One Man's Justice by Akira Yoshimura Read Free Book Online Page B

American affluence was starting to wane.
    After that day Takuya was never assigned to watch over the cells, but he took considerable interest in the decision about what to do with the men in them. No doubt the Army Ministry had delegated authority over the airmen because the intensified bombing attacks ruled out transporting prisoners to a central destination. This was evident from the concise wording of the order to ‘handle as you see fit’. Even so, the precise meaning of ‘as you see fit’ was unclear.
    Takuya thought back to the first raid by North American B-25 medium bombers just four short months after the start of the war. A force of sixteen enemy planes had taken off from an aircraft carrier and flown at low altitude into the Tokyo and Yokohama area to bomb and strafe targets before retreating toward China, where eight men from two planes that crash-landed near Nanchang and Ningpo had been captured by the Imperial Army. A university student at the time, Takuya remembered reading in the newspaper that the captured men had been tried by a military court on charges of carrying out bombing attacks designed to kill and wound non-combatants in urban areas, and strafing defenceless schoolchildren and fishermen. All had been found guilty as charged, and some were sentenced to death, others to terms of imprisonment. Takuya remembered seeing a photograph of the airmen wearing black hoods over their heads as they were led to their execution.
    The fact that executions had been carried out after that raid surely left little room for debate over the fate of the twenty-four prisoners now in their custody. Once the B-29s moved their base of operations to Saipan, they began to concentrate their attacks on urban areas in general, as opposed to military installations and munitions factories. The Superfortresses gradually switched their targets, dropping huge quantities of incendiary bombs on medium-sized and even smaller towns outside the Kyushu and Shikoku areas. The extent of the devastation was immense; according to reports from central headquarters, more than a hundred thousand people had already been killed and over nine hundred thousand dwellings razed tothe ground, affecting over two and a half million people. These fire raids were serious violations of the rules of war, so surely the handling of B-29 crew members would not be bound by provisions regarding the custody of normal prisoners of war.
    Processing these prisoners began with interrogating them to acquire information which might help headquarters staff in their efforts against the bombing raids, and as the officer in charge of anti-aircraft intelligence, Takuya observed the interrogations. There were general questions about the number of aircraft at the bases in Saipan, as well as about the runways and hangars, followed by more specific questions about the scale of various kinds of facilities and whether or not there were plans for expansion, and then questions about the capabilities of the B-29, its weak points, and the flight paths used to enter and leave Japanese airspace. The interrogations were carried out both individually and in groups, and the captured crew members replied to the questions posed by the interpreter, Lieutenant Shirasaka, with surprising candour. The content of their answers was consistent, and there was no indication whatsoever that they had tried to co-ordinate their approach to the interrogation. All had some signs of fear in their eyes, but every so often one of them would shrug his shoulders, casually gesture with his hands, and even relax the muscles of his face slightly with the hint of a smile.
    One nineteen-year-old crewman looked Shirasaka straight in the face and said he had taken part in twelve raids on cities such as Tokyo, Nagoya and Kobe. There was no mistaking the pride in his expression.
    When asked to describe the scene inside the aircraft after dropping the bombs and turning back over the Pacific Ocean towards