No. 14 My name appears in the paper

The “police on duty” put the newspaper into the cell for me. It was the Sankei Shimbun (newspaper). We were allowed to read newspapers.
Turning over the pages from the front page, I found black lines covering over the original letters with black magic marker.
“What is this?” I asked one of my roommates, an eleven-time convict.
“Maybe the article is about one of us. Peer through the paper.”
According to him, unless immediately after marking, we can see the hidden letters when I look through them in the light.
“What? What’s this?” How surprised I was! Big headlines jumped to the eye. “Leaders of JREU Arrested” “Union Forces its Defiant Member to Quit”
At that moment I got so scared that I could hardly read the paper. I didn’t want to read it. I remembered that the police said, “Reporters are gathering.” I didn’t know what to do. “I have come out in the papers!” I trembled with fear. Before my own arrest I had seen TV gossip show for amusement as affairs of other people. The moment I knew I was in the similar situations, I became scared to imagine that I could be chased about by the TV or news reporters.

No. 13 I’d like to cry!

After breakfast on the first morning at Suginami detention cell, I was worrying about my wife and son. At the same time I was gripped by the shock of my arrest.
After being arrested, everything was my first experience. Above all I got cultural shock at the lockup.
I couldn’t believe that I was in the barred cell which I had seen only on TV. I got scared whenever the police officer (we call him the “person on duty”) who watched us shouted as “Get up!” or “Wash your face!” in an imperative tone. I felt vaguely scared when I was in the community cell with criminals and also had breakfast with them. I felt I was wandering off into the world where I couldn’t go under normal circumstances.
A roll-call was one of them. Police officers made roll-calls after every breakfast and dinner. “Roll-call!” When the police officer called out the cell number and my own number, I had to reply “Yes, sir.” At first I didn’t know what to do, so I was one beat behind.
Another one was smoking time. When the time came, all streamed into the smoking room next to the lockup. I saw numbered wooden boxes with two cigarettes for each person. Two cigarettes a day were all that were allowed for one person.
In this smoking room we were allowed to clip nails and get a shave. A nail clipper had a mirror-like flat part, which we used for shaving as a mirror. I didn’t shave. That was the least to express my resistance, because “I had done nothing wrong.”
Though I was not a smoker, I was sent to the smoking room. I stood by the window and looked at the scenery out of the barred window. I saw a motor park of the Suginami Police Station. Some police cars went in and out there.
I felt an impulse to cry with anger which filled my heart. I couldn’t accept my situation. “What am I doing?” However, immediately after that, I said to myself, “Just be patient a little longer. I can go home in a couple of days.”


The widow in the middle of the picture was that of the smoking room.

No. 12 Morning at the lockup

“Get up!”
I was awakened by a loud voice. I was not aware whether I had slept or not. I felt the cold air. The upper window of the room was open.
“Good morning. Please give me guidance.”
I gave a salute in a small voice to my roommates who had been ahead of me. They began to fold up their futon. A man who looked beyond forty said to me, “Fold up yours!”
“Yes.”
“We do everything ourselves.”
“Yes.”
I quickly folded up my own futon. We carried our futon and got out of the room in turn to put it at the corner. Then I returned. Without thinking of what to do, I watched my roommates and followed them.
“Wash your face!”
We got out of the room and washed faces at the sink. I brought facial cleansing foam with me, but it was banned. So I borrowed soap. At the same time I brushed my teeth. After finishing all I returned to my cell again. Whenever we got out of the cell, some police officers watched us.
“Breakfast!”
From a little window of the cell, so-called Hinomaru-bento, rice and pickled Japanese apricot, and pickles, bean paste soup (miso soup, traditional Japanese soup) hot water were served on a rubber tray. We spread a sheet of straw mat on the floor, and put our trays on it. Our breakfast started. Maybe you know the scene in the recent film, “Still, I didn’t do it.”
However, I was not hungry. I felt no hunger as if my stomach was shrinking. Nevertheless, I ate miso soup, which was richly flavored against my expectations.After breakfast all were silent. I sat leaning against a wall and clasping my arms around my knees at a location nearest to the door.

