One Man's Justice

by Akira Yoshimura

  Takuya remembered that he had observed an operation Iwase had performed on one of his subordinates who’d slipped and fallen from a truck, breaking his hip. The fact that the professor was being held at Fukuoka prison as a suspected war criminal was proof that the authorities had found out about the experiments carried out on the eight prisoners of war, making Takuya think that the others who had been involved must also have been caught. Army surgeon Haruki, who had suggested performing the dissections of live POWs, had been killed in the fire raids on Fukuoka, but Colonel Tahara, who had witnessed the operations as a representative of the tactical operations staff, would no doubt have been arrested with the others. Tahara had been involved in organising the executions of the other thirty-three airmen. Obviously he would have been grilled by his interrogators as to their whereabouts, so by now warrants for the arrest of all those who had taken part would have been issued, and it was highly likely that many were already in custody. The fact that Iwase had chosen to take his own life was probably an indication of the severity of the interrogations, and doubtless the prospect of dying on the gallows had been too much for him to bear.

  Clearly, by now the occupation authorities must know all there was to know about the fate of the forty-one captured airmen.

  Takuya looked up from the newspaper. A wave of apprehension came over him, as though suddenly he were cowering naked in the middle of a vast expanse with nowhere to hide. He felt as though he wanted to crawl into a cave deep in the mountains and hide there for the rest of his life.

  That day Takuya had difficulty keeping his mind on the job, and two or three times Terasawa and his co-workers laughed at him for giving odd replies to their questions. He was suddenly on tenterhooks again, and these men seemed to represent nothing less than a threat to his life.

  The summer heat intensified with each passing day.

  When Terasawa had gathered all the building materials he needed, he got a man who had been a carpenter’s apprentice before joining the army to come in and start the construction.

  Kameya invited Takuya to accompany him on his trips to the black market, but the risk of being spotted in the crowd made him turn down every invitation.

  Since the end of the war, the American forces had taken over the Suyari munitions works, and US Army Jeeps and lorries were everywhere on the streets of Himeji. New brothels, bars and shops catering to their needs sprung up virtually every week in the areas frequented by the Americans.

  Kameya told him all sorts of stories about what he saw on his trips into town. He talked about the time he saw a young couple waiting for a train on the platform at Himeji station. An American soldier had swaggered over, grabbed the young woman by the arm and tried to drag her off, knocking her husband to the ground when he tried to intervene. He talked about the tawdry women he had seen brazenly consorting with American soldiers in the streets, and how some of them had even set up a hut near the US military camp, where they solicited customers. Kameya said he had even seen these women shamelessly copulating with their American customers out in the open. He also told Takuya about the number of times he had witnessed innocent young women being accosted and dragged off to be raped by American troops. Evidently soldiers threw things from their vehicles for the locals to scramble after all the time, and he even described unscrupulous dealers who collected food scraps from outside the Americans’ tents and boiled them up to sell as broth on the black market.

  No way, thought Takuya, would he venture into the town centre if that was what he was going to find.

  As he worked during the day, every few minutes Takuya stole a glance down each of the approach roads to the factory. The number of people throwing up shacks made from burnt roofing iron was gradually increasing, and there were even some out there living in what were to all intents and purposes crude mud huts. Whenever people approached the workshop grounds, Takuya scrutinised them to see if they posed a threat. He had decided that if someone did come with the intention of arresting him, he would first rush into the house to get his pistol and then dash down to the embankment by the river, where he’d fire some warning shots if followed. He had resolved to blow his brains out rather than be taken alive.

  Deep inside, Takuya recognised that his feelings of outrage toward the American military for devastating his country were gradually mellowing, but that his fear was intensifying with each passing day. His reason for staying on the run was fear of the gallows.

  On the thirteenth of August, Takuya found an article in the newspaper which raised his vigilance to yet another level. The headline read ‘Kempeitai Chief Flees. Female Companion Arrested’.

  ‘When a warrant was issued for his arrest this April on charges of war crimes, former Imperial Army colonel and commander of the Tokyo Kempeitai Oishi Kojiro (forty years of age) of 1–16, Kaga-Cho, Ushigome-Ku, Tokyo, mysteriously disappeared with his maid, Hirakawa Fumiko. However, Hirakawa was recently apprehended after being spotted by a policeman at Ueno Station while she was in the city to buy food supplies. She told police that Oishi was living in a village in the Nishi-Tama district, but when the agents moved to arrest him they discovered that he had already fled. According to Hirakawa, they had left suicide notes at their residence in Tokyo before absconding to Kawaji with what money and food they could lay their hands on. They had moved from one farmer’s shed to another before eventually managing to rent a four-tatami-mat storeroom in a private house in Hikawa.’

  Takuya tried to calm himself with a cigarette. It was strange to think there was another fugitive out there in exactly the same predicament as himself. He could almost sense the fear in Oishi, driving him to stay one step ahead of the police.

  At the first opportunity, Takuya stepped behind a pile of building materials and scanned the article one more time. The arrest warrant for Oishi, chief of the Tokyo kempeitai, had been issued in April, about the same time the police had turned up at his parents’ house in Shikoku. Obviously the SCAP authorities had issued a blanket order for the arrest of all suspects wanted on charges of war crimes. That Hirakawa’s maid should have been apprehended on her way through Ueno station was proof that their photographs must be in circulation, and also that police agents were watching passers-by even in places as crowded as railway stations. This must be the case all over the country, so there would undoubtedly be police agents standing watch in and around Himeji station, holding photographs of war crimes suspects.

