Old torturers’ reunion

Press, 21 August 1976, Page 12

Old torturers’ reunion

Twenty Japanese will assemble today in the deserted canteen of a kimono sash factory in a leafy Tokyo suburb. Precisely at 1800 hours, they will start swilling beer and rice wine, as they have done on the third Saturday of every month since 1953.

sentenced to life, were quietly shipped out of the Philippines and freed in Tokyo. Japan surrendered 31 years ago. A quarter of a million Filipino civilians were slaughtered during the Japanese occupation, but the Muntinlupa inmates relive their wartime glory with unabated nostalgia. I asked Masayasu Itoh, a junior officer of the Bth Division, for what crime he was sentenced to hang by the Manila war tribunal.

But these former army and navy officers are not just any old soldiers on a veterans’ reunion. In 1945 they were among 117 Japanese found guilty of atrocities against civilians in the Philippines, and a gallows was erected outside Muntinlupa prison, 40 miles south of Manila.

“Torture, murder, rape ” he told me. “The Fuji Division Case.”

Seventeen Japanese were hanged. Another 40 waited for their turn, but war passions were subsiding and in 19t>3 the condemned men. with 60 more war criminals

The case involved the massacre of unarmed civilians at Los Banos in Luzon. “Command responsibility” says Itoh. denying personal responsibilitv; “Just obeving orders.”

By ROBERT XS HA MANI in the “Sunday Times,’’ London

Today’s reunion will have special cause for a prolonged toast in the traditional Japanese style of exchanging wine cups: Itoh, now in his late fifties, has just been promoted general. He is the only one among his club of old soldiers who is still on active duty. Former Lieutenant-Com-mander Ogawa, of the First Marine Battalion, downed an expensive brand of Scotch at the last reunion as he recalled the massacre of civilians in the small town of Infanta in the spring of 1945. “Commanding officer’s responsibility,” Ogawa says breezily to explain his conviction at the Manila war tribunal. At 59, Ogawa is today advisor to the president of one of Japan’s largest electric appliance companies.