44 days in Hell- Don’t read if you are weak by heart
By: Nagesh Kumar
Tags: Rape, Humanity, Heinous Crimes, Crime

44 days in Hell- Don’t read if you are weak by heart

Ok in the morning, a notification popped on my mobile phone from youtube. It was regarding a shocking true story that happened in Japan in 1988.

For you who can`t stand read something that is so cruel, don’t read this.

This story is a horribly gruesome one. It’s the kind of crime that makes you wonder how such horrible human beings could exist.

Perhaps more importantly, how could any criminal justice system let them off as easily as they were let off?

Junko was a good girl who lived in Misato, Japan. She didn’t drink, she didn’t smoke, and she was well-loved by her classmates. Junko was a beautiful sixteen-year-old and this likely contributed to her popularity. Unfortunately, her beauty caught the eye of the school bully as well. When Hiroshi Miyano asked Junko out and she respectfully but firmly declined, this made him furious.

Miyano was not used to being said no to. He was not only the school bully, but a known affiliate of the yakuza. The yakuza are essentially the gangsters of Japan, a huge crime organization known country-wide for their ruthlessness.

On November 25, 1988, as Junko was biking home from her baito (part-time job), a random boy assailed her.Junko fell off her bike as the boy ran away and Miyano, “fortuitously” across the street, ran over to help her. Miyano offered to walk her home. Unsuspecting Junko accepted the offer. Little did she know, Miyano and three other high school friends were completing their plan to capture her.

The four boys responsible for the capture and subsequent torture of Junko Furuta are Hiroshi Miyano, Nobuharu Minato, Kamisaku Jo, and Yasushi Watanabe.

At first, Miyano raped her repeatedly in an abandoned warehouse, but he and his friends decided it would be more fun to completely kidnap her.

The boys forced Junko to call her parents and tell them that she was running away and not to look for her because she was doing well.

Junko’s next 44 days were filled with unimaginable pain. 100 different men (mostly other yakuza members) would rape Junko over 500 times. She was raped, sodomized, beaten, and starved. They amused themselves by forcing her to masturbate in front of them and inserting different objects into her genitals.

The following objects were cruelly inserted into Junko’s vagina: scissors, a bottle, an iron bar, a hot exploding light bulb, grilled chicken skewers, roasting needles, and an exploding firework. Junko’s internal organs would be subjected to so much trauma that she eventually lost control of urinary and bowel movements. When the men & boys got too disgusted to continue sexually assaulting her, the severity of the beatings increased.

Junko’s torture continued: they urinated on her, hung her from the ceiling & used her as a punching bag, crushed her stomach with dumbells, smashed her face against the cement floor, beat her with golf clubs & iron rods, forced her to eat live cockroaches and drink her own urine, made her sleep on the balcony in the cold winter, stuck her in a freezer for hours, and twisted off one of her nipples with pliers.

Twenty days into her torture Junko managed to dial an emergency number, but the boys snatched the phone from her and hung up before Junko was able to say anything. As punishment, they poured lighter fuel on Junko’s legs & feet to set them on fire, burned her eyelids with lighters & hot wax, and smashed her fingers.

On January 4, 1989, the boys challenged Junko to a game of Mahjong. Even in her brutalized state Junko beat the boys, and this sent them into a rage. They poured gasoline all over her and set her on fire again. Junko went into convulsive seizures that the boys thought she was faking. She died a few hours later.

In order to get rid of Junko’s body, the boys put her corpse in a 44-gallon drum, filled it with cement, and discarded it in Tokyo. It wasn’t until about a year later that authorities located Junko. One day when they were questioning Miyano about a different girl, Miyano thought they had evidence about Junko and confessed to what they had done to her prematurely.

Shockingly, because the boys were underage by Japanese standards (Hiroshi, 18; Jo, 18; Nobuharu, 16 ; Watanabe, 17) they were given lenient sentences. Miyano received a twenty year sentence, and others only seven. By now, all four boys have been released from jail and have not proven to have turned their lives around.

It’s unthinkable that so little justice was served for this poor girl’s 44 days in hell.