The evidence against him at his trial had clearly established that he was directly responsible for the death of over a hundred thousand slave laborers in China, and there were other crimes to do with medical experiments on prisoners.
But he had been a loving father. With his arrest, Kei's world had collapsed. The eldest son, he had been closest to his father.
The condemned men were kept in Block 5C of the prison, one to a cell. Each centrally heated cell, eight feet by five and half feet, contained a desk, a washbasin, and a toilet. A futon mattress was placed on the floor and blankets were provided. To avoid suicide, cell lights remained on and prisoners were kept under twenty-four-hour surveillance.
The executions were carried out according to the U.S. Army's regulations for such procedures.
Each prisoner was weighed in advance to determine the appropriate drop. A table of effectiveness had been determined by trial and error in the nineteenth century. General Namaka weighed a hundred and thirty pounds and would fall seven feet seven inches when the trap was sprung. Too long a fall, and his head could be torn off. Too short a drop, and he would slowly strangle to death. The objective was to snap his spinal cord and kill him almost instantly. It was not a precise science.
The condemned men's last meal was rice, chopped pickles, miso soup, and broiled fish. They drank sake. They spent their last day writing letters and praying.
Half an hour before the official time of execution, the condemned men were brought to the death house. Each man was handcuffed to two guards.
In the center of the execution chamber was a platform reached by thirteen steps. Four ropes made from one-inch manila hemp hung from the gallows above. The hangman's knot had been greased with wax. Before each prisoner ascended the steps, his handcuffs were removed and his arms pinioned to his sides with two-inch-wide body straps.
The final climb was slow. At the top, on the platform, the ankles of each prisoner were secured with a one-inch strap. The noose was then placed around the neck with the knot directly behind the left ear.
The traps were sprung, the sharp crack echoing throughout the death house and across the prison yard.
The executions took place in two groups.
General Shin Namaka was in the second group. He entered the death house at 12:19 A.M.. At 12:38, he was pronounced officially dead by the senior medical officer.
Each corpse was transported to Yokohama Municipal Crematorium, placed in an iron firebox, and incinerated. Afterward, the ashes were scattered to the winds.
The dream faded.
In its place was emptiness and despair and then a grim determination to survive and never to forget, whatever the cost.
Kei Namaka, tall, well-built, muscular from his daily workouts at the dojo, and looking a decade younger than his age, uttered a terrible, anguished cry. He fell to his knees, his eyes wet with tears, and sobbed.
He had had the dream countless times over the years.
The NamakaTower stood on the site of what had once been Sugamo Prison. The whole development, which included a hotel, aquarium, offices, and a large shopping center, was no longer called Sugamo. After an open competition, the name SunshineCity had been chosen.
Just a simple inscription on a boulder placed in a small outdoor sitting area at the foot of the NamakaTower recalled the executed.
* * * * *
When Kei and Fumio Namaka had first started their entrepreneurial activities, administration was comparatively simple.
Fumio would scout for a victim and then Kei, bigger, stronger, faster, and decidedly dumber — though far from stupid — would dot he actual deed. It was a simple system and administratively undemanding. No paperwork was required. Counting the proceeds of armed robbery and related activities could scarcely be called financial planning, and personnel management was nothing more than the two brothers agreeing between themselves.
That was no problem. The two were devoted to each other and painfully aware that they had not one else to turn to. Further, their roles were clearly defined by age and natural attributes. Kei was the official leader, man of action, and decision-maker. Fumio was the loyal second in command, the thinker, and, quickly and discreetly and in absolute privacy, and in such a manner that Kei was not really aware of the process, told Kei what decisions to make.
The Namaka brothers were a pair of ragged, street-smart hoods in the late 1940s. As he grew older, Fumio found that more and more he recalled those early postwar days.
They were the benchmark of the scale of their achievement. So much from so little; so much from virtually nothing. They were driven by desperation, for the immediate postwar period was indeed a desperate time.
Their initial capital, Fumio Namaka remembered vividly, had come from a major in the Imperial Army. It had been late January, 1949, a month after the executions. The little family was shunned by many who were fearful of the imagined wrath of the occupation forces. Mother was seriously ill. The brothers were near-starving and desperate. They were living in a bomb site, really little more than a hole in the ground with a roof made of flattened U.S. Army ration cans.
Priorities were elemental. Whereas before and during the war, people had been occupied with such issues as strategy, patriotism, social standing, and career prospects, by 1949 the issue was survival.
You did whatever you had to to make it through the day. You dressed in rags and castoffs, you slept in ruins or worse, and you ate anything you could. Pride was irrelevant. Social status was a joke. Moral standards and ethics were an abstraction.
You did what was necessary and you lived. You stood on principle and you died. You killed if you had to. After a while you got used to it and you killed because lethal force worked. It got results. It was effective.
There was a thriving trade in Japanese Imperial Army militaria. Two hundred thousand occupation troops wanted war souvenirs and several million Imperial Army veterans wanted to eat. The action came together in street markets around Tokyo, and particularly in the Ginza.
The major was of the samurai class and had been a member of the Imperial General Staff after distinguished service — initially in Manchuria and subsequently in the invasion of Burma. The latter exercise had cost him his left arm above the elbow after a British .303 bullet had shattered the bone into multiple fractures, but it had added to his chestful of medals and gained him promotion to the staff, where he was highly regarded. More medals soon followed. Promotion was a certainty, until Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the reedy voice of the Emperor, never before heard on the radio, called for surrender.
Selling his medals one by one had kept the major alive. Now, on that freezing cold day in January 1949, his medals were gone and he was down to his last item of value, the long sword, or katana, that had been in his family since the eighteenth century. It was a blade signed by Tamaki Kiyomaro. It was bought for a fraction of its true worth by one of MacArthur's bodyguards.
Inwardly, the major died a little as he sold it, but there was no choice. He and his family had to eat. Everything else of value had been sold. His wife had earned some food and a little military scrip from sleeping with members of the occupation forces, but her looks had gone and there was too much competition. They were starving. There was no other choice. He had to sell the last item of value they owned.