Gas Chamber For Former Japanese Interpreter

Grey River Argus, 7 October 1948, Page 4

Gas Chamber For Former Japanese Interpreter

(Rec. 10.0) LOS ANGELES, Oct. 5 Tomoya Kawakita, the 28-year-old American-born interpreter, in a wartime Japanese prison camp was sentenced to death to-day for treason. Federal Judge William Mathes, sentenced Kawakita to die in a lethal gas chamber.

Neatly dressed, the defendant stood expressionless in the court as he heard the penalty. Kawaktta’s attorney has submitted an appeal. The judge declared that the extent of Kawakita’s treason was limited only by the opportunity he had to commit treason. “He would have blown up our Pacific Fleet, or given the secret of the atom bomb if he had the opportunity.” Kawakita’s trial was one of the most complex ever heard in a Federal Court here. Testimony was presented for three months, and the witnesses included scores of ex-servicemen. Kawakita, after the war, received a visa from the occupation forces and returned to the United States. He was identified in a Los Angeles store by a former prisoner, who put the Federal Bureau of Investigation on his trial. Witnesses at the trial, said that Kawakita, who was also a guard in the camp, treated the prisoners so brutally that several died and others went mad.