A Twist in the Tale (16 page)

However, the
Japanese High Command sent a new Number Two to the camp, a Lieutenant
Osawa
, who quickly became known as “The Devil” since he
perpetrated atrocities that made the Undertaker and the Pig look like church
fete
organisers
.

As the months
passed the Colonel and the commandant’s mutual respect grew. Sakata even
confided to his English prisoner that he had requested that he be sent to the
front line and join the real war. “And if,” the Major added, “the High Command
grants my request, there will be only two NCOs I would want to accompany me.”

Colonel Moore
knew the Major had Sweet and Sour Pork in mind, and was fearful what might
become of his men if the only three Japanese he could work with were posted
back to active duties to leave Lieutenant
Osawa
in
command of the camp.

Colonel Moore
realised
that something quite extraordinary must have taken
place for Major Sakata to come to his hut, because he had never done so before.
The Colonel put his bowl of rice back down on the table and asked the three
Allied officers who were sharing breakfast with him to wait outside.

The Major stood
to attention and saluted.

The Colonel
pushed himself to his full six feet, returned the salute and stared down in-to
Sakata’s eyes.

“The war is
over,” said the Japanese officer.

For a brief
moment Moore feared the worst.

“Japan has
surrendered unconditionally.

You, sir,”
Sakata said quietly, “are now in command of the camp.”

The Colonel
immediately ordered all Japanese officers to be placed under arrest in the
commandant’s quarters. While his orders were being carried out he personally
went in search of The Devil. Moore marched across the parade ground and headed
towards the officers’ quarters. He located the second-in-command’s hut, walked
up the steps and threw open
Osawa’s
door. The sight
that met the new commandant’s eyes was one he would never forget. The Colonel
had read of ceremonial hara-kiri without any real idea of what the final act
consisted. Lieutenant
Osawa
must have cut himself a
hundred times before he eventually died. The blood, the stench and the sight of
the mutilated body would have caused a
Gurkha
to be
sick.

Only the head
was there to confirm that the remains had once belonged to a human being.

The Colonel
ordered
Osawa
to be buried outside the gates of the
camp.

When the
surrender of Japan was finally signed on board the US Missouri in Tokyo Bay,
all at
Tonchan
POW camp listened to the ceremony on
the single camp radio. Colonel Moore then called a full parade on the camp
square. For the first time in two and a half years he wore his dress uniform
which made him look like a
pierrot
who had turned up at a formal party. He accepted the Japanese flag of surrender
from Major Sakata on behalf of the Allies,
then
made
the defeated enemy raise the American and British flags to the sound of both
national anthems played in turn by Sergeant Hawke on his mouth-organ.

The Colonel
then held a short service of thanksgiving which he conducted in the presence of
all the Allied and Japanese soldiers.

Once command
had changed hands Colonel Moore waited as week followed pointless week for news
that he would be sent home.

Many of his men
had been given their orders to start the ten-thousand-mile journey back to
England via Bangkok and Calcutta, but no such orders came for the Colonel and
he waited in vain to be sent his repatriation papers.

Then, in
January 1946, a smartly dressed young Guards officer arrived at the camp with
orders to see the Colonel. He was conducted to the commandant’s office and
saluted before shaking hands. Richard Moore stared at the young captain who,
from his healthy complexion, had obviously arrived in the Far East long after
the Japanese had surrendered. The captain handed over a letter to the Colonel.

“Home at last,”
said the older man breezily, as he ripped open the envelope, only to discover
that it would be years before he could hope to exchange the paddy fields of
Tonchan
for the green fields of Lincolnshire.

The letter
requested that the Colonel travel to Tokyo and represent Britain on the
forthcoming war tribunal which was to be conducted in the Japanese capital.
Captain Ross of the
Coldstream
Guards would take over
his command at
Tonchan
.

The tribunal
was to consist of twelve officers under the chairmanship of General Matthew
Tomkins. Moore was to be the sole British representative and was to report
directly to the General, “as soon as you find it convenient”. Further details
would be supplied to him on his arrival in Tokyo. The letter ended: “If for any
reason you should require my help in your deliberations, do not hesitate to
contact me personally.” There followed the signature of Clement Attlee.

Staff officers
are not in the habit of disobey-
ing
Prime Ministers,
so the Colonel resigned himself to a prolonged stay in Japan.

It took several
months to set up the tribunal and during that time Colonel Moore continued
supervising the return of British troops to their homeland. The paperwork was
endless and some of the men under his command were so frail that he found it
necessary to build them up spiritually as well as physically before he could
put them on boats to their various destinations. Some died long after the
declaration of surrender had been ratified.

During this
period of waiting, Colonel Moore used Major Sakata and the two NCOs in whom he
had placed so much trust, Sergeant
Akida
and Corporal
Sushi, as his
liais
-on officers. This sudden change
of command did not affect the relationship between the two senior officers,
although Sakata admitted to the Colonel that he wished he had been killed in
the
defence
of his country and not left to witness
its humiliations. The Colonel found the Japanese remained well-dis-
ciplined
while they waited to learn their fate, and most of
them assumed death
was
the natural consequence of
defeat.

The war
tribunal held its first plenary session in Tokyo on April 19th, 1946. General
Tomkins took over the fifth floor of the old Imperial Courthouse in the Ginza
quarter of Tokyo – one of the few buildings that had survived the war intact.
Tomkins, a squat, short-tempered man who was described by his own staff officer
as a “pen-pusher from the Pentagon”, arrived in Tokyo only a week before he
began his first deliberations. The only rat-a-tat-tat this General had ever
heard, the staff
offficer
freely admitted to Colonel
Moore, had come from the typewriter in his secretary’s office. However, when it
came to those on trial the General was in no doubt as to where the guilt lay
and how the guilty should be punished.

