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On their way to work, Tokyo citizens read the news, mostly from billboards slapped up around the city by newspapers. To Westerners, their faces showed nothing. The predominant sentiment expressed was "Hotto shita ne"—which, colloquially, means "I'm glad it's all over."
Many said: "Kinodoku, kinodoku (pity, pity)." That was what many had said during the war when U.S. prisoners had been led through Tokyo's streets. Tojo & friends, through their thought control police, had tried then to stop the expression of kinodoku. It persisted, even for them.
Said one prominent Japanese publisher to an American: "We all went into war together and all suffered, but they died for us. What they did was wrong, but we all did it together. It is finished; we are now in your hands."
On the day after the execution, many Japanese went to shrines to pray. It was hard for a Westerner to learn what they really felt. Some said the Japanese were not praying for the dead war lords, but for peace in the world. It was no less difficult to learn the final attitudes of the condemned. Tojo left a poem:
It is goodbye.
Over the mountains I go today
To the bosom of Buddha.
So, happy am I.
Itagaki was the only one of the seven who publicly expressed contrition. Itagaki's poem:
Humbly do I kneel
In front of our great God
And beg forgiveness
For all my sins.
The attitudes of the victors were also obscure. After the seven were dead, MacArthur granted freedom to all remaining "Class A" war criminals except two who were already on trial. MacArthur asked for a day of prayer throughout Japan.