No. 11 I felt as if I was drifting

Night went on. I did nothing wrong, so it was hardly possible for me to have a shock like “Finally they’ve found me!” I had confidence about my honest life. I felt much concerned about my parents-in-law and my own mom who were sure to worry about me.
Ignoring my will, the police arrested me, took me to the police station, examined me, jumped to the conclusion that I was a Kakumaru member and detained me. While I thought there must be a mistake, the police didn’t. No one was likely to listen to me. I was held down by brute force, and couldn’t fight back at all. I was not motivated to present my counterarguments. I just didn’t have it in me to think of the reason why I was arrested.
All that I was asked in the interrogation room were about JREU. As I was little interested in union activities then, the questions were not particularly close to me. I wondered why I was asked so relentlessly. If I wanted to have someone to ask for advice or help, I was not allowed to see anyone. I couldn’t understand at all why I was arrested by the police who, I considered, were friends of just causes.
I felt as if I was drifting and passing around on a conveyor belt which I was forced to ride. If I didn’t feel so, I couldn’t have borne what happened to me. I didn’t know where I was going. My last hope was “I can go back in a few days.” When did I fall asleep?

No. 10 Night at the lockup

I was put into the barred cell at the Suginami Police Station. It was nearly twelve midnight. Inside was not dark, as there was a light on. Other people seemed asleep, so I entered quietly.
Near the door a futon was set up for me. Maybe someone of my roommates did it. First I visited the toilet in the deepest of the cell quietly. I saw three other people there.
My futon was thin and hard. Though a large-sized air conditioner was working, it was too cold. I was terribly sleepy as I had had little sleep since the previous night. However, I was too highly strung to get to sleep. I stared at the ceiling. I had been sleeping in my own room half a day ago! What would happen to me? How did my wife and son feel when they saw me arrested. I worried about them. I wondered what they were doing. My parents-in-law might be anxious also. So might be my mom.
The police officer told me to see the prosecutor the next day.
“What is the difference between the police officer and the prosecutor?” “Why must I have such a bitter experience?” “I hope I’ll be home in a few days. I can go back soon!”
Vexation, fear or a mixture of emotions filled my heart. I felt as if I was troubled with a nightmare. Tears welled up in my eyes.

No. 9 Suginami Detention Cell

The car got to the Suginami Police Station. We went up a stairway to the third floor. There was a lockup on the floor. I was extradited to the officer of the Station.
“I will call you No.7,” said the officer. We were numbered while detained and called by numbers instead of names. From that time on my name was “No.7.”
There were cells inside a thick iron door. I went through a physical checkup such as body height and weight, and then presence of damage was ascertained. I was released from my handcuffs, and was allowed to wear only underpants. I heard that the police checked my body in order to draw a distinction between the old damage and the new one created while detained. After their check I changed into sportswear which I brought with me.
All my belongings from my house were inspected. I couldn’t bring a long towel into the room. “Only a hand towel is allowed,” the officer said, adding, “The reason is to prevent suicide.”
I was so scared in the community cell, because I was surrounded by people under suspicion. For 29 years I had lived honestly. Why should I live with them? I was thrown into the abyss of despair with feelings of loneliness and fear.

No. 8 I was worried about my family

As I wrote in No.6, after drawing up the “suspect’s statement”, the police took my pictures and detected my fingerprints in another room. It was the first time for me to be fingerprinted. I put my fingers on the machine like a copier. First, they printed every finger mark, next, open hands and then, fists (from my little finger to wrist). They worked carefully.
During the questioning, the examining officer told me “You have a visit from a lawyer, and took me to another room to meet him. He looked at a man and asked me, “Is he your private lawyer?” “Yes.” I made a guess at the answer, because I met him for the first time then.
The lawyer said, “JREU asked me to see you,” adding, “Don’t worry. Your wife is all right. JREU will take good care of her. Is there anything you have worried about?”
“About my family.”
Though he said my wife was all right, I couldn’t forget her pallid face when I was taken with handcuffs. I was really anxious about my wife. The question finished around eleven o’clock at night. The officer said, “You are going to Suginami Police Station.” I descended on the elevator with my hands cuffed and got in the car. I sat in the middle of the backseat with police officers on my both sides, and other two in the driving seat and the front seat. A car with five people started running into a nighttime street of Tokyo.

