One Man's Justice (26 page)

His knees started to tremble. He shuddered, and staying on his feet became a painful struggle. The sentences of the soldiers from Ishigaki Island who had beheaded and then bayoneted the bodies of three American pilots came to his mind. Forty-one of the forty-five accused had been sentenced to death. Takuya and his comrades from Western Command had killed a total of thirty-three men, so it went without saying that their crime was much worse than that of the coastguards, and therefore the words ‘death by hanging' would surely be read out after each of their names.

As they moved down through the ranks, next came the lieutenants. Both legal affairs officers were condemned to death, and after their names and sentences had been read out Takuya recognised the name of Lieutenant Howa Kotaro. He had thought the fact that Howa's mother had been killed in the fire raids on Fukuoka might have been seen as an extenuating circumstance, but again the words ‘death by hanging' rang out.

By now Takuya had lost all hope. His own action had been no less extreme than those of the two legal affairs officers or Lieutenant Howa. His name would be next, he thought, but instead the name of the young officer cadet was read out in the same American pronunciation, again followed by the death sentence. Takuya's head started to spin. His legs went numb and his knees felt as though they would buckle any second.

Next came the name of the staff officer who had ordered
Takuya to take part in the executions. The set English expressions describing the charges were read out in the same sombre tone, but the words at the end were different. Takuya was sure that rather than an expression mentioning ‘death', he heard the word ‘life'. As he tried to understand the difference, the interpreter translated it as a ‘life sentence'.

Himuro's name was read out next. Takuya concentrated as hard as he could on each individual word, and again he picked out the expression ‘imprisonment for life'.

‘Ta-ku-ya Ki-yo-ha-ra,' said the chief of the military tribunal. Takuya gazed intently at the colonel's lips. His sense of time seemed to have deserted him, because the space between one moment and the next seemed like an aeon. The charges were read in full and again Takuya thought he heard the word ‘life' among the words explaining the sentence.

Another wave of shaking came over him and he felt a chill run down his spine, then barely controllable nausea. The culmination of years and months of unrelenting suspense had passed in an instant. He was not going to be strung up after all. A wave of emotion pushed the physical sensations into the background, but for a fleeting moment, until the interpreter confirmed it, he thought that maybe he had misheard his sentence.

The remaining defendants' sentences continued to be announced in the same monotone English followed by the interpreter's Japanese, but by now the words no longer registered with Takuya. He stared at the American flag, at the same time repeating to himself the words ‘life sentence'.

After a short while the tenor of the announcements seemed to change, and the words ‘not guilty' could be heard following the charges.

Realising that the English announcements had come to an end, Takuya returned his gaze to the chief of the military tribunal. The American colonel shuffled his papers into order on his desk and rubbed his cheeks slowly with both hands.

Suddenly a voice could be heard from down in front of Takuya. Incredulous, the chief of the tribunal turned to see what was happening.

Takuya could just make out a muffled sobbing two rows down, as well as the sound of someone breathing hard and trying to keep back tears. Looking toward the front, Takuya saw a little old man moving forward from the line of seats, his head quivering slightly.

The old man was pleading tearfully that he hadn't given any orders to kill POWs. His voice trembled as he spoke. Obviously the strain had got the better of him, for he stood ramrod straight, almost as though someone had inserted a board down the back of his shirt.

Takuya felt ashamed to see this old man grovelling before the court, insisting to the members of the tribunal that, though he might have been sentenced to death in the earlier trial of those involved in the vivisection of POWs at Kyushu Imperial University, and had now received the same sentence in this trial, he had never given anyone orders to do such things, and that this decision was regrettable in the extreme.

Takuya felt he had witnessed something he would have
preferred not to see, and looked away. He shut his eyes, but could still hear sniffling from the former commander-in-chief. The old man Takuya had respected as a famous general was now openly weeping.

A different American voice said something in English, which the interpreter quickly translated as the announcement of the end of the proceedings.

