On the afternoon of Aug. 10, 1945, Osamu Satano's superior officers took him to an open field near the Fukuoka crematory in northern Kyushu. There Satano had to "volunteer" to behead a captured U.S. B-29 airman. After he had swung the executioner's sword, Satano watched one of his officers torture another prisoner to death by shooting arrows at him.
Last week, in a musty military courtroom in Yokohama, 27-year-old Satano rose to be sentenced by a five-man military tribunal. Just before the sentence was pronounced, the defendant's mother presented the embarrassed U.S. prosecutor with a bouquet of...
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