Silence Once Begun (10 page)

INT
.

I wonder if you could speak at all on the subject of your brother’s starvation attempt, or hunger strike, as some have called it. As I understand the facts, you were unable to be in the courtroom for the trial, but you visited him during that period at the jail. Is that so?

JIRO

I visited him three or four times during the trial. My foreman at the plant where I worked had become frustrated with me and was looking for any excuse to fire me, which he eventually did. I could only manage to get time on perhaps seven or eight occasions, and on at least four of those I arrived at the jail only to be told I could not see him, that he was being exercised, fed, etc.

INT
.

Do you know what these
feedings
consisted of?

JIRO

I do not. They found some way of forcing him to eat. I don’t know if they used a tube or held him and forced things down his throat. I don’t know. It could have been as simple as a priest with a spoon. My brother had an irrational liking for priests.

INT
.

But you had seen that he was not eating? On your visits there, you had seen that?

JIRO

I noticed that he was thinner. His appearance was grim all along. At some point, he did seem very weak.
You have to remember, we were no longer speaking at this point. There had been speech at that one time, when I brought the lawyer. Apart from that, we just stood and looked at each other. When he became very weak, he would just drag himself over to the bars and sit hunched against them, letting the bars press into his back as far as they would go.

INT
.

And you couldn’t tell he was starving?

JIRO

You ask that now and it seems like a good question, a good clever question, but there’s no cleverness in situations like this. Could his spirit have been broken? Could his mind have broken? Could his nerves have broken? Could his body have broken? Any of these things could have been the case. All of these things were likely, even. So, it isn’t as clear as it sounds, not at all.

INT
.

I didn’t mean to suggest …

JIRO

Just continue.

INT
.

Did you notice a change in him once they began to feed him again?

JIRO

He got more energy. He began standing again. They tell me he was carried into the courtroom on the day of his trial, that he was propped up on the chair, and that a bailiff had to stand by and keep him in it or he would fall out.

INT
.

I hadn’t heard that.

JIRO

But you know what I believe?

INT
.

…

JIRO

I think that the hunger strike wasn’t real. I think it was another tool they used to try to break him, to try to get him to sign another confession, confessing more.

INT
.

Because the first confession wasn’t enough …

JIRO

It wasn’t enough. They wanted more from him. Maybe they started to starve him and he turned it around. Maybe he said to himself, fine, then I won’t eat. Then I’ll just die. I think he saw it as a way out. Things had become so bad, and there was no door. Then they showed him this door of not-eating.

(A minute of silence, tape running.)

INT
.

And there would be no way to know, to know which it was.

JIRO

No way, a hunger strike imposed by the guards on a prisoner who won’t break would look identical to a hunger strike staged by a prisoner as a protest. No one could tell the difference.

INT
.

But in this case they didn’t want to starve him to death. They wanted to execute him.

JIRO

Right, so they had to make him eat.

[
Int. note
. Through a very peculiar and wonderful action of chance, the landlady who rented me the property on which I conducted many of the interviews had a friend whose brother had worked in the prison where Oda Sotatsu sat on death row. Apparently the high profile of the case had led to this brother’s stories of Oda becoming common anecdotes that were told and retold in that family, eventually reaching the ears of the landlady to whom I came. When she learned what I was writing about, she put me in touch with the brother. I spoke to him several times on the telephone and once in person at a ramen house in Osaka. He was an extremely vain man in his sixties and he boasted at every conceivable opportunity. Even the ramen house we met at, it was a
personal connection
. He would get us some kind of special service, he said. In fact, they did not know him at all. It is my belief that this man did not personally know Oda Sotatsu at all, but rather that he relayed all manner of prison lore and anecdotes about Oda Sotatsu, casting them in the first person as though he were the one having had the experiences. As anyone familiar with oral histories will attest, this is quite a common occurrence. His narratives of the time are quite compelling, however. Whether that is because he actually knew Oda, actually was there, or whether it is due to him repeating the anecdotes countless times, I can’t say. However it may be, he was an invaluable source of otherwise unobtainable data about this time period and I am grateful that he consented to speak to me.]

[This first interview occurred via telephone. The house in which I lived (the leased property) had no telephone, so I made use of the telephone situated on the property immediately adjoining.]

INT
.

Hello. Mr. Watanabe.

VOICE

One moment. Garo! One moment, please.

(Noise of the phone being put down.)

(Perhaps thirty seconds.)

(Noise of the phone being picked up.)

GARO

Mr. Ball.

INT
.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. We are being recorded at this time.

GARO

I understand.

INT
.

You were a prison guard at the L. Facility during the spring of 1978?

GARO

I was employed there from 1960 to 1985. Yes, you could say …

(Laughs.)

GARO

You could say I was there in 1978.

INT
.

And you were a guard on what is called death row, with the most dangerous prisoners?

GARO

The ones on death row aren’t always the most dangerous; that’s what people often think, but it isn’t always true. Quite the opposite sometimes. Certain
types of assault, certain types of fraud, in-house kidnapping, what is that called in English?

INT
.

Home invasion.

GARO

Yes, home invasion, or rape and mutilation. These are all crimes that don’t get you too much time. But the guards know. We know which ones to watch out for.

INT
.

You learn that?

GARO

I think you just know it. If you don’t, you don’t last long. So, it takes care of itself. In the long run, you get guards who know what they’re doing.

INT
.

You met and dealt with Oda Sotatsu at that time? The man convicted of the Narito Disappearances?

GARO

Sure, I dealt with him. If walking back and forth, looking at him, talking to him, bringing him food, counts. I only spoke to him three times. Three times in the eight months he was there. And he liked me. He wouldn’t speak to anyone else.

INT
.

Eight months? I was told he was on death row for only four months.

GARO

Not to my knowledge. Four months is awfully short, awfully short. Don’t think I’ve heard of that. Matter of fact, eight months is short for a capital case. Almost unheard of. We used to say someone must have wanted him dead for it to come so quick, his number to come up, I mean. Seems he skipped clear to the head of the line. Supposedly he had an enemy,
some minister, didn’t like how things went, wanted an example, I can’t say. He was easy, though. Tell you that much. Made no trouble, not once.

(Something indecipherable.)

INT
.

I’m sorry, I couldn’t make that out. What did you say?

GARO

I said he was so good they let a girl in his cell, right before the end. Not that he knew it was the end, mind you. Execution’s always unannounced. Never know. They drag ‘em off through a series of rooms, one after another. We called it visiting the Buddhas because there are different statues, one in each room.

INT
.

I have questions about that, but first …

[
Int. note
. Here we lost the connection. It was a couple of weeks before I managed to speak to him again. That continuation will come shortly.]

[
Int. note
. Watanabe Garo gave me a photograph that he claims had been in Oda Sotatsu’s death row cell. When I later met with Jito Joo, she admitted having given it to him. This strengthens Watanabe’s claims of having known Oda; it is also possible he recovered it from another guard, or from the cell, without having known Oda. Further conjecture on the exact degree of his reliability is likely useless.]

[
Int. note
. This was somewhat later in the same conversation at the pavilion. Jiro and I had been drinking, and he had begun to tell me some stories from his and Sotatsu’s childhood.]

INT
.

So your father refused to take you along on the fishing boat?

JIRO

He said it would be bad luck for me to come.

INT
.

And why was that?

JIRO

He said it had to do with my birth date, that it was not an, what did he call it, not an auspicious day for a fisherman to be born. He wouldn’t even let me on the boat when it was out of the water.