Business cards are very common for office workers, from the CEO down to the small salesman, almost everyone carries a business card and hands it when they see it. But no one could have imagined that such a small piece of cardboard would affect a person's life and death.
In Tokyo in 1948, Japan, which had experienced defeat in the war, was faced with a situation in which the old order collapsed and the new order was unstable, and the dilemma of insufficient food caused people's hearts to fluctuate.
At three o'clock in the afternoon of January 26, the Imperial Bank was preparing to close when a middle-aged man in a suit and a red armband on his arm suddenly walked in. In his armband read "Tokyo Metropolitan Government Epidemic Prevention Class", in order to cope with this uninvited guest, the bank clerk asked the store manager to personally receive, and the visitor showed the store manager a business card with the title of "Medical Clerk of the Ministry of Health and Welfare of the Ministry of Health and Welfare; Doctor of Medicine Someone"
The other party claimed that he was sent by ghq, and announced to the crowd in a professional tone: there are people infected with dysentery nearby, and some patients have come to the bank today. The disinfection class will come to disinfect, and they will come early to distribute preventive drugs to everyone.
All the people in the bank believed it to be true and therefore resigned themselves to their arrangements. Then, the M.D. took out a small bottle of medicine and distributed it to everyone present. And told the crowd: "There are two kinds of medicines, and everyone takes the second one after taking the first one for one minute." At the doctor's demonstration, all the bank employees present, as well as the children of one of the staff, a total of sixteen people drank the so-called "anti-epidemic drugs".
However, just after they drank the first dose of the drug, they felt that something was wrong, the medicine was surprisingly bitter, and after drinking it, the tongue and throat felt burning, and then the eyes blurred and the limbs lost their strength. It was too late when someone realized that his doctor might be a liar, and the onset of the drug caused him to fall to the ground one by one, doing nothing but groaning in pain.
In a daze, one clerk watched the doctor walk up to the counter, pack cash and checks into his handbag and pocket, and leave quickly.
When a passerby passed by the door of the bank and found that there was something strange inside, he quickly called the police, but when the police arrived, 11 of the 16 people died on the spot, and another person was sent to the hospital, and in just half an hour, 12 people died, which is the largest death case encountered in post-war Japan.
After investigation, the gangster posing as a doctor stole a total of 160,000 yen and a cheque worth 17,000 yuan, which was obviously not a big loss, but the means used by the gangsters were extremely cruel. The Metropolitan Police Department immediately formed an investigation team to solve the case within a time limit.
The autopsy report was soon released, showing that the "first drug" the victim drank was actually cyanide; the "second medicine" was just ordinary water. The reason why the murderer wants the victim to drink water one minute apart may be that the people present are powerless to resist, and they will not immediately attract attention from the outside world, so that the murderer has time to commit the crime.
The police determined that the killer had sufficient knowledge of the characteristics of cyanide, and it was not easy to obtain cyanide in post-war Japan, and it was clear that this person could obtain such highly toxic substances through special channels. There are no more people who can obtain this highly toxic substance than those who can be accessed in medicine, chemistry, and work. The killer handed out a business card with the title of "Doctor of Medicine" printed on it. Could it be that the murderer himself is really a medical doctor?
Unfortunately, none of the survivors remembered the name on the business card, and the business card handed out was taken away by the murderer, who was too cunning to even leave fingerprints. No strong evidence could be found at the scene, and the police could only look for clues from other sources. The police quickly remembered that before the Diyin incident, there had been two similar cases in other banks.
One of them happened at The Yasuda Bank, when a person who claimed to be a doctor of medicine took out his business card, and the staff of the Yasuda Bank clearly remembered that the business card read "Dr. Matsui Ulla, M.D." After investigation, Dr. Matsui Ulsu does have his own person, and indeed works in the Ministry of Health and Welfare. However, at the time of the crime, Dr. Matsui was on duty at the work unit, and it was obvious that he did not kill the person.
The police asked who Dr. Matsui had ever issued the business card to, as it was most likely the person who got the business card posing as Dr. Matsui. According to Dr. Matsui's recollection, a well-known Japanese tempera painter, Hirazawa Sadatsu, once met himself on a boat and the two exchanged business cards.
The police quickly found Pyeongtaek, but Pyeongtaek insisted that the wallet had been stolen, and the business card happened to be inside the wallet. Unable to clearly account for the whereabouts of the business card, Pyeongtaek became a key suspect and was arrested in August of the same year. At first, Pyeongtaek did not admit that he was the culprit, but after a while he suddenly confessed again. The result of this confession caused him to retract his confession and appeal in the future, and he could not overturn the death sentence.
After Pyeongtaek confessed guilt, major Japanese newspapers reported one after another, claiming that the prisoners had been arrested and sentenced to death, and that the Imperial Silver Incident had come to a successful end, and the grievances of the deceased had been comforted.
Pyeongtaek's family did not think so, they went around shouting injustice, and found a private detective to investigate, Pyeongtaek's family believed that the police investigation process was full of doubts, and the conviction of Pyeongtaek was also very sloppy. Pyeongtaek pleaded guilty, most likely threatened.
The reason given by Pyeongtaek's family is that Pyeongtaek is neither a doctor nor a chemist, he is just an honest painter, how could he understand the use of cyanide? Where do you go to get cyanide? In fact, the police never had any evidence that Pyeongtaek possessed cyanide.
In addition, several survivors of the Diyin incident all gave uncertain answers when identifying Pyeongtaek. They just said that they looked at Pyeongtaek's figure like the murderer, and they were not 100% sure that Pyeongtaek was the murderer. There is also the business card that has no clue at all, and if you can't find the business card, you are considered a murderer, which is obviously unreasonable.
In the years that followed, Pyeongtaek and his family began a thirty-nine-year appeal, and because they could not bear the mental blow, Pyeongtaek also tried to commit suicide three times, but no matter how to do it, it could not shake the court's death sentence. Until Pyeongtaek died of illness at the age of 95 in hachioji Medical Prison, he was not rehabilitated.
Just after his death, some people involved in the investigation of the case at that time claimed that Pyeongtaek was just a scapegoat, and the real murderer was a retired veteran of the former 731 Ishii unit. Unit 731 was a specialized unit specializing in the study of epidemic prevention, germ warfare, and biological weapons in the Harbin area, and its staff had convenient conditions and medical knowledge for obtaining cyanide.
The Japanese government at the time was reluctant to let the outside world know more about Unit 731, so the Japanese authorities banned the investigation of the relevant members of the former Unit 731. In order to explain to the outside world, the police instead investigated the whereabouts of the business card and arrested Pyeongtaek Sadatsu.
No one would have thought that a person would indirectly die in the hands of a small business card, and whether Pyeongtaek was wronged? Is the real culprit really a member of Unit 731? In the end, no one found the real answer.