Takuya and the others turned to the right and, after being handcuffed once again by the MPs, filed out of the courtroom.

In the makeshift holding-room down the corridor, they were given their evening meal in army-issue mess tins. Takuya had no appetite, but he knew that he must eat. He dug his spoon into the white rice mixed with barley and chewed away at the pieces of tasteless dried fish.

Three hours after leaving Tokyo they were back on the bus to Sugamo. The sun was starting to set and the western sky was tinged with red.

Out of the left side of the bus Mount Fuji was visible in the distance as they crossed the Rokugo Bridge over the Tama river. With the sun sinking behind it, the snow on the mountain took on a light shade of purple.

Takuya was moved into a different cell to begin serving his sentence.

Soon after New Year 1949 his father and brother came to visit him. Through the three layers of heavy wire mesh separating them Takuya had only a blurred view of their faces, but he could see his father blinking uncomfortably, wiping his eyes repeatedly with a handkerchief. Seeing them stare at the handcuffs and the leather band wrapped round them made Takuya feel decidedly uncomfortable.

When their time was up an MP came over and led Takuya's two visitors out of the interview room.

In the end nine people, including the commander-in-chief, had been sentenced to death, five to life imprisonment, one to forty years of hard labour, four to thirty years, three to twenty-five years, four to twenty years, one to ten years, and one to five years. Seven were found
not guilty. Evidently, four of the men who had taken part in the executions, Howa being one of them, were sentenced to death because their involvement was judged to be voluntary, whereas Takuya and the others who received various prison terms were deemed to have been acting in response to orders passed down the chain of command. That night, the nine men sentenced to death were moved to another wing of the prison.

Takuya spent his days uneventfully, going along with prison routine. Having avoided the gallows, he started paying greater attention to prison life. The food was dreadful. The staple component of most meals was a rice sludge made from what the other inmates said could only be chicken feed, and the soup that sometimes accompanied it was little more than miso-flavoured water with a few tiny pieces of vegetables in it. On the rare occasions they were served bread it came lightly buttered, the fat already starting to separate. Eating, getting up and going to bed took place at set times. When Takuya thought of how he'd managed to avoid the gallows, his face relaxed. He might be destined to spend the rest of his days in prison, but he was happy to be alive.

Just after the rainy season started Takuya's younger brother came to visit again. He said their parents and sister were well, and that with the sale of sake having been liberalised a month earlier their father was now enjoying a drink every night before going to bed. He went on to announce cheerfully that he'd received a pay rise at work.

Takuya listened patiently before telling his brother not to come any more. With their father having left his job,
it couldn't be easy for his brother and sister, so the money needed to get from Shikoku to Tokyo and back was better spent on keeping the family fed, he said. His brother nodded from the other side of the steel-mesh dividing-screen.

Newspapers were not allowed in Sugamo. Instead there was a simple mimeographed tabloid put together by the inmates, but it featured nothing more than wood-block prints depicting prison life, some satirical verse, the occasional cartoon and a column of letters to the editor. There were effectively no sources of information about life in the outside world.

Several days of hot, humid weather set in.

One evening, through his cell window Takuya caught sight of fireworks bursting one after another in the night sky. A voice from the next cell told him that it must be from the river festival at Ryogoku. There was no sound with them, but the brightly coloured strands of light seemed to trace flower petals in the darkness before trailing away to nothing. When two or three went off at once the night sky was illuminated with splashes of brilliant colour, soon followed by an audible sigh from those watching from the cells. As Takuya stood staring out of his window at the fireworks, he thought that at last the confusion that had followed defeat in the war was starting to dissipate.

Autumn came and went and the temperature dropped.

Takuya hadn't smoked since entering Sugamo. There was an allocation of five cigarettes a day for those who wanted them, and the guards walking up and down the corridor would light them if asked. But Takuya felt so nervous about
calling the guards over that before long he had lost all desire to smoke.

One day in the third week of November, when Takuya was on his way back to his cell with a tray of food, the old man walking beside him started talking.