  Obviously, when the maid confessed Oishi’s whereabouts to the police, they would have rushed there, only to find that he had given them the slip once again. Oishi must have been constantly on the lookout, somehow sensing their approach and skilfully evading arrest.

  This article taught Takuya a valuable lesson. Oishi had been lying low up in the mountains, but had kept sufficiently alert to recognise the impending danger and avoid capture by pursuers who no doubt had taken great care to approach as stealthily as possible. Takuya realised that no lesser degree of vigilance would be needed to keep himself safe from the gallows. His impulse was to cut the article out and save it as a reminder, but the risk of drawing attention to himself made him reject the idea.

  After the corner supports of the warehouse had been erected the men started attaching the crossbeams. Perched precariously on lengths of wooden scaffolding, Takuya and the others toiled under the summer sun. The sweat from his brow had already stained the front of his mountaineering hat, and his face was so tanned that the skin was peeling from the bridge of his nose.

  The clear view of the White Egret Castle gave Takuya the solace he needed to get through the day. Sitting majestically amid the desolation that once had been Himeji city, the castle seemed to project a feeling of stability, like a lead paperweight sitting on a sheet of rice paper. Its indomitable presence somehow buoyed and comforted him. It changed colour with the weather, light brown under an overcast sky, purplish in the evening sunlight.

  The area around where the workshop was being constructed was known for its profusion of fireflies. They
were so concentrated that at night the air above the river a short distance away glowed in the dark, and the luminescence seemed to spill over beyond the stream as thousands of the little insects flew out over the devastated land. Depending on the direction of the wind, there were also days when the house was enveloped by myriad tiny beads of light, while out in the desolate expanse pieces of twisted roofing iron and the rubble from white stone walls were illuminated, fading into and then out of sight.

  Towards the end of August, three iron girders were stolen one night.

  Incidents of theft were reaching epidemic proportions. Crops in the fields were plundered, and stories of cattle being stolen and butchered for their meat were not uncommon. A spinning-mill which had survived the fire raids had the glass taken from almost two hundred windows. Even lead water pipes were dug up and carried away. If people let their guard down for a moment, their bicycles, handcarts or even their shoes disappeared in a flash, and instances of luggage being stolen at the station were rife. Concerned about the materials he had to store outdoors, Terasawa made sure that at night everything was tied up with rope, but this had not deterred the thieves.

  Judging from the number of girders taken, this seemed to be the handiwork of one person. If the thief had been a man of considerable physical strength, he certainly could have carried three of them at once.

  Knowing how hard Terasawa had worked to obtain these girders, Takuya was incensed by the theft. The man was probably an incorrigible thief, whiling away his hours in the black market rather than working, and feeding himself with the proceeds of his criminal activities. The girders were to be used for building the warehouse, and without them construction was not possible.

  Terasawa seemed disillusioned with everything, and spent his time walking mutely around the property.

  That evening, he announced that the property would have to be guarded through the night. He seemed to think that, like a mouse that has found a source of food, the thief would definitely be back for more. The only way to stop him was to keep watch for the whole night, so it was decided that Kameya and Takuya would alternate shifts watching the yard. Terasawa said that he would do a shift as well, but Takuya insisted that it was the employees’ duty and he should leave it to them. Beginning that night, Kameya kept watch from ten o’clock at night until one in the morning, when Takuya took over until daybreak.

  While Kameya seemed to struggle on less than a full night’s sleep, Takuya took it in his stride. Working through the night in the tactical operations centre had hardened him to the extent that, if he awoke some time before beginning his shift, he didn’t hesitate to let Kameya go back to bed. Keeping watch until dawn with only an hour’s catnap hardly affected him at all. Fatigue wasn’t a problem, but the swarms of mosquitoes that appeared during the night certainly were. Together with Kameya he fashioned some bags out of cloth to cover their hands, and stitched together two hoods with small holes cut for their eyes. Their vantage point was the spot behind the metal drum used by the workers to bath in.

  Just before dawn on the fifth day after they started their vigil, from his position crouched behind the drum, resting a piece of timber on his knees, Takuya noticed someone walking along the road in his direction.

  Tiny bulbs of incandescence from the fireflies glimmered in the still night air as the person stopped in front of the yard, presumably to survey the scene before making his next move. Takuya remained motionless, only his eyes moving to follow the man as he walked off again toward the pile of building materials, just close enough now for Takuya to make out that this was no small individual. In the faint light from the stars in the clear night sky he was able to see that the man was manoeuvring a couple of steel girders on to his shoulder.

  Takuya jumped to his feet and moved quickly from his spot behind the steel drum towards the thief. The man obviously heard Takuya, for no sooner had he taken a couple of steps towards the road than he swung round and dropped the girders to the ground with a clatter. Before the thief could make another move, Takuya swung his makeshift truncheon down on to the man’s shoulder with all the force he could muster. After staggering three or four steps back towards the road, the man dropped to one knee, giving Takuya the chance to push him over, twist his arm up behind him and thrust a knee into the small of his back. The man was certainly well built. Takuya turned his head towards the house and yelled for those inside to come out and help. The man groaned slightly as he lay pressed to the ground, but showed no other sign of resistance.

  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.