[On March 27, 2014, Iwao Hakamada was released from the Tokyo Detention House. He was granted a retrial based on new evidence that would prove his innocence.]
[By then, he had already spent 47 years 7 months and 9 days behind bars.]
And now he's free.
He's now leaving Tokyo Detention House in a silver van.
We always believed Iwao was innocent.
Even if he were to be executed,
we always trusted Iwao and believed he was innocent.
I always knew in my heart that he was innocent.
The death penalty still exists in Japan,
which means that many people still believe that criminals deserve to die.
I think that we need to take this opportunity to re-examine
the origins of this belief within ourselves.
Their reasons were shoddy,
but it was what the bereaved wanted to hear.
All I could do was just sit there and take it in silence.
This is Iwao.
And this is me here.
My second oldest brother.
And my second-oldest sister.
My oldest brother wasn't there for this photo.
He was off having fun somewhere so we couldn't get him in the shot.
We were born and raised near Lake Hamanako (in Shizuoka).
That was back in the peaceful times before the war.
My family owned a boat.
Every Sunday we would take it out,
and my father would fish while my mother caught shellfish.
Meanwhile, us kids would play in the water. That's how we spent our summers.
Before the war started,
some B-29s came out on reconnaisance.
One of the ladies from the neighborhood came to tell us that those were the B-29 bombers.
So, we climbed up on the roof and watched the B-29s fly over.
Iwao followed me up there.
The two of us sat straddling the top of the roof,
and watched the planes.
Iwao was the youngest.
He was very quiet as a child.
We're only 3 years apart. I was the second youngest.
Our older siblings doted on us both.
He started boxing in his teens.
After that, he went pro.
Probably at the advice of our older brother.
I think he fought for around 10 years.
But he had a problem with his leg.
So he took a break.
During that time, he worked at the Kogane miso factory.
Where the incident took place.
This was the scene of the crime.
The houses to the left and right are the same as they were back then.
There have been a few alterations to the exteriors, but the actual buildings are the same.
But the house in the middle, the scene of the crime, was burnt down in a fire.
On June 30, 1966,
four members of the family of one of the directors, or managers,
of the company where Mr. Hakamada worked were murdered.
Mr. Hakamada was living in Shimizu around 2 years before the murders took place.
Someone introduced him to Kogane Miso,
a miso factory in the area, and he began working there.
I've heard, however, that he still wanted to be a boxer, and kept up with his training.
This is the area where the bodies of the mother and son were found.
And then over here...
Over here, in a room with straw mat flooring,
they found the body of the daughter.
And then finally, over by that back door,
they found the body of the father.
These murders took place in a residential neighborhood that gets very quiet at night.
The type of place where people would surely notice if something happened.
But somehow no one noticed,
and four people were murdered one after another.
That's why the police thought the killer must be someone with great physical strength.
Someone who has been trained to fight. A professional boxer like Mr. Hakamada, for example.
This assumption led the police to view Mr. Hakamada as their prime suspect.
When I saw in the newspaper that they had arrested someone whose name began with an H,
when they said that this person was the culprit,
I was shocked. My shoulders just slumped to the ground.
I immediately rushed back to our parents' home in Hamakita.
Our family knew he couldn't have committed that crime.
But that's what the news was saying.
So it was difficult for us to tell everyone that they were wrong.
We decided to just keep quiet.
We kept our lips sealed.
50 years ago, the factory extended from where these buildings stand now
to that area over there.
The offices were located above the factory.
And over to the left from where we stand...
From around this point, there was a big door that led into the factory.
Stepping through there would take you into the main area of the factory.
According to the confession that the police forced out of Mr. Hakamada,
he left the factory dormitory in his pajamas.
He put a knife in the pants of his pajamas.
Then he came down here to the entrance of the warehouse.
A smaller side door was built into the big doors of the warehouse.
So he passed through that door.
His pajamas were white,
and they used to have raincoats stored in the corner over here,
so he grabbed one and put it over his pajamas.
He then crossed the train tracks.
He walked across diagonally that way.
See the gate over there with trees to the right of it?
He climbed one of the trees, and...
You can only see the wall of the shed, but back then there was a roof.
He climbed onto the roof and walked along it,
before climbing down in the garden area between the shed and the main house.
That's the confession they forced out of him.
Then, after the crime was committed,
he came out through one of the doors,
went back to the factory, and filled a bucket with oil.
Then he went back to the house, set it on fire, and came back out.
The rest of his confession goes that he then hid in his room or somewhere.
You were hitting on your manager's wife, weren't you?
[August 21 7 hours 5 mins]
For 23 days,
Mr. Hakamada was interrogated for an average of 12 hours a day.
Roughly 20 days after he was arrested,
he finally said that he committed the crime.
Don't give me that look.
There were several tanks from over here to that corner over there.
Four... no, five, I think.
Tank No. 1 was right around here.
Tank No. 1 is where they discovered the five articles of clothing.
This is where Tank No. 1 was located.
