Word: reelingly
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...long ago Tokyo's Shimbun ran a brief review of The Case of General Yamashita (The University of Chicago Press; $4), by A. Frank Reel, a labor lawyer and former U.S. Army captain, who had helped defend the Japanese commander in America's first major war crimes trial. Next day a SCAP officer phoned Shimbun and other Tokyo papers that it would be "advisable" not to mention Reel's book. The Hosei University Press was likewise cautioned not to publish it. The admonitions have been strictly obeyed...
Enough Japanese editors had read Reel's book (it was sent to them by the U.S. publishers) to assure that some day, when the Occupation withdrew, it would emerge from censorship. Then, instead of heightening respect for American good faith and readiness to acknowledge a wrong, The Case of General Yamashita might engender a bitter disillusion...
...Reel's book should be much more the concern of American readers than Japanese. Two months after publication, it has sold only 2,100 copies. Yet it is a classic of its kind, a superbly presented, toughly argued, dramatic and damning report on American justice in a case of fundamental importance...
...Reel quotes an Army lawyer's comment : "Under such a principle, I suppose, even MacArthur should be tried." . Objection. A military commission of five U.S. generals* sat in judgment on Yamashita. They had no legal background. The commission seemed to feel that defense objections, made for the record, wasted time and smacked of insubordination. Once, in a smiling but meaning aside to Reel, one of the general-judges remarked: "You fellows should talk to us, not to the record. You'll get along better...
Defense continued to talk both to the judges and the record. One of Yamashita's aides, whose English was limited, became sorely puzzled. "Who is this Mr. Jackson that Captain Reel is always talking about? He always jumps up and says, 'Jackson.' " When the Americans realized that "Jackson" was the Japanese's understanding of "objection," they told him that Jackson's last name was "Notsustained...