14. Sugamo Prison in Tokyo was built and operated on the prevalent European model of the time
In the early 1890s Japanese officials toured several of the prisons operated in the European countries of the day and developed recommendations for the construction of a prison in Tokyo to be operated in a similar manner. The result was Sugamo Prison, which opened in 1895. During the rise of militarism in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s it became the site where political dissidents were sent as prisoners, mingled among the criminals which had been convicted by the Japanese legal system. It also became known and feared as a site where the Japanese military and secret police (the kampetai) tortured and executed those suspected of sedition, espionage, sabotage, and other crimes against the government.
In 1941 a Russian spy working undercover as a journalist in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, informed Stalin that the Japanese were planning an attack on the Americans and would not invade Siberia. The information allowed Stalin to transfer significant numbers of troops and equipment to the west for the defense of Moscow. Sorge was later caught, tortured, and executed by the Japanese at Sugamo. The United States used the prison to hold Japanese war criminals after World War II and seven were executed within the prison’s walls. Others served their sentences there, including Iva Toguri, known to history as Tokyo Rose. Sugamo Prison was closed in 1962, and demolished in 1971.