‘You men were really lucky, you know,' he said calmly. The man was a former colonel in the Imperial Navy who had been sent to Sugamo on a life sentence just after the prison was opened.

Noticing Takuya's puzzled expression, the man began to explain what he meant.

In the early trials, he said, many people had been condemned to death for little more than slapping prisoners of war, and only after two years had the punishments started to get lighter. He said things had changed markedly after the forty-one navy coastguard troops from Ishigaki island were sentenced to death in mid-March 1948, almost three years after the surrender. The judgement of those from Western Command in the last of the war crimes trials, with most of the accused escaping the hangman's noose, was proof that the American position on war crimes had changed dramatically. United States policy toward Japan was at a turning-point, he explained, with the Americans moving away from treating Japan as a former enemy, and instead trying to entice her into their camp as a friendly player in the increasingly complicated political situation in Asia. This new stance, he said, was manifesting itself in all sorts of areas, one of them being the handling of war criminals.

Before the war, this man, now well on in years, had been a naval attaché at the Japanese Embassy in Washington,
and at the time of the surrender he had been an intelligence officer at Imperial Headquarters.

‘Do you follow what I'm saying?' he asked, smiling faintly.

He told Takuya that after graduating from the Imperial Naval Academy he had studied at a university in the United States, and that since he spoke fluent English he was acting as a liaison for the American military authorities with former Imperial Navy personnel in Sugamo. Obviously, it was through his continuous contact with the Americans that he had detected this subtle change in direction, and as he had some knowledge of world affairs in general he was able to make the connection between American policy toward Japan and the effect this had on the issue of war crimes.

Takuya thought the man's observations were probably very accurate. There was certainly no doubting the fact that punishments had become much less severe with the passage of time, as his own case illustrated. As the man said, luck had indeed been on Takuya's side.

On reflection, he realised that there had even been a change in the attitude of the American prison guards. The ones who had treated the inmates with spiteful severity had suddenly disappeared, replaced by more pleasant, cool-headed characters. The MPs were much more lenient about the inmates' time in the bath, and occasionally even winked affably at the men. The food situation throughout the country must have been gradually improving, because the quality of the prison food seemed better; and the time inmates were allowed to spend outside was extended.

On the twenty-fourth of December, Takuya was reminded of just how perceptive the former navy colonel's conclusions had been. That night, the Christmas message from the US Army colonel in charge of Sugamo was pasted to the wall in each wing of the prison. It detailed a number of improvements for the inmates, as well as specific reductions in the sentences of those serving shorter terms. These were to go into effect immediately. Two days later forty-six men were released on parole, followed by another sixteen on the thirty-first of December.

The atmosphere in Sugamo became even more hopeful in early 1950. In the first week of March, the prison superintendent announced parole for all inmates serving short sentences, and rumours immediately started circulating that sentences might even be reduced for those in for life or still awaiting execution. This proved to be the case, with reductions of sentence announced for all those remaining on death row. Word spread around the prison that all nine men from Western Regional Command who had been condemned to death, including the former commander-in-chief, were to have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

Thirty-four of those involved in the executions on Ishigaki island had their death sentences reduced to prison terms, so, including the Ishigaki garrison commander, former navy colonel Inoue Otsuhiko, only seven people remained on Sugamo's death row.

Everyone expected that they, too, would be reprieved, but early in the evening on the fifth of April, these seven men were notified that they were to be moved to cells
in a different wing of the prison, in preparation for the carrying out of their sentences. Two days later, at thirty-two minutes after midnight, Colonel Inoue and three others were hanged, followed to the gallows twenty-five minutes later by former navy lieutenant Enomoto and two others. The Japanese prison chaplain told the other inmates that after they had eaten a meal with the men they had made their way through the rain to the execution yard singing the ‘Battleship March'.

When the Korean war broke out that June, the American approach to the occupation of Japan was further relaxed, and one after another the remaining inmates had their sentences commuted. Takuya was no exception, and his term was reduced from life to fifteen years.

