Chaplain Kagao Shunin
The Secret Execution Order
On January 19, at four in the evening, I visited the office of Warden Bunye on an errand.
Then the Warden said, in a rather formal tone,
“Mr. Kagao, tonight let’s have dinner at my place, together with my secretary, Borja.”
he said.
“Please wait a moment. I believe something has arrived for me from Japan, so, for your children perhaps…”
Answering thus, I returned to my room, and when I went back to the Warden’s office, he was nowhere to be seen.
Thinking he might have gone home…, I stepped out to the main gate.
And there… I came upon four or five Filipino soldiers, of the kind I had often seen at the war crimes tribunal in Manila, standing about.
Why on earth were they there? — I looked outside and saw two jeeps.
But even that was not particularly unusual, so I returned to the Warden’s office once more.
There, Dr. Nelson was seated on a chair together with Mrs. Dyer, with a very grave expression.
“Good evening, Doctor.”
When I greeted him, the doctor, looking startled in a way quite unlike him, said abruptly,
“Mr. Kagao! Something terrible has happened…”
he said in a heavy, sorrowful tone.
Startled, I searched his expression, and I sensed at once: this might be an execution.
The day before, one of the war criminals who was working at the hospital had said to me,
“Father, the hospital has prepared a dozen or so new blankets this time.”
He had said it offhandedly, but I recalled his words and linked them to the doctor’s.
Then Dr. Nelson asked,
“How many are connected with you?”
“So it is…” — the question came so fast that I had no time even to think that, and I was flustered.
Dr. Nelson, assuming that I already knew, was asking how many among those to be executed were connected with me — that is, how many were Buddhists.
But since I had been told nothing at all, even when asked such a question I could not quite judge, and
“Well, let me see—”
I was hesitating when Warden Bunye strode briskly into the room.
“The execution is about to begin. Please make ready at once.”
He said this to me out of the blue.
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