The Yokohama District Court on Oct. 31 decided to retry a case related to the worst example of Japan's wartime repression of freedom of speech — the Yokohama Incident. In the retrial, the court should delve into what actually happened, including what the police, prosecution and court did during and immediately after World War II.

In the incident, more than 60 journalists were arrested between 1942 and 1945, and more than 30 of them were indicted on charges of promoting communism in violation of the now-defunct Peace Preservation Law. Four were tortured to death in detention and one died immediately after release on probation. Many of the indicted were convicted by the Yokohama District Court immediately after the war.

The retrial petition was filed by relatives of a journalist who was with Kaizo (Reform) magazine. He was arrested in 1943, given a suspended two-year prison term in September 1945 and granted amnesty following the Oct. 15, 1945, abolition of the law.

In the retrial from an earlier retrial petition filed by relatives of five other journalists, the district court terminated the case in February 2006 without ruling on guilt or innocence on the grounds that the law was abolished and that the five were granted amnesty under the Pardon Act. The Supreme Court upheld the decision in March 2008.

In accepting the latest retrial request, the district court said the court handled the case in a slipshod manner. It pointed to the possibility that the prosecution and the court destroyed related documents to hide "inconvenient facts." It also said that since it is reasonably assumed that the Kaizo journalist and other defendants were subjected to torture, the defendants' confessions that they tried to change "national polity" lacked credibility.

The Yokohama District Court should realize that if it does not get to substance in the next retrial and instead terminates it as before, it will be criticized for again blotting out the mistakes it committed when the notorious Peace Preservation Law was in effect.