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THE CANNERY BOAT

iron will resisted all their torture until unconsciousness and then death relieved him. The police took the dead body to a hospital and got a false death certificate saying the doctor had seen him before death and that he was suffering from heart trouble.

The relatives were then called and the body was handed over to them. His fine old mother of sixty, Oseisan, was in sympathy with his ideas and asked that he be given, not a religious funeral, but a workers’ one. When she saw the body she turned on the police and said that never would she believe he had died a natural death.

Friends communicated with all the big hospitals to get a post-mortem examination, but everywhere this was refused. One hospital did consent, but when the body was brought and they saw whose it was they too refused. Obviously they were acting under orders. The police department had learned wisdom since last November, when at the post-mortem of Comrade Iwata the doctors at the Imperial University had shown up their murder.

Photographs of the body, however, were taken, clearly revealing the ghastly wounds. The branding of a red-hot poker was easily visible on the forehead. Round the neck were marks left by a thin rope. On the wrists were deep handcuff marks, while one wrist was twisted right round. All the back was abrased and from the knees up the legs were swollen and purple with internal bleeding. The police were not yet satisfied. They arrested 300 people who tried to attend the night watch beside the coffin and sent back to their donors many of the wreaths, including one sent by the bourgeois