and rushed over to the thief lying face down on the ground. While the younger police officer placed his knee in the small of the man's back, the older one checked the thief 's pockets, then untied the rope and snapped a set of handcuffs on him. They made the man kneel on the ground with his legs folded under him.

The older policeman appeared to know Terasawa, engaging him in what seemed to be friendly conversation. The part Takuya had played must have been mentioned, as the officer nodded and turned to walk over to him.

Takuya told himself to stay calm, but a slight grimace came over his face and he looked down at the ground while the policeman approached. A furtive glance towards the house allowed him to measure the distance between himself and his gun. If the officer's expression betrayed the slightest hint of suspicion, the moment they moved to arrest him he would dash into the house, grab his rucksack and flee out of the back door.

The sun was starting to rise, the earthen bank along the river coming faintly into view through the morning mist.

The policeman stopped in front of Takuya, pulled out a notebook and asked his name and age. Takuya replied that his name was Higa and that he was from Okinawa, which the officer quickly jotted down, his face the picture of
concentration as he asked for details of the time and nature of the incident.

Each time Takuya sensed the policeman's eyes turning on him, fear surged up inside him. He was trying to avoid the gaze of his questioner without being too obvious, but he could see nothing but goodwill in the policeman's expression.

Terasawa sauntered over. ‘Good job to have dropped this fellow with one blow. These army men are terrific, aren't they?' he said with a hint of triumph in his voice.

The policeman nodded and smiled at Takuya as he put away his notebook. Terasawa told Kameya to take the police back to the station, and the handcuffed thief was pushed up into the back of the truck. As the engine revved, the senior policeman saluted Terasawa and stepped up into the truck himself. The truck pulled out of the yard and off down the road.

Watching the vehicle move away, Takuya thought that he didn't seem to have attracted any undue suspicion during the questioning.

The scene was now bathed in morning sunlight and a plume of smoke rose into the air from the chimney above the kitchen.

Before long Kameya returned, and they all went inside to have the morning meal of rice gruel with thin slices of seaweed.

Obviously in fine spirits, Terasawa excitedly described how his heart had raced as he dashed outside to answer Takuya's call for assistance. Terasawa's wife and Kameya gave enthusiastic accounts of their own parts in the episode,
Kameya explaining that the man hadn't said a word during the trip into town, and that he'd walked passively into the police station, his head hanging.

After finishing his meal, Terasawa got to his feet and went over to a cabinet in the corner of the room, where he opened the lid of a small wooden box and took out two packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes. ‘Well done,' he said, handing each of the men a packet.

Kameya looked curiously at the packaging before breaking the seal.

‘Try one,' said Terasawa. Takuya opened his packet and pulled out a cigarette. The paper was of good quality and the pleasant smell of tobacco wafted out of the box. Holding it between his fingers, Takuya noticed how much thicker it was than the Japanese ration cigarettes, and that the tobacco was packed much more evenly. To Takuya, these cigarettes symbolised all he had heard about the material wealth and affluence of America.

He lit it and inhaled. It certainly smelt nice, and tasted as though it had been made from good-quality tobacco, but it was far too pungent for his uninitiated palate and he coughed as soon as he inhaled the smoke. Terasawa laughed happily at the scene in front of him.

They completed the ‘workshop' that evening. At least, it was called a workshop, but in actual fact it was only a square structure with sheets of roofing-iron nailed on to the top and sides. Most of the floor was just bare ground, with only a small section covered with recycled wooden boards.

The next morning, the carpenter turned his attention to the construction of the warehouse. Terasawa and Kameya
went out in the morning in the truck and returned in the afternoon loaded with a jumble of machines, motors, belts and shafts, which the men hauled straight away into the workshop. Takuya played his part in assembling the machinery, but as he worked he stood in such a way as to keep a clear line of sight down the road in the direction of the police station. He still couldn't shake his lingering uneasy feeling that the police might have recognised his face from wanted posters and at that very moment might be on their way back to arrest him.

In the evening of the fifth day after the thief 's capture, Terasawa returned from town saying he had stopped at the police station and found out some details about the man. Evidently he was a known criminal, a specialist in the theft of metal goods, which he then sold through a broker. When the broker was arrested, he in turn had spilled the beans about the full extent of his betrayer's activities. The man was a demobilised soldier, as Takuya had guessed, and had moved to Himeji by himself to start his life of crime after losing his family in the fire raids on Osaka.

