Yoshie Shiratori

Yoshie Shiratori (; ; July 31, 1907 – February 24, 1979) was a Japanese national born in Aomori Prefecture. Shiratori is famous for having escaped from prison four different times. There is a memorial to Shiratori at the Abashiri Prison Museum.

There are numerous tales describing his escapes, but some details may be highly exaggerated rather than factual.

Early life Yoshie Shiratori was born on July 31, 1907, in Aomori, Japan. His father died when he was 2 years old, and he was abandoned at a young age by his mother, who took only his older brother to live with a farmer in Akita Prefecture, leaving only Shiratori and his sister behind. Initially, he worked in a tofu shop run by his Aunt, before becoming a fisherman to catch crabs in Russia. After switching jobs several times and finding little success, he turned to gambling and robbery for a living.

Prison escapes Aomori prison break

Shiratori was imprisoned at Aomori prison in 1936 for a felony murder charge, and after studying the guards' routine for months, he escaped by picking his cell lock with the metal wire that was wrapped around the washroom's bucket provided for bathing and escaped through a cracked skylight. Before escaping, he placed floorboards onto his futon to fool the passing guards into thinking he was still asleep.

Akita prison break Police recaptured Shiratori after three days while he was stealing supplies from a hospital. Sentenced to life in prison for escaping and attempted theft, he was transferred to Akita prison in 1941. and made his escape on June 14, 1942. Three months later, he showed up at the house of head guard Kobayashi to ask for help, as he was one of the only people who had shown kindness and respect to Shiratori during his stay in the Akita prison. However, it was circulated that Kobayashi called the police, and Shiratori was arrested and sent back to prison.

Abashiri prison break Replica of Shiratori's escape from Abashiri Prison at the Abashiri Prison Museum. During the winter of 1942/43, Shiratori was transferred to Abashiri prison in Northern Hokkaido, the country’s northernmost prison. He was thrown into an open cell exposed to the extreme cold, and the guards would beat him up whenever he attempted to stand up. Furthermore, he and other inmates at Abashiri prison were forced to wear thick clothing in summer and thin clothing in winter. Afterwards, Shiratori was fitted with specially made handcuffs, which took enormous effort to remove. They were only removed for bathing and meals. Because they were rarely taken off, Maggots bred in the handcuffs, causing his skin to develop infections. The treatment that Shiratori endured eventually led to his decision to escape.

When the guards delivered meals, he would drip miso soup on the handcuffs and food slot, both of which eventually became corroded due to the salt content of the miso soup, allowing Shiratori to break them. 。 On August 26, 1944, he dislocated both of his shoulders, enabling him to slip through the narrow food slot in his cell door and escape the prison, using a wartime blackout as cover. After living in an abandoned mine deep in the mountains for two years, he descended to a nearby village and learned of the surrender of Japan. However, he was captured yet again after he fatally stabbed a farmer who had caught him stealing a tomato from his farm.

Sapporo prison break For his previous escapes and the farmer's murder, Shiratori was sentenced to death by the Sapporo District Court despite claiming that he had stabbed the farmer in self-defence. At the Sapporo prison, he was placed in a specially designed cell with high ceilings and windows smaller than his head. However, due to the confidence that the guards had in the security of the cell, they no longer bothered to handcuff Shiratori, and also because they were hyper-focused on stopping another roof escape, they neglected to install enhanced security features on the floors. Shiratori cut out a section of the floorboards using a homemade saw fashioned from a piece of metal from the washbasin, then concealed it within a tube filled with excrement. This was because the guards avoided inspecting the soiled tubes due to their distaste for them, making the search perfunctory.

On March 31, 1947, after cutting through the floor with a handmade saw, Shiratori used his miso soup bowls to dig a two-meter tunnel through the earth in just two hours, eventually using the accumulated snow as a foothold to scale the outer wall and successfully flee into the night.

Final years After a year of freedom, it is said that Shiratori was offered a cigarette by a police officer in a park. Emotionally touched by the kindness, Shiratori admitted he was an escaped convict and offered to be turned in. He was arrested and tried once again, but the High Court of Sapporo, having reviewed his case, decided that the farmer's death was accidental and merely a result of acting in self-defense. As a result, the court revoked his death sentence, instead sentencing him to 20 years for his escapes, having noted that Shiratori never harmed a single guard during his breakouts. During the trial, Shiratori explained his motive to escape prison, which was the fact that he could not stand the guards' abusive actions towards inmates. After the court officials accepted his testimony, Shiratori's request to be imprisoned in Tokyo was also granted, and he spent 14 years in Fuchu Prison, where the guards treated him nicely for the first time, until December, 1961, when he was finally released on parole. His wife had died while he was in prison. Shiratori lived for another decade, working odd jobs to survive. He died after suffering a heart attack in 1979, at the age of 71.

Akira Yoshimura's 1983 novel Hagoku is based on Shiratori's life.

The character Yoshitake Shiraishi in Satoru Noda's 2017 manga series Golden Kamuy was based on Shiratori.