The columnists and Congressmen who screamed injustice last spring, when U.S. Soldier William S. Girard was turned over to Japanese courts, had reckoned without Judge Yuzo Kawachi of the Maebashi District Court. As the Girard trial went into its third week, Judge Kawachi donned raincoat and rubbers and a peasant’s wide-brimmed straw hat, took the court sloshing through mud and drenching rain to the hilltop of the U.S. Army firing range where Girard shot a Japanese woman in the back and killed her while she was scavenging for scrap metal (TIME, May 27 et seq.). Meticulously the judge puttered about, asking questions, probing into the testimony, checking visibility and distances.
Judge Kawachi sought to establish motive. “Did you think Girard fired the shot at the woman in fun?” he asked Army Specialist Third Class Victor Nickel, who was with Girard when he fired. “Yes—for a joke,” Nickel replied. Then the judge drew from a Japanese prosecution witness the testimony that Girard had at least shouted a warning (“Get outa here”) to the woman before he fired, whereupon Girard weakened his own case and astonished the courtroom by denying it. “These discrepancies baffle me,” said Judge Kawachi in a genial interim verdict at week’s end, “but so far there is no evidence of deliberate murder.”
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