Around this time, Takuya found himself considering the war crimes trials in a new light. By rights, a trial should represent the precise application of the law, with the verdict being the strictly impartial result of due process. But the war crimes trials seemed to be heavily influenced by world affairs, with the severity of the sentencing varying greatly from one trial to the next and the original sentences often commuted within a short time of being delivered, which surely threw into question their legal foundation, and suggested that judgements were made by the victors however they saw fit. Although it pleased Takuya to know that many condemned men had escaped the gallows, and to have had his own sentence reduced, he couldn't help but think that these trials had been nothing more than an arbitrary set of judgements, distant in the extreme from what he imagined a trial should be.

With the escalation of the conflict on the Korean peninsula, the pace of changes in Sugamo accelerated. American prison guards dispatched to the front were replaced by Japanese staff, which brought more dramatic improvements in the conditions for the inmates. In September of the following year, 1951, the San Francisco peace treaty was signed, and once it came into force the administrative responsibility for running Sugamo was transferred to the Japanese government, which soon allowed stage shows and even sumo wrestling troupes to entertain the inmates.

Takuya closely followed the bewildering changes happening around him. People were being released one after another, and five-day paroles offered to anyone who chose to apply. Inmates were even allowed to leave Sugamo during the day to work in the city, and before long the prison gate was witnessing a veritable commuter rush in the morning and early evening. By this stage Sugamo was no longer a prison in the true sense of the word.

About this time Takuya heard that the former commander-in-chief was receiving treatment in the prison hospital for a neurological disorder. A short time later word went round that the old man had died in the middle of the night, filling the air with bloodcurdling screams of agony before he succumbed. The news aroused no emotion in Takuya. It was as though he were hearing of the death of an old man with whom he had no connection.

Takuya chose neither to seek work in companies during the week nor to go on work parties outside the prison, and he did not apply for five-day parole. Those who worked in companies during the week brought back newspapers
as well as stories of the changes in the outside world, but Takuya scarcely ran his eyes over the headlines, and paid little attention to the other men's gossip. The regular stage shows held little appeal for him, so he spent his days quietly in his cell. Such entertainment was supposedly organised as a special favour to the inmates, but this ‘benevolence' only served to annoy Takuya.

In early November 1954, he noticed an article in the newspaper forecasting a rice harvest of around four hundred million bushels, the largest in history. The food in the prison was now all Japanese, and in both quality and quantity it had tangibly improved.

Early in January 1955, Takuya's father died of tuberculosis. The prison officials encouraged Takuya to go and visit his family, saying they would grant him special parole, but he stubbornly refused their offers, finding their displays of sympathy nothing more than an unwelcome intrusion.

In a letter from his younger brother, Takuya read that the attitude of the people at home to war criminals had completely changed, the general opinion now being that these men were in fact victims of the war, and that, though it might have been an unofficial offering, the town officials had sent the family a condolence gift after the death of Takuya's father.

Takuya ripped the letter up and threw it away. He knew that the expression ‘victims of the war' was in common usage, but still felt that these words were of no relevance to himself. He wrote a reply to his brother, saying that having beheaded an American POW he in no way fell into the category of victim. When he remembered once
having read an article describing war criminals as ‘enemies of mankind, utterly repulsive beasts of violence', he felt an overpowering bitterness towards those who, in the space of seven or eight short years, could simply change their minds on such a crucial issue. It annoyed him that his brother could be foolish enough to pass this on as though it were good news.

The release of the Class A war criminals who had avoided the death sentence continued, and the fewer than two hundred inmates remaining in Sugamo were all moved into the same wing.

In February 1957, nine years after he had entered Sugamo Prison, Takuya was released on what was termed ‘parole'.

He felt no elation as he stepped out through the prison gate. The first thing that struck him was how many well-dressed men and women were out walking in the streets. From the window of the tram he could see rows of houses and newly constructed buildings, neon signs everywhere and all kinds of cars on the neatly paved roads.