Another victim was the wife of a Christian teacher, a very bright, intelligent woman, with one child four months old, and two or three months advanced in her second pregnancy.  She had taken a small part in the demonstration and then had gone to the home of the mother of another woman who had been arrested, to comfort her.  Police came here, and demanded if she had shouted “Mansei.”  She admitted that she had.  They ordered her to leave the child that she was carrying on her back and took her to the police station.  As she entered the station a man kicked her forcibly from behind and she fell forward in the room.  As she lay there a policeman put his foot on her neck, then raised her up and struck her again and again.  She was ordered to undress.  She hesitated, whereupon the policeman kicked her, and took up a paddle and a heavy stick to beat her with.  “You are a teacher,” he cried.  “You have set the minds of the children against Japan.  I will beat you to death.”

He tore her underclothes off.  Still clinging to them, she tried to cover her nakedness.  The clothes were torn out of her hands.  She tried to sit down.  They forced her up.  She tried by turning to the wall to conceal herself from the many men in the room.  They forced her to turn round again.  When she tried to shelter herself with her hands, one man twisted her arms, held them behind her back, and kept them there while the beating and kicking continued.  She was so badly hurt that she would have fallen to the floor, but they held her up to continue the beating.  She was then sent into another room.  Later she and other women were again brought in the office.  “Do you know now how wrong it is to call ’Mansei’?” the police asked.  “Will you ever dare to do such a thing again?”

Gradually news of how the women were being treated spread.  A crowd of five hundred people gathered next morning.  The hot bloods among them were for attacking the station, to take revenge for the ill-treatment of their women.  The chief Christian kept them back, and finally a deputation of two went inside the police office to make a protest.  They spoke up against the stripping of the women, declaring it unlawful.  The Chief of Police replied that they were mistaken.  It was permitted under Japanese law.  They had to strip them to search for unlawful papers.  Then the men asked why only the younger women were stripped, and not the older, why they were beaten after being stripped, and why only women and not men were stripped.  The Chief did not reply.

By this time the crowd was getting very ugly.  “Put us in prison too, or release the prisoners,” the people called.  In the end the Chief agreed to release all but four of the prisoners.

Soon afterwards the prisoners emerged from the station.  One woman, a widow of thirty-two who had been arrested on the previous day and very badly kicked by the police, had to be supported on either side.  The wife of the Christian teacher had to be carried on a man’s back.  Let me quote from a description written by those on the spot: