First Haul

Until the U.S. could recondition one of Japan's infamous prison camps, the Yokohama jail was the only safe lodging for war criminals. The Yokohama jail was clean and unbombed, but it would be only large enough for the first batch.

After the seizure of Hideki Tojo (TIME, Sept. 17), who bungled his attempt at suicide,* counter-intelligence officers began rounding up the other 39 on MacArthur's first list of criminals wanted.

Two others, Welfare Minister Chikahiko Koizumi and Education Minister Kunihiko Hashida of Tojo's Pearl Harbor Cabinet (and four unlisted officials) succeeded in killing themselves. Admiral Shigetaro Shimada told a nervous U.S. officer: "Be quiet--I don't suicide." Many surrendered voluntarily, either to U.S. officers or Japanese police. At week's end only ten were still at large.

The first list had been hastily compiled, apparently under pressure from the U.S. press. It included the name of Tojo and all his Cabinet (a few of whom might win acquittal) and assorted criminals at large: Lieut. General Masaharu Homma (the Bataan death march), Mark Lewis Streeter (U.S. civilian from Wake who wrote propaganda for Radio Tokyo), Jose Laurel (Filipino quisling), Joseph Meisinger (Gestapo "butcher of Warsaw").

A subsequent list of seven supposed members of the militaristic Black Dragon Society had to be revised rapidly. Two of the seven were dead, one of them since 1938. A third was not a member. A fourth name, that of onetime Premier Koki Hirota, who in 1936 signed the anti-Comintern pact, was removed without explanation.

The confusion did not betoken forgiveness or lack of determination. U.S. occupation forces were still inadequate. Compilation of names and evidence was divided between Chungking, Manila and Washington. It was not until after the first list had been released in Tokyo that the State, War and Navy Departments in Washington cabled their combined list to MacArthur.

Meanwhile, Japanese complained that Tokyo newspapers had not published war criminal lists. There was bitter derision for Tojo's suicide failure and favorable comment on those officials who gave themselves up. When Tokyo papers (on direction from MacArthur's headquarters) published accounts of atrocities suffered by U.S. prisoners, Japanese asked that they be allowed to arrest, try and punish their own criminals.

* In a U.S. military hospital, Tojo explained why he had tried to kill himself with a pistol instead of by traditional harakiri: he had had no aide (kaishaku) to stand by and strike off his head with a two-handed sword after he had slit his abdomen with a ceremonial dagger. In some recent Japanese pistol suicides a kaishaku with a pistol stood by to blow out the suicide's brains. Said Tojo: "I did not want to mess up my head."

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