No. 7 What I was inquired in the interrogation room

When I saw my coworker through the door of the interrogation room, I was seized with an uneasy atmosphere like dark clouds spreading over the head for a moment.
At any rate, it was incredible painful to undergo an examination. The police came one after another to the room to ask the similar questions.
“Where is the head office of JREU?”
“I don’t know.”
“You liar!”
“No. I’ve never been there.”
“How many memberships are there in JREU?”
I wondered why he asked me such a question. I didn’t know if the number of union membership was connected to my arrest!
“Do you know Mr. Matsuzaki?” Mr. Matsuzaki is a founding president of JREU.
“I’ve never talked to him personally. I have only listened to his lecture at the meeting once.”
“What is the Youth Organization of JREU?”
In this way they repeated the same questions. As I thought I would be able to go back home in a few days at that time, I obediently responded to all that I was asked.
I was asked, “Golf is your favorite sport, isn’t it?” I guessed that the police saw my golf bag in my room while searching.
“How many swings?”
“About 90.”
“You are a good golfer!”
As I was a train driver, I was asked about the train. For example, I was asked, “Why do the cars go back?”
During interrogation, I was asked, “Do you want something to drink?” I said, “No.” I don’t remember what I ate as dinner. I was so tired because I answered the same questions by interrogators who came by turns. I thought I was promised to go back to my family in return for best cooperation with the interrogators.

No.6 I’m not a Kakumaru member

It seemed to be lunch time. Two rolls of bread and sweet juice was served. I drank juice, but bread didn’t pass my lips.
“Now it’s time to start investigation.”
There were two interrogators. I noticed that they were different from those who had come to my house. The detectives offered a “List of criminal facts” to me. A total of 15 alleged criminal facts were listed with dates and locations. In the seven cases of them I found my name. I thought, “So many names of mine!”
I read the first description, but it was far beyond my recollection. I was believed to be an assailant to Mr. Y. How could I inflict pain on my fellow? As Mr. Y. was one of my coworkers, I saw him every time. If I was asked when I saw him, it was difficult for me to answer the question.
“Are you a Kakumaru member?” asked one of the detectives.
“No!” I answered with anger.
I am not its member from the beginning. I have never written an application for admission. The Kakumaru faction is an extremists’ group, but that’s all I knew. I felt displeased to be assumed that I was a Kakumaru member.
Then the detective wrote a “suspect’s statement” whose contents were “I wasn’t involved in what the interrogator had explained,” and “I’d like to call a legal advisor of the union.” I didn’t think of these contents. When the interrogator asked me if I wanted to call a lawyer, I said, “Yes, please. Then he wrote it in the statement. To say the truth, I didn’t know what a legal advisor of the union meant, and I secretly asked myself what that was.
I was ordered to sign and seal the document with my finger. I used my left forefinger and ink-pad. I did as told, but I didn’t know it would matter in the trial later. At that time I didn’t hesitate to seal the document as I stamped my private seal when I received a home-delivered parcel. Without explanation of its importance in the trial, the interrogator ordered me to do so.
I didn’t ask every detail because I was messed-up. I felt as if I had been walking on air. I thought it was nightmare for me to be cuffed before my wife and son. It seemed to me that I was drifting around.
After writing the statement, the interrogator engaged in chitchat. I found it was deeply unpleasant to be there with him. I repeated to ask me in my mind why I needed to be there. I was sitting on the seat situated away from the door, and the detector sat near the door, which was a little open. Then I got a fleeting view of my elder coworker through the gap. “Is that him? Why? What has happened?”

No.5 Interrogation room

Franked by the police officer, I was sitting in the car. The car got off the motor-way. “We are arriving soon. So I’ll cuff you,” said one of them. The handcuffs were heavy and cold.
“Oguro, reporters are gathering,” said the officer sitting on the assistant driver’s seat. He was talking with someone over his mobile phone.
“Oh, no!”
When I heard the word “reporter”, I soon visualized TV shows that covered a wide variety of topics. The idea of a rush of TV cameras came into my mind. I imagined the scene where reporters were confronting me with microphones and mobbed me. My mind was occupied by letters “Ka-ku-ma-ru” which I had seen in the warrant to search a house. “Am I a member of Kakumaru? Do the media come to report on the arrest of the Kakumaru member?” My car was running around the same place. It seemed that the police were taking stock of the situation.
The police officer sitting on my left took off his own jacket and said, “Wear this, because there are reporters.” I accepted it. Now that I think about it, I behaved as if I had been a true culprit. In addition, I don’t know if the media were there. I wonder if the reporters come to collect such a news material even though Kakumaru members are arrested. However, at that time I didn’t have such doubts.
The car arrived at an underground motor park. We went up from there by a small elevator. I came to a place like a school with a beige wall. But the building was different from schools. It had a cold and dull atmosphere.
My brain stopped working. I felt unsteady. I had almost no room to think about anything. From the very beginning I did nothing to be considered a crime. I didn’t have a feeling like “Finally the police found me.” Instead I was unsteady from severe shock caused by the fact that I was arrested. I repeated in my mind “I will be released in a few days!” In a few days! That was my only comfort.
After getting out of the lift, we walked to the left, then turned right at the end of the corridor and once again turned right. I saw silver-colored duralumin doors in a row. I entered one of them. The room was as small as a four-tatami (mat) room, and was a bleak room with only a desk and chairs. I knew this was an interrogation room. I was ordered to sit down on the chair far from the door.

