The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [118]
“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 disobeying 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 liaison 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 defense of his country and not left to witness its humiliations. The colonel found the Japanese remained well-disciplined 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 officer 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 favorite 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.