“Hang every one
of the little slit-eyed, yellow bastards,” turned out to be one of Tomkins’s
favourite
expressions.

Seated round a
table in an old courtroom, the twelve-man tribunal conducted their
deliberations. It was clear from the opening session that the General had no
intention of considering “extenuating circumstances”, “past record” or
“humanitarian grounds”. As the Colonel listened to Tomkins’s views he began to
fear for the lives of any innocent member of the armed forces who was brought
in front of the General.

- The Colonel
quickly identified four Americans from the tribunal who, like himself, did not
always concur with the General’s sweeping judgments. Two were lawyers and the
other two had been fighting soldiers recently involved in combat duty. The five
men began to work together to counteract the General’s most prejudiced
decisions. During the following weeks they were able to persuade one or two
others around the table to commute the sentences of hanging to life
imprisonment for several Japanese who had been condemned for crimes they could
not possibly have committed.

As each such
case was debated, General Tomkins left the five men in no doubt as to his
contempt for their views. “Goddam Nip
sympathisers
,”
he often suggested, and not always under his breath. As the General still held
sway over the twelve-man tribunal, the Colonel’s successes turned out to be few
in number.

When the time
came to determine the fate of those who had been in command of the POW camp at
Tonchan
, the General demanded mass hanging for every
Japanese officer involved without even the presence of a proper trial. He
showed no surprise when the usual five tribunal members raised their voices in
protest. Colonel Moore spoke
elo-quently
of having
been a prisoner at
Tonchan
and petitioned in the
defence
of Major Sakata, Sergeant
Akida
and Corporal Sushi.

He attempted to ex- plain why hanging them would in its own way be
as barbaric as any atrocity carried out by the Japanese.
He insisted
their sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment. The General yawned
throughout the Colonel’s remarks and, once Moore had completed his case, made
no attempt to justify his position but simply called for a vote. To the
General’s surprise, the result was six-all; an American lawyer who previously
had sided with the General raised his hand to join the Colonel’s five. Without
hesitation the General threw his casting vote in
favour
of the gallows. Tomkins leered down the table at Moore and said, “Time for
lunch, I think, gentlemen. I don’t know about you but I’m famished. And no one
can say that this time we didn’t give the little yellow bastards a fair
hearing.”

Colonel Moore
rose from his place and without offering an opinion left the room.

He ran down the
steps of the courthouse and instructed his driver to take him to British HQ in
the
centre
of the city as quickly as possible. The
short journey took them some time because of the melee of people that were
always thronging the streets night and day. Once the Colonel arrived at his
office he asked his secretary to place a call through to England. While she was
carrying out his order Moore went to his green cabinet and thumbed through
several files until he reached the one marked “Personal”. He opened it and fished
out the letter. He wanted to be certain that he had remembered the sentence
accurately . . .

“If for any
reason you should require my help in your deliberations, do not hesitate to
contact me personally.”

“He’s coming to
the phone, sir,” the secretary said nervously. The Colonel walked over to the
phone and waited. He found himself-standing to attention when he heard the
gentle, cultivated voice ask, “Is that you, Colonel?” It took Richard Moore
less than ten minutes to explain the problem he faced and obtain the authority
he needed.

Immediately he
had completed his conversation he returned to the tribunal
headquar-ters
.
He marched straight back into the conference room just as General Tomkins was
settling down in his chair to start the afternoon proceedings.

The Colonel was
the first to rise from his place when the General declared the tribunal to be
in session. “I wonder if I might be allowed to open with a statement?” he
requested.

“Be my guest,”
said Tomkins. “But make it brief. We’ve got a lot more of these Japs to get
through yet.”

Colonel Moore
looked around the table at the other eleven men.

“Gentlemen,” he
began. “I hereby resign my position as the British representative on this
commission.”

General Tomkins
was unable to stifle a smile.

“I do it,” the
Colonel continued, “reluctantly, but with the backing of my Prime Minister, to
whom I spoke only a few moments ago.” At this piece of information Tomkins’s
smile was replaced by a frown. “I shall be returning to England in order to
make a full report to
Mr
Attlee and the British
Cabinet on the manner in which this tribunal is being conducted.”

“Now
look here, sonny
,” began the General.

“You can’t-”

“I can, sir,
and I will. Unlike you, I am unwilling to have the blood of innocent soldiers
on my hands for the rest of my life.”

“Now look here,
sonny,” the General repeated. “Let’s at least talk this through before you do
anything you might regret.”

There was no
break for the rest of that day, and by late afternoon Major Sakata, Sergeant
Akida
and Corporal Sushi had had their sentences commuted
to life imprisonment.

Within a month,
General Tomkins had been recalled by the Pentagon to be replaced by a
distinguished American marine who had been decorated in combat during the First
World War.

In the weeks
that followed the new appointment the death sentences of two hundred and twenty
nine Japanese prisoners of war were commuted.

Colonel Moore
returned to Lincolnshire on November 11th, 1948, having had enough of the
realities of war and the hypocrisies of peace.

Just under two
years later Richard Moore took holy orders and became a parish priest in the
sleepy hamlet of
Weddlebeach
, in Suffolk. He enjoyed
his calling and although he rarely mentioned his wartime experiences to his
parishioners he often thought of his days in Japan.

“Blessed are
the peacemakers for they shall . . .” the vicar began his sermon from the
pulpit one Palm Sunday morning in the early 1960s, but he failed to complete
the sentence.

His
parishioners looked up anxiously only to see that a broad smile had spread
across the vicar’s face as he gazed down at someone seated in the third row.