‘The police were really pleased about this one. They think he'll probably admit to still more crimes,' said Terasawa, cutting a cigarette in half and stuffing the tobacco into a clay pipe he held in his hand. Putting the pipe in the corner of his mouth, he turned to Takuya and said, ‘I didn't think of this till after I left the police station, but I think I'll get them to give you some sort of award for this. I know all the top brass down there, so if I say something they'll take notice. That was quite a criminal you nabbed here, and you should get something for it.'

Takuya was flabbergasted. Getting an award would require him to go to the police station and give more details of his personal history. He would have to meet all sorts of police officials, and in the process they would more than likely work out his real identity.

‘I can't have you doing that,' said Takuya in a strained, high-pitched voice.

The faintest of smiles appeared on Terasawa's face before he replied. ‘I won't have to stand up and shout about it. You really caught a big one here. The police will be more than happy to give you an award for your efforts,' he said as he picked out the last bits of tobacco from his pipe.

Takuya's mind raced as he tried to think of a way to get out of this predicament.

‘He's a demobilised soldier just like me. I couldn't accept an award for putting a fellow soldier behind bars. And remember, he lost his whole family in the war, so he must have been beside himself. I couldn't accept an award for capturing someone like that,' he said, raising his voice.

‘I see,' said Terasawa, obviously recognising that there was no point in pressing the matter further. His wife smiled warmly across the table at Takuya.

After that there was no more mention of awards, and no policemen turned up to discuss Takuya's capture of the thief.

The machinery had all been installed in the workshop and test runs had gone without a hitch. Terasawa obviously still had considerable funds left, because he purchased a large handcart and had a telephone put into his house.

One day the owner of the match factory turned up on his
bicycle and had a long talk with Terasawa. By all accounts the quantity of matches being produced was steadily increasing and with it the demand for matchboxes.

Even into September, the late summer heat showed no signs of abating.

Takuya spent his days pulling the cart to fetch materials from a timber-processing yard at a little town down near the coast. There was a press there which cut out the shapes for large and small matchboxes from pine boards.

He was uneasy about walking around on the streets, but with the construction of the warehouse complete the only job left for him was pulling the handcart. Using a splitter machine, the men in Terasawa's workshop cut the boxes out. Two recently hired middle-aged women then stuck the striking-paper on to the outside of the boxes. They were obviously experienced, and kept up a steady pace with no problem at all.

With Kameya now also working on the striking-paper, Takuya found himself in charge of carrying all goods and materials in and out of the factory. He wrapped a hand towel round his head and wore his mountaineering hat on top of that to avoid being burnt by the late summer sun as he traipsed through the ruins to pick up materials at the timber-processing yard or the paper wholesalers. He always made a point of choosing the less crowded paths.

On the morning of the twenty-fifth of September, Takuya opened the newspaper and found the article he had been fearing all along. The name of the commander at the regional headquarters was printed boldly under the headline ‘Jailed in Sugamo Prison'.

‘The Judiciary Division of SCAP has announced that the following seven high-ranking officers of the Japanese Imperial Army have been arrested and are being held in Sugamo prison in relation to the unlawful killing in Fukuoka of thirty-three crew members from B-29 bombers,' it read. Those arrested were the lieutenant-generals in command of the Western Regional Forces and the Sixteenth Army, and of the southern Kyushu-based Fifty-seventh Army; the chief of staff of the Sixteenth Army; a major-general who had been second in command in the Western Region; a colonel in charge of the Western Region Air Defence Tactical Operations Centre; a major; and finally Lieutenant Howa Kotaro, listed as a company officer attached to headquarters.

Although this was the first article about the POWs since the coverage of Professor Iwase's suicide, Takuya knew instantly that this meant the SCAP authorities now knew every last detail about what happened to the airmen. Like Professor Iwase, these officers would have undergone relentless interrogation in Fukuoka prison, and only after they had told all they knew would they have been transported to Sugamo prison in Tokyo, where Class A war criminals were incarcerated.