Free One Man's Justice by Akira Yoshimura Page A

impassioned voice, ‘It’s on.’
    At Takuya’s puzzled look, the lieutenant blurted out that eight of the prisoners in the holding-cells were to be executed, and that this was to be carried out immediately in the courtyard of what used to be a girls’ high school, immediately behind the headquarters complex. Takuya was told that the prisoners were to be decapitated, and that headquarters staff with considerable experience in kendo had already been selected. Takuya was to arrange for two of his subordinates to be made available to participate in the executions.
    Takuya nodded his understanding and beckoned the two sergeant-majors sitting on the other side of the room to come over to his desk. When he told them they would be taking part in the executions the colour drained from their faces and a look of trepidation came into their eyes.
    â€˜One good clean blow. Don’t let us down,’ growled Takuya.
    The two men stood stiffly at attention as they barked their reply.
    They were men with much longer service records than his, including combat experience at the front, and Takuya could not comprehend how they had the gall to show even a trace of apprehension at the mention of the executions. A rumour that one of the men had reputedly succeeded in beheading two Chinese prisoners with successive blowsmade their attitude all the more enraging. Possibly their stint at office work on the home front had dulled the mental hardness they would have honed on the battlefield.
    Takuya watched as they put on their service caps, picked up their swords and left the room. By now a weather report that rain had started to fall in southern Kyushu had arrived. No sightings of any enemy aircraft were reported. Takuya’s subordinates worked away collating the mountain of damage reports received from the city.
    Around two o’clock the door opened and the two sergeant-majors walked in, one after the other. Takuya searched their faces for a hint of emotion. They were both pale but there was a strangely radiant look in their eyes. Their brows glistened with sweat as though they had come from vigorous exercise, and a tangible heat emanated from their bodies.
    They stepped toward Takuya’s desk and in an animated voice one reported, ‘Duties completed, sir.’
    â€˜How was it? Did all go well?’ asked Takuya.
    â€˜Yes, sir. We each executed one prisoner,’ replied one of them, exhilaration lingering in his eyes.
    â€˜Well done,’ said Takuya, nodding his approval. The two soldiers returned to their desks and wiped their brows with handkerchiefs.
    Takuya heard that four regular officers and three noncommissioned officers had taken part in the executions that day, including Lieutenant Howa Kotaro of the accounts department, the only man who had volunteered. A graduate of Tokyo University, Howa was a mild-mannered man known for writing beautiful tanka poetry. That morninghe had hurried down through the smouldering ruins of the Koojiya-machi area of Fukuoka to the house where his mother lived. It had burnt to the ground, so he waited for his mother to return from wherever she might have sheltered during the air raid. Casting his eyes over the sheets of roofing iron scattered across the ruins at the end of the little alleyway, he saw a black object resembling a scorched piece of timber. When he looked more closely and saw the gold-capped teeth showing from the gaping, burnt hole that had once been a mouth, he realised that this was the charred corpse of his mother. He wrapped her body in a piece of singed straw matting and asked a neighbour to look after it until he could come back to give her a proper funeral. Howa returned to headquarters and began working silently on his mother’s coffin. Those attached to the tactical operations centre were in charge of organising the executions, but when Howa heard that the American airmen were to be killed, the request he made to the staff officer in charge