prewar

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Court avoids judgment on wartime 'Yokohama Incident'

The Yokohama District Court on February 9 terminated a retrial for five people, now deceased, who were arrested and tortured for violating the pre-war Law for Public Order Maintenance without determining their guilt or innocence.

The retrial had been held at the request of the bereaved families of five journalists rounded up in the "Yokohama Incident."

The incident represents the notorious suppression of the freedom of speech in a frame-up by the Special Political Police (Tokko) during the Pacific War. The journalists and others were convicted of promoting communism.

The retrial had been held after the Tokyo High Court in March 2005 supported the request raised by Kimura Maki, the widow of the monthly "Chuo Koron" magazine editor and one of the former defendants, and four other families of deceased defendants.

The incident broke out when Tokko used Hosokawa Karoku's magazine article to assert that the magazine editors' party in Fukui Prefecture was actually a meeting held to prepare the reconstruction of the JCP. About 60 editors were rounded up on suspicion of "propagating communist ideology." Five of them were tortured to death in jail.

Even after Japan surrendered to the Allies by accepting the Potsdam Declaration, the "guilty verdict" was not revoked.

In March 2003, the last defendant died and their families took over the lawsuit.

The lawyers for the former defendants in the retrial demanded a not-guilty verdict because the incident was caused by Tokko's frame up of the defendants.

The prosecution argued that since the Public Order Maintenance Law was abolished and the former defendants' amnesty was proclaimed, the court is not entitled to judge whether they were guilty or not-guilty, and this argument was accepted by the judge.

The lawyers maintained that avoiding judgment will make it impossible for the former defendants' honor to be restored and their call for judicial compensation to be met, and that it contradicts the original purpose of the retrial.

The Tokyo High Court, in supporting the retrial, declared that it could be highly possible that former defendants' confessions were caused by Tokko's torture, and that they should be regarded as victims of mistaken judgments.

Stressing that the termination of the retrial was unjustifiable, Kimura and other family members of the former defendants and their lawyers said they will take the case to the high court.

The People's Aid and Relief Association of Japan and the League demanding State Compensation for Victims of the Public Order Maintenance Law on the same day issued a statement, stating that a "not-guilty" verdict was the only acceptable response.
-Akahata, February 10, 2006