Diary of a convicted Japanese war criminal who was spared the gallows

When one thinks of the war criminals who were found guilty by the Tokyo Tribunal and sentenced to death in 1948, one reflexively recalls former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese civilian and military leaders who were tried as so-called Class A war criminals. With the outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula in June 1950, many of Toji's American guards became fatalistic, as the likelihood increased of their being transferred to the war zone and falling in battle. The U.S. response to the new communist threat would also have an impact on the fates of Sugamo's inmates; as it turned out, Toji's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.