The Yokohama District Court last week made a disappointing ruling in a case stemming from the state's wartime suppression of freedom of speech. The court could have shed light on the dark side of modern Japanese history by delving into a variety of related issues, including the questionable conduct of law-enforcement authorities and the judiciary.

Instead, the court focused mostly on legal technicality and dismissed a retrial of five now-deceased people convicted in a case known as the Yokohama Incident. By avoiding judgment on whether the five were guilty or innocent, the court missed an opportunity to do its own soul-searching on the violation of a principle essential to the well-being of society.

The Yokohama Incident is regarded as the worst case of free-speech suppression during the Pacific War. By invoking the notorious 1925 Peace Preservation Law, a legal instrument used by the government to clamp down on communists and other dissidents, the tokkou (Special Higher Police) of Kanagawa Prefecture arrested about 60 people, many of them journalists, between 1942 and the closing day of the war. Four were tortured to death in detention and one died immediately after being released on probation.