'This is the beginning': 91-year-old sister of longest death row inmate sees hope in his acquittal

After helping lead the fight to free her younger brother from nearly a half-century on death row, Hideko Hakamada feels she and her brother are beginning a new chapter of their lives

Hideko Hakamada, 91, spent much of her life working to free her brother from nearly a half-century on death row. Now that he has been acquitted she feels that the siblings are beginning a new chapter of their lives.

She backed her brother, Iwao Hakamada, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, through decades of frustrating, at times apparently hopeless, legal wrangling as his mental condition worsened.

“No matter what people said about me, I lived my own life and appreciated my freedom. I did not belittle myself as the sister of a death row inmate. I lived without shame,” she told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview at her home in the central Japanese city of Hamamatsu. “My little brother only happened to be a death row inmate.”

While working as an accountant to support herself, she helped cover her brother’s legal costs, made regular long trips to Tokyo to see him on death row and helped shape public opinion in his favor.

It wasn’t easy, and there were times she felt helpless.

“I was desperately working to win him a retrial, because that was the only way to save his life," she said. But sometimes she felt "at a loss and even unsure who I should be fighting against. … It was like I was fighting against an invisible power.”

To maintain a sense of herself, outside of her brother's legal fight, she invested her savings and took out loans to have a building constructed. She now rents out apartments in the building, where the siblings live.

Iwao Hakamada, a former boxer, was acquitted in September by the Shizuoka District Court, which said police and prosecutors had collaborated to fabricate and plant evidence against him, and forced him to confess with violent, hourslong, closed interrogations.

Earlier in the week, he received in the mail his voting ticket for Oct. 27 parliamentary elections, a verification his civil rights are being restored. Though he was freed from his solitary death row cell after a 2014 court order for a retrial, his conviction was not cleared and his rights were not fully restored until the recent decision.

Hideko Hakamada said she is “filled with happiness” over the acquittal, and that being able to vote "means he has finally been allowed back into society.”

“I will definitely go vote with him. It doesn’t matter which candidate" he votes for, she said. "To me what’s important is that he casts a vote.”

Her brother's long death row confinement took a toll on his mental health. He often drifts between reality and his imagination. He understands his acquittal but doesn’t seem to be fully convinced, she said.

Because of his difficulty carrying on a conversation and to avoid stress, Iwao Hakamada could not speak with the AP and left while his sister was interviewed. Volunteers took him on his daily ride and a brief walk. His supporters say he thinks he is going out “patrolling” as a guardian for the neighborhood.

He was convicted of murder in the 1966 killing of an executive at a miso bean paste company and three of his family members in Hamamatsu. He was sentenced to death in a 1968 district court ruling, but was not executed because of the lengthy appeal and retrial process in Japan’s labyrinth-like criminal justice system.

It took 27 years for the Supreme Court to deny his first appeal for a retrial. His second appeal for a retrial was filed in 2008 by his sister, and that request was granted in 2014.

Hideko Hakamada said her brother’s training as a professional boxer helped him survive. She maintained a rock-solid trust in her brother, who was the closest to her among their six siblings.

For his first few years in prison, her brother wrote to his mother every day, repeating that he was innocent, asking about his mother’s health and expressing optimism about his fate.

“I am innocent,” he wrote in a letter to his mother while on trial in 1967.

After the top court finalized his death penalty in 1976, Hideko Hakamada noticed changes in her brother.

He expressed fear and anger at being falsely accused. “When I go to sleep in a soundless solitary cell every night, I sometimes cannot help cursing God. I have not done anything wrong,” he wrote to his family. “What a cold-blooded act to inflict such cruelty on me.”

The only way for her to make sure he was alive was to go to visit him in person at the Tokyo Detention House. She could only see him for up to 30 minutes per visit. She also arranged care packages of fruit and sweets. There were times he refused to meet, presumably because of the deterioration of his mental health.

Executions are carried out in secrecy in Japan, and prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are hanged. In 2007, Japan began disclosing the names of those executed and some details of their crimes, but disclosures are still limited. Japan and the United States are the only two countries in the Group of Seven advanced nations that have capital punishment.

Hakamada was the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner and only the fifth death row inmate to be acquitted in a retrial in postwar Japan, where prosecutors have near-perfect conviction rates and retrials are extremely rare.

Hideko Hakamada wants that changed, based on the lessons learned from her brother’s case, which has raised criticism about prosecutorial actions.

She rarely complained about her ordeal or the harsh public comments she faced or her fear that her brother would be executed despite her belief that he was wrongfully accused. She has been praised for her positive attitude and strength. But, she says, “It is Iwao who deserves praise for surviving, for walking out of confinement after more than 50 years.”

As her brother’s legal fight dragged on, she decided to build a home so she could feel a sense of achievement for herself.

“That became something to strive for,” she said.

To stay fit enough for her regular trips from Hamamatsu to Tokyo to visit her brother, she started exercising every morning, a mix of stretching and gymnastic exercises. She still keeps up with her morning routine.

“I’m 91, but age has nothing on me. People say ordinary 91-year-olds live more quietly, but that's not what I’m doing. I want to do everything I can while I’m still in good health,” she said.

“I’m not done yet," she said, with a laugh. "This is the beginning.”