Chaplain Kagao Shunin
My vision went black, as if I had been struck by lightning.
Ah — again and again I had pinned my hopes on a retrial, had clung to hopes of petitions for clemency, and had done nothing but pray and pray, yet it had all been in vain.
At this late hour, what good would it do to plead for their lives?
“Just a moment, the papers—” I hurriedly asked to see the Warden’s documents, and there, lined up in a row, were the names of Mr. Mihara Kikuichi, and then those connected with the troublesome Nakamura case, Mr. Nakamura Shuichi and the others, thirteen names in all.
A truly astonishing number.
Bringing my swimming eyes close to the papers, I counted them one by one, name by name: there were eight Buddhists, and the remaining six were Christian believers.
“My group is eight—”
I told Dr. Nelson.
The doctor nodded in silence.
Then the Warden said,
“Please get ready as quickly as you can.”
With an irritated look, as if issuing an order, he hurried me along.
I rushed back to my room.
Struck by a truly abrupt storm, as if blown away by a gust of wind, I was so violently shocked that my heart and my legs faltered.
That ominous dream of mine — looking back now, it had not been a phantom that simply faded away!
It had been a true dream. The mystery of the universe, riding on a dream, had told me of the ominous cloud enveloping Muntinlupa.
On that merry day at the end of the year — who could have imagined that, a little over ten days later, I would be seized all of a sudden by the black demon of death?
And yet the karma of vengeance and retribution, rooted since the creation of humankind in the principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” must have been waging a fierce battle, against the sword-sharp words of Christ, who taught us to pray for our enemies, in the hearts of the Philippine leaders seated in Malacañang Palace.
And then, for reasons unknown, the execution order must have been suddenly signed.
The circumstances have never been made public, and even now no one can know the secret. Probably never.
Though it is said that no one can escape death, a harrowing night had thus come, on which fourteen men in the full vigor of life were to be thrown into the hellfire of death by fellow human beings.
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