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.
Everything he saw made him feel uncomfortable, as did the thought that he was now thirty-seven years old, with the prime of his life behind him. Merely looking at the streets and the people in them made him angry.
Just after nine o’clock that night he boarded the express train bound for Uno, from where he would take the ferry across the Inland Sea to Takamatsu in Shikoku, and change again to the train for Uwajima. In his pocket was an envelope holding the money he had been given by the Demobilised Soldiers’ Bureau to cover the cost of returning home.
All the seats in the train were clean, and with few people on board he had no problem finding a place to sit. In the row in front of Takuya, a young woman sat slumped against the shoulder of the man sitting next to her, and diagonally across from him on the other side of the carriage a middle-aged man poured himself a glass of sake. Outside, neon lights lit up the streets beside the tracks.
Takuya wiped the lenses of his glasses, clouded by the steamy air inside the carriage. His short-sightedness seemed to have worsened in the last few years.
Leaning against the metal window frame, Takuya closed his eyes. His younger sister had missed her chance to find a husband when she was still in her twenties and had married a widower the previous spring, while his brother had married three years earlier and now had one young child. In her last letter, Takuya’s mother had recommended that he get married as soon as he left prison, even going as far as to enclose a young woman’s photograph for him to consider, but he had sent it straight back without comment. Marriage held no appeal for him. All he really felt like doing at the moment was lying down and resting on a tatami-matted floor.
From time to time he opened his eyes and gazed drowsily out of the window.
Eventually the first signs of dawn came and the sun started to rise.
Takuya left his seat to wash his face and clean his teeth in the washroom at the end of the carriage. When the train reached Osaka station he stepped down on to the platform and bought a boxed lunch at the nearest kiosk. Trains came in and departed from the other platforms, with waves of people rushing up and down the stairs.
As the train approached the outer suburbs of Kobe, for a brief moment Fujisaki’s face flashed in front of his eyes. The train rumbled on through Akashi and Kakogawa.
Thoughts of Terasawa and his wife came to his mind. Takuya had sent them two or three postcards in his early years in Sugamo and had received letters of reply with gifts of rice crackers, but their correspondence had dried up several years ago.
He turned his head to look out of the window again. Fields had been replaced by rows of houses, and Himeji castle had come into view in the distance. It almost seemed to rotate slowly as the train drew nearer on the last curve of track into the city. Heavy grey snow clouds hung low in the sky.
The idea of returning home was less and less attractive. If he went back to his parents’ house, his mother would probably weep at the sight of him and his brother and sister would probably be just as tearful. He would have to go and pay his respects at his father’s grave and talk to the relatives and friends who would gather to welcome him back. The prospect of all this was still annoying, something he preferred to put off as long as possible.
The train slowed as it approached the station. Takuya took his bag down from the luggage rack above his head, put on his overcoat and went to the door.
As he stepped down on to the platform he
saw that the station had been completely refurbished, with new benches and kiosks on each platform. He walked out on to the street. The area in front of the station was packed with shops and large buildings. All the roads looked in good condition, and a wide tar-sealed boulevard stretched from the station to the castle’s soaring walls. The green of the pine trees surrounding the castle stood out in stark contrast to the gleaming-white plaster walls of the donjons and towers, and the light brown of the stone buttresses provided a distinctive outline against the surrounding scenery.
Gazing at the White Egret Castle as he walked, Takuya headed along the road beside the railway tracks, and crossed over them at the first intersection. Before long he passed the employment agency he had visited years ago. Still on the same spot, it was now a larger, permanent structure, surrounded by rows of houses probably built as part of a municipal housing project. There were new houses and shops on both sides of all the streets he passed, so Terasawa’s factory would have been enlarged and the old house knocked down and replaced.
Takuya walked down the tarred road until he got as far as the pachinko parlour, where he stopped. Almost ten years had gone by since he had left Himeji. Terasawa and his wife would be old by now, or they might even have died while Takuya was in prison. Their niece would have been adopted as a daughter, then would have married and taken over the business.
Takuya tried to imagine what meeting Terasawa would be like after all these years. All they would have to talk about would be how things were in the past, and once that was over conversation would quickly dry up. He had sent Terasawa a postcard expressing his gratitude and had received a reply, so maybe that was where he should leave it. Indeed, if they had adopted Teruko and she had married and started a family, she would probably feel obliged to offer little more than a perfunctory welcome. The prospect of having to make conversation with Teruko’s husband hardly inspired enthusiasm.
One Man's Justice Page 23