[1 year after Mr. Hakamada was arrested, 5 pieces of bloodstained clothing were discovered inside one of the tanks of miso at the factory where he worked.]
[The pajamas that he said he had been wearing at the scene of the crime in his original confession were removed from the investigation, and the 5 pieces of clothing became new evidence.]
[In 2009, Mr. Hakamada's supporters pointed out that the discoloration of the clothing didn't match the period of time they were supposedly hidden in the miso - a strong indication that the evidence was forged.]
Iwao came back home to Hamakita around three days after the murders were committed
I remember the way he was back then.
If, for example, someone just killed four people,
there's no way they could go around acting the same as usual.
But Iwao was the same as always when he visited.
[On September 11, 1968, Mr. Hakamada was sentenced to death. The clothing found inside the miso tank was the decisive evidence in his sentencing. Through numerous appeals, Mr. Hakamada and his family were able to narrowly prevent his sentence from being carried out.]
This is a retracing of my actions that night.
It includes explanations too.
The police made me mark where I was.
In Japan, there are four instances of death row inmates being found innocent after a retrial.
The first such case was that of Sakae Menda.
The crime he was charged with took place back in the 40s, right after the end of the war.
Pretty much everyone who experienced the war were in jail.
And in fact, many of them were on death row.
They were feeding me loaded questions,
and made a confession statement out of it.
They knew the details of the crime,
but I didn't.
I was just an uneducated kid from the country who had never been arrested before.
So having to deal with the police like that...
I was at the perfect age to be absolutely terrified of them.
[On December 30, 1948, a 76-year-old priest and his wife were brutally murdered. Despite having an alibi for the time of the murder, Sakae Menda was charged with the crime and forced to confess by the police.]
As it turns out, Mr. Menda happened to be with a woman,
right when the family was being murdered.
But he had made a bad name for himself in the area.
He was a bit of a troublemaker, so people had their eyes on him.
The police weren't having any luck finding a culprit,
so they arrested Mr. Menda as a "person of interest."
Mr. Menda told them that he was with a woman that day, that he had an alibi,
but after an extremely harsh interrogation by the police, he apparently confessed to the crime.
They did horrible things to me, and then I made my coffession statement.
The old laws were still in place when I was arrested.
It was right when they were making the transition to the new laws.
The old laws were still in effect,
so they treated me according to the old ways, but the actual legislation was new.
I think it was in 1949 that the Criminal Indemnity Law came about.
The crime I was being charged with occurred on December 29, 1948.
The picked me up on January 10, 1949, I think... Or the 14th or 15th.
They did a lot of horrible things to me.
There are no lawyers present during police interrogations.
Even if the suspect has a lawyer,
they won't be in the interrogation room.
The suspects are completely on their own during questioning.
A very large amount of people end up confessing during the 23 day holding period.
This applies to pretty much all criminal cases.
Currently in Japan, inmates on death row are only informed of their execution
on the actual day of the execution.
Executions normally take place in the morning,
so they are informed that their time has come just a few hours before they are to be executed.
This means that everyone on death row spends their mornings in terror.
They step out into the hallway from their room.
When they say their farewells to everyone,
they generally all say the same thing.
"I'm on my way."
"Thanks for everything."
"I wish you well."
I'm going on ahead.
Take care, everyone.
Some people shake hands with everyone through the food tray slot.
They clasp your hands repeatedly and say,
"Take care, take care, take care."
Iwao said, "There was an execution yesterday."
"It was the guy in the cell next door."
"He told everyone to take care. Everyone is really depressed."
That's when his mind started to slip.
It was the fear of never knowing when he might be executed.
As a means of mental escape, Iwao began deliberately telling himself things like,
"This isn't a prison. The prison is gone."
"I'm the warden."
He started having all these delusions and saying crazy things.
The chamber consists of two floors.
Back under the old laws from 1873, they used gallows.
But now they use a two story setup where the prisoner drops down to the floor below.
The prisoners enter from the second floor.
Then the floor controlled by the executioner drops away,
and they fall through and die.
Down below is an observation room where the prisoner can be seen after they've fallen through the hatch.
That room is where the public prosecutors and warden will be.
There's also a doctor in the room that the prisoner drops into,
to confirm that the execution has been successful.
That's how the procedure goes.
There are also other prison guards on hand to help.
First, there are several guards to put the noose around the prisoner's neck.
This precaution is taken since there's a chance that the prisoner will struggle.
So, they attach the noose which is affixed to the ceiling.
Once the prisoner has actually been hung,
they lose control of their bodily functions and release all their urine and other waste.
It's very messy, to say the least.
So there are people on hand to quickly clean everything up.
The noose comes around here like this.
They pull it up, and then it stops right here.
The noose cuts in right here.
The blood vessels may be cut, but the heart keeps on beating.
All the blood pushes up to the head but can't return to the body,
so it ends up coming out of the eyes, the ears, even the pores.
The head becomes swollen with blood.
The body falls on the concrete floor.
Cleaning the mess left behind is a huge ordeal, apparently.
Here we are: "The ruling was unexpected. They've completely misinterpreted the facts."