No.4 It was a drizzling, cold day.

The police officer removed handcuffs when I got out of my house. I don’t know the reason. My house is on the 4th floor of the company condominium. As I went down to the 1st floor, I saw an acquainted woman living close to us. I didn’t want her to see me. I asked the police officer and went back to my house on the 4th floor. My wife was still there, but she couldn’t afford to say a word. I went out of the condominium at the proper time after the woman went away. The sky was gray, and it was drizzling and cold. In addition to the groundless arrest, I was further afflicted by the gloomy weather.
I was walking franked by policemen. Another officer walked before me. I hate anyone to see me walking with the police in handcuffs. I didn’t like it. I really hate it. I was looking down as I walked. After walking nearly 200m, I saw a silver sedan on the road. I got in the car. I sat on the backseat. Four police officers were with me, on the driver’s seat, on the assistant driver’s seat and on both sides of me. I had seen a total of six officers at the beginning, but in the car there were four of them.
“My car” entered the Metropolitan Expressway Omiya Line from local way. I had been uncuffed since leaving home. The officer repeated, “We should have handcuffed on you.” Now I come to think of it, I may have been considered by the police to know nothing at all because I didn’t resist the police on the occasion of domiciliary search. So I was released from my handcuffs.
I saw the windshield wipers brush away raindrops which hit the windscreen. Sitting in the center of the backseat, I was looking at a monotonous move of the wipers.

This is the place where I was put into the car. You can see a manhole on the yellow line of the road. A police car stopped ahead. After I got in, the cars turned right at the end of the road. This is a picture as of now. In those days there was a wire netting on the right side like the one you can see on the left, and the road looked like a silent back street. My condominium was once on the right, and then it was removed. [You can enlarge the picture by clicking.]

No.3 Handcuffs

“We arrest you,” the police officer said. However I couldn’t understand.
“Is that me? Am I a suspect?”
I felt as if had been dreaming a dream of nightmare. It was difficult to understand what the matter was going. My mind went blank. At the same time I was violently-disturbed.
But it was unimaginable for me to resist because, as I wrote yesterday, I thought the police was a friend of just causes. I noticed I was in a flood of a flashlight from the right hand. It was another police officer. The flash was so uncommon for my 2 year-old son that he innocently asked him, “What’s this?” “It’s a camera,” answered the officer.
“Are you ready to leave? We are taking you.”
“How long will it take?”
“A couple of days.”
“I can come back in only a few days,” I accepted his words. I was upset due to a baseless arrest at that time, but I calmed myself to hear this.
“How much money is needed?” I asked.
“Twenty-thirty thousand yen is good enough.”
As the day was right after my pay day, I had such amount in my wallet. When I was preparing for departure, my mobile phone started ringing. The police officer stopped me from answering the call. Later, after release on bail, the telephone message informed me that they were from my coworkers. I heard their repeated voices, “It’s an emergency, Oguro-san.” “What are you doing? Why don’t you answer me?” My friends thought I had gone out to have a fun because I took a paid holiday on 1 November. Later I told my coworkers that it was me who was in trouble then. No one could imagine what was going on with me. And little did I consider that my comrades were also arrested.
When I got ready and was hauled by the police, the officer said, “I’ll clap handcuffs on you, OK?” In the police dramas I had seen on TV, the police officer snap handcuffs violently with a big noise. It was different. He handcuffed my right wrist, and then, left wrist gently. However they were so heavy. I was surprised to find them terribly heavy.
“Why am I handcuffed?” I was seized by a depressed feeling which was as heavy as lead due to the weight of the handcuffs and pressure. In my life till now, I have never experienced such a feeling. At that time I was so full of my own affairs that I couldn’t think much of my wife and little son who were watching an entire scene. When I think back, I always feel sorry for them as her husband and his father.I got out, speaking to my wife, ”I’ll eat pork cutlet on rice before coming back.” But my wife said nothing. Her face looked pale.

