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Diaries of a Japanese war criminal reveal 'how irrational war truly is,' son says
On June 19, 1945, a U.S. firebombing raid on the city of Fukuoka killed over 1,000 people and changed the course of one man's life.
The next day, Army Paymaster Kentaro Toji, grieving the loss of his mother in the attack, volunteered to execute four captured American airmen.
Convicted as a Class B/C war criminal after the war, Toji was initially sentenced to death in 1948, but later had his sentence reduced to life imprisonment and was released in 1958.
'War is a cycle of senseless victimization and perpetration,' said his third son, Katsuya Toji, 71, in an interview from Fukuoka. He spoke as he held the wartime diaries his father wrote while imprisoned at Tokyo's Sugamo Prison — extensive records totaling more than 3,000 pages.
Kentaro Toji |
Courtesy of Katsuya Toji / via Jiji
According to court documents and personal records, Kentaro Toji came across the men about to be executed on June 20, 1945, at the former Western Army Headquarters in Fukuoka as he was preparing a coffin for his mother. He volunteered to carry out the beheadings of four captured B-29 crew members, reportedly driven by grief and anger from the bombing.
Following Japan's surrender, Toji was imprisoned at Sugamo and kept a detailed diary from August 1946 to October 1952. His writings document not only the legal proceedings and daily life behind bars, but also his reflections on family and justice.
'Death by hanging! That was the sentence handed down to me,' he wrote on Dec. 29, 1948. 'It felt like I was sinking quietly into the bottom of a deep sea.'
In the same entry, he wrote that he had believed the executions had been formally sanctioned by military disciplinary procedures, and noted that orders had been given for three of the four killings. Still, he wavered between seeking a retrial and accepting his fate.
Katsuya Toji speaks during an interview in the city of Fukuoka in May as he shows the diaries his father Kentaro had written while in prison as a war criminal following World War II. |
Jiji
On Jan. 1, 1949, he wrote: 'If this is the price of war, a sacrifice for the advancement of humanity, or the result of an infinite karmic cycle, I accept it.'
When the Korean War broke out in 1950, Toji noted how even the American guards at Sugamo were being dispatched to the front. On July 14, 1950, he wrote, 'I can't bear the thought of young soldiers around the age of 20 dying one after another under North Korean fire,' before concluding simply: 'I hate war.'
In one exchange written in the diaries, a prison guard asked Toji how he had felt at the time of the executions. 'Before I volunteered, I was truly angry,' he admitted, also recounting how his wife had admonished him, saying that the executed airmen 'must have had wives and children, too.'
After his release, Toji installed Jizo statues in his garden to honor the men he had executed.
In his later years, he frequently welcomed Asian exchange students into his home and supported them. 'We caused harm to other Asian countries,' he told his son. 'That must never be forgotten.'
Toji died in 1983 at age 68. Until the end, he maintained that 'it is unjust and wrong for the victors to judge the defeated.'
'If that becomes the norm, no one will be able to surrender,' said Katsuya. 'My father's diary reveals just how irrational war truly is.'
Translated by The Japan Times
