The Yokohama District Court on Monday ended a retrial of the late Yasuhito Ono, a journalist who had been convicted in the Yokohama Incident — the worst example of Japan's wartime repression of freedom of speech — without determining his guilt or innocence. Regrettably the court failed to deal with the core point of the retrial.
In the Yokohama Incident, the Kanagawa thought-control police arrested about 60 journalists on suspicion of spreading the idea of communism in violation of the Peace Preservation Law during the Pacific War; more than 30 were indicted. Torture was employed during interrogation and four died while in detention. Most of the defendants were given suspended sentences right after World War II ended. The former defendants are all dead.
In and after 1986, retrial requests were filed four times. The first two requests were turned down. But the third request for a retrial of five former defendants was accepted in 2003. The Supreme Court in March 2008 terminated the proceedings without determining the five's guilt or innocence. The latest retrial suffered the same fate. Ono's two children opted not to appeal the decision, ending the series of Yokohama Incident-related retrials.