No.2 Arrest

The first thing I thought when the police came to my house was that I would work with them. In the dramas I had seen on TV such as “Bark toward the Sun” or “The Western Police”, I had an image of the white-hat police as an actor Yujiro Ishihara performed. I thought it was no doubt an obligation of a citizen to help them. And I’m ashamed to say it, but the union meant nothing to me then. On the day of the union executive meeting, I went to play in the Tokyo Disney Land. Every time when I attended the meeting, I didn’t note down, and I threw away the documents. I didn’t dedicate myself to union activities.
The police officers who came into my house asked me, “Where is your datebook?” or “Where is your mobile phone?” I handed them to the officers saying “Here it is.” My phone was an old type with a sticker of Disney characters.
The domiciliary search was carried out first in “the room with a TV set”, next the “bedroom” and then the “third room”. They requested my presence everywhere. The officers asked me, “We want to see here,” or “Can we examine this?” Every time I answered “Yes”. One of the officers wore white gloves and took photos.
The time to be interviewed for enrollment was coming. Parent and child had to go together. We got a numbered ticket after waiting through cold night. We couldn’t cancel the interview. So I asked.
“It is time to go to the kindergarten for interview.”
“No. Wait here. You need to stay here.”
“How about my wife and son?”
“They can go.”
After that I saw them off, saying, “Sorry.” After some time they came back. When I asked my wife how the interview was going, my wife said, “We did it successfully.” I was relieved to hear that.
Finally the police officer made a catalog of confiscated goods. He confirmed one by one at the table. He seized my secret money of 856.570 yen which I had saved before marriage. 35 items were seized. In the trials afterwards they were not given in evidence. All were useless for the police. The officer said, “I’ve finished writing.” Then standing up from the table, the police officer added, “There is one more paper there. Could you come here?”
“What is it?” I stood in front of the police officer. He pulled another paper from his breast pocket and opened it, saying, “Warrant of arrest has been issued. We will arrest you.”

This is my datebook. “Kindergarten” was written as a schedule of 1 November. However, “arrest” was not there. Paper of the book was tainted by red color. Maybe that was a kind of chemicals used for detecting my fingerprint. That must be changed back.

No.1 On the morning of 1 November, 2002

I was dozing on the morning of 1 November 2002 in my bed room when I heard the chime of my entrance. I heard my wife answering, “Yes”.
After a while my wife came to me and said, “The police are at the door.”
I was going to the kindergarten to submit a written application for my son on that day. My wife and I had taken our turn lining up in front of the kindergarten since the previous night because the application would be accepted in the order of arrival.
On the previous day I ran the JR Keihin-Tohoku line trains. I came to work at 9:37, left Minami-Urawa at 10:12 and returned there at 17:56 after driving about 215 km. The clock-out time was 18:24. This service is called in the worksite “diagram 11” or “schedule 11”.
I came home around 19:00 on 31 October. As my wife was waiting in line in front of the kindergarten, I went there to get my son home for dinner. Then I switched with her. Thanks to her effort our number was No.4. I remember it was very cold that night and I stood in line putting on warm clothes. As morning dawned, people from the kindergarten gave us numbered tickets, so I went home to sleep.
When I was waiting in front of the kindergarten, I heard some young men making noise. So when I learned that the police came, at first I thought they came to investigate something about the young men.
I went to see the police at the entrance in a jersey. I saw a man wearing a jacket when I opened the door a little.
“What has happened?”
“Do you know Mr. Y?”
Mr. Y is my coworker. “Yes.”
“I have a warrant to search a house. Will you have a look?”
I received the paper named warrant to search a house and looked at it. It was the first time for me to look at the warrant. I had never thought that I could have a chance to see such a paper. Then I found the words such as “Kakumaru member” (Kakumaru is a name of a faction which is known as a group of extremely leftists in Japan), a name “Y”, “East Japan Railway Workers’ Union (JREU) and my own name. What happened? I didn’t know what was what. I felt my brains muddled due to lack of sleep from the night earlier. Saying “What?”, I returned the “warrant” and opened the door. I saw six or more men standing outside the door.