"I immediately filed a protest."
"I think the second hearing will most likely take place at the beginning of next year."
"So, I will most likely be able to spend new years in Shizuoka."
"Please don't be too upset about the turn of events."
"The fight has just begun."
"I know that I have the grounds and confidence to overturn this ruling."
"For now I'm fine, and planning for the next fight."
"Please don't worry. Goodbye."
"From Iwao, to Mom."
He sent this after his first trial.
Our mother was still healthy back then.
When Iwao's incident happened, I mean.
It was very difficult for all of us.
But, it was much worse for our mother.
The rest of us found ways to endure it, but some things are just too much for a mother to bear.
I'm partly doing this as a daughterly duty towards my mother and father.
Every time I went to see Iwao he would say strange things.
He'd say things out of the blue, like "there's a monkey here" and so on.
I felt uneasy when he said those things,
but that's what prison does to a person.
I think that's just how horrible of a place it is.
[34 years after he was first found guilty after six trials, Mr. Menda was released on July 15, 1983. He became the first ever person in Japan to be released from solitary confinement on death row.]
I heard later that it caused a really big commotion.
There were even helicopters flying around in the sky.
When they sentenced me to death, never in my wildest dreams did I think
that something like this would ever happen.
I realized that my suffering hadn't been for nothing.
[Soon after his release, Mr. Menda married a woman who had been a supporter of his for many years.]
[He became the figurehead of a campaign to abolish capital punishment, and made appearances worldwide. The government awarded him reparations of 7,000 yen a day, or 90 million yen in total.]
[He donated half of this to an anti-death penalty campaign group.]
[Tokyo Detention House]
[Iwao Hakamda's sister Hideko] I'm very happy with the verdict we received today.
I came in hopes of bringing him back even one day sooner.
We were so happy, like, "That's wonderful!" Just overflowing with happiness.
After that, it felt like I was walking on air.
It was really like a dream.
When Iwao would go out for exercise,
he'd be punching the concrete.
He'd be covered in bruises. I would ask him why he was doing this.
He'd reply, "Because I'm going back to boxing once I get out."
"So I'm practicing my punches."
He'd practice until his fists were bloody.
Today's criminal law considers investigations that over-emphasize confessions to be problematic,
because they lead to mistakes and even torture.
So there's been a call to do away with the confession system,
and instead focus more on the inspection of objective evidence.
And this process of verifying facts based upon objective evidence,
to put together a solid case, is done by the police.
The findings of this investigation are ultimately used in court.
However, in Japan, a person is pretty much considered guilty from the moment they are arrested.
In other words, if the police are taking action and arresting someone,
that in itself guarantees that they're guilty in people's eyes.
There's a strong tendency for this in Japan.
In my case, I was handed a life sentence.
A lower court ruling.
I truly suffered.
I had nothing.
No supporters.
Not even any visitors from home.
I was completely alone.
I will never forgive the police.
Those people are guilty of murder.
They're murderers.
I will absolutely never forgive them.
Is the radio on?
Ah, he's listening to the boxing match.
Better switch it off.
- Mr. Hakamada, stand up and give us a V-sign.
- Could you please stand and...
My wish is that history will do away with evil.
History today will be saved by (indecipherable)
With Takamori Saigo at the helm, the (indecipherable) will turn into mist and dissipate.
This will keep the world from falling apart.
Respect and...
Is it heavy?
Hey, it is really heavy!
Oh, well thank you very much! Take care of yourself.
- Is he going home? - Pardon me.
I think he wants to leave.
- Is he leaving? - Yeah, I think he's heading off.
We had a screening of the movie "Saiban (Trial)"
that appears on the pamphlets you've all received.
Nobody says it outright, but if you take a good look at the inner workings,
that's how things are.
I've been out of prison for dozens of years now,
but my name still hasn't been completely cleared yet.
It hasn't been cleared,
so I have to keep after them so that they will reflect upon what they did wrong.
Admit their mistakes.
And clear my name once and for all.
And if they find something...
I want them to make a clear effort to pursue the lead.
But that's probably never going to happen.
I think it's going to be difficult for him to make a full recovery.
But, he knows he's not in prison anymore now.
We're putting a lot of effort into rehabilitating him.
But, he still says strange things like "Do dragons exist?"
because of the mental illness brought on by his solitary confinement.
But I'm always going to be watching over him, so it's alright.
That's all.
The chairman will now hand him the commemorative bouquet.
None of us have ever forgotten about the victims.
The two kids were in middle and high school,
and the parents both died young too.
But none of that will ever make us agree with the idea of pinning the crime on Mr. Hakamada.
These men were fortunate enough to return to society.
But this is good fortune that we stole from them many years ago.
We need to be aware that we're the ones locking these people up,
and think of a way that we can prevent similar cases from occurring in the future.
[In March 2014, the Shizuoka District Court released Mr. Hakamada and granted him a retrial, stating that "imprisoning Mr. Hakamada any further will be a grave injustice."]
[The cases appearing in this video remain unsolved to this day.]