44 Days In Hell.

44 Days In Hell - The Story Of Junko Furuta

The calendar read "January 4th, 1989." She woke up in the room that she wished was her own, but alas, was a room she recognized far too well.

Her body weak, in pain from the torture she endured the past 44 days. Her arms, legs, back, and stomach were cut, bruised, and tattered from the beatings and rape Hiroshi Miyano, Jo Ogura, Nobuharu Minato, and Yasushi Watanabe performed, simply because she was Junko. Mustering up all her strength, she tries to crawl away from this room. She had been held against her will since November 25th; the day Hiroshi and Nobuharu made the conscious decision to lure her into an abandoned warehouse and rape her. 

Junko Furuta was a loving daughter, a sister, and a hard worker. She was a star student at Yashio-Minami High School, which is where she met Hiroshi Miyano. She had good grades, near-perfect attendance, and worked a part-time job after school at a plastic molding company. On the day she was abducted, she was riding her bike home from her part-time job when Nobuharu was instructed by Hiroshi to knock Junko off her bike; a common form of mischief performed by the boys in town at the time. Once she fell off her bike, Nobuharu ran off, and Hiroshi acted as if he coincidentally was in the area and witnessed the attack. He offered to walk her home in case anyone came back to attack her again and suggested they walk a different route, in the instance, the assailant knew her usual route home. Junko graciously accepted this offer.

Hiroshi wasn't the Romeo that he portrayed this day, it was all staged. Most people, including his mother and father, were afraid of Hiroshi due to his affiliations with the yakuza (or otherwise known as the Japanese mafia). Hiroshi had made passes to Junko before, but she was so focused on school and her part-time job, she politely declined each time and it's believed that this is what caused Hiroshi to target her. Junko, unfortunately, only was aware of affiliation with the yakuza the day he walked her into an abandoned warehouse instead of her home. 

"Why didn't she just run when she realized what was happening?" you might ask yourself. Why didn't she try to escape as soon as she realized what was happening? It was because she was terrified of yakuza, and now she was terrified of Hiroshi; he had threatened to kill her if she screamed or ran away. Once Hiroshi was done having his way with her, he moved her from the warehouse to a nearby hotel. At the hotel, he called Nobuharu and the rest of his friends. Once the group got to the hotel, Hiroshi bragged about the rape and Jo Ogura had a small request... To keep her captive and invite MORE people to have sex with her. The friend group did have a reported history of gang rape, so this wasn't a new concept for the boys. They had recently kidnapped and raped another girl, why not do the same with Junko? They can just release her after as they did the last victim.

Early the next morning, Hiroshi took Junko to his home. There, Jo, Nobuharu, and Yasushi stood waiting. They had her backpack with all her personal belongings. This gave them everything they needed to know about her; where she lived was the most crucial piece of information for them. They had the upper hand now, threatening to kill her and her family if she tried to escape. She was completely overpowered by these four boys and struggled to fight them off as she was gang-raped again. 

At this point, Junko's family had grown concerned and worried. She had not come home from work that day, and they were unable to reach her at any of her friend's homes. On November 27th, they phoned the local police and tried to file a missing person's report. Once the gang heard of the missing person's report, they forced Junko to call her mother and say she had simply run away with a friend and to have the police stop looking for her. This way, it would discourage any further investigations about her disappearance.

Because Hiroshi had her captive at home, they had to come up with a reason she was there in case his parents asked who she was. It was agreed that she would pose as one of the kidnapper's girlfriend, but the lie fell off when the boys realized that Hiroshi's parents were too afraid to even call the police. The Minato's would eventually tell authorities in an interview that they didn't intervene due to Hiroshi's connections to the yakuza and feared for their lives had they tried to get the police involved.

For 44 grueling days, she was abused, raped, beaten, and tortured. Other members of the yakuza (believed to be around 100 men and up to 12 in one day) would routinely visit the home to torment and rape Junko. According to trial statements, it's been claimed she had been raped over 400 times collectively. They would beat her mercilessly, treating her as their "human punching bag," hung from the ceiling. They starved her and would force her to eat live cockroaches and drink her own urine. They dropped dumbbells on her stomach, bashed her face with golf clubs or against the cement floor, made her sing to songs while they beat her, and at times forced her to masturbate to arouse the men. They sodomized her with household objects, including a lit light bulb, scissors, and even lit fireworks. They burned her vagina with lighters and cigarettes. They burned her eyelids with hot wax. Tore her nipples off with pliers and would pierce her breasts with sewing needles. The torture was day-in, day-out. It was reported by one of the gang members that she was tormented so badly, she would fall in and out of consciousness, to which they would then submerge her head in water to continue the torture. 

Junko did try to save herself. One attacker recalled an instance where they were resting after a long day of drinking and caught her trying to call the police. They punished her by drenching her feet with lighter fluid and burning them. This caused severe burns to her already badly bruised legs, which made it impossible to walk the last 20 days of her life. She was unable to use her hands properly due to all the broken bones inside them. By the 30th day, she was unable to control her bowel movements due to all the internal damage to her organs, vulva, and rectum. It would take her over an hour to crawl to the restroom, so she began urinating and defecating where she lay... this lead to more beatings.

On January 4th, Hiroshi challenged her to a game of Mahjong (which is like a cross between rummy and dominoes). Junko ended up winning the round and this severely angered Hiroshi and the other boys. They began beating her with a barbell and set her body on fire. This was all Junko was able to handle. This was the final blow...

Junko would finally die from all her injuries. She was only 17.

Once Nobuharu's brother realized Junko was dead and not unconscious, the group wrapped her body and put her in a 55gal drum. They filled this drum with wet cement and threw the drum into a cement truck headed to Kyoto.

Remember the other girl the group raped? She had reported her assailants to the police and was able to identify Hiroshi and Jo Ogura. On January 23rd they would be arrested for this kidnapping and rape and on March 29th they'd be interrogated as the police found women's underwear in their possession. During the interrogation, the interviewing officer led Hiroshi to believe they were aware of a murder he had committed. This was the murder of another woman, who was NOT Junko, who had been killed alongside her seven-year-old son. At this point, Hiroshi fell under the notion that Jo confessed to everything regarding the death of Junko, so proceeded to tell the officers where they would be able to find Junko's body. The officers were shocked and confused by this confession as it wasn't the person they were initially looking for. They took this confession seriously, followed the directions Hiroshi had given them and found the drum containing Junko's lifeless body.

When authorities finally got hold of Junko's body, they found soda bottles stuck in her anus, and her face so mutilated they were unable to immediately identify that it was Junko. She was only able to be positively identified via fingerprints. Autopsy reports also showed that she was pregnant at the time of her death. DNA evidence would help identify and officially charge Tetsuo Nakamura and Koichi Ihara after finding their DNA on her body. It was originally believed that Koichi was coerced into raping Junko out of fear of the yakuza, as he told his brother what happened earlier at Hiroshi's home. Koichi's brother told their parents, and the police were called. Two officers would be dispatched to Hiroshi's home but were told there was no girl inside. The police were even invited in to check the premises and in a maddening turn of events, they declined the offer believing the invitation to go inside was good enough proof that there was nothing wrong. Had the police checked the home, they'd find a badly beaten Junko and her ordeal would've ended at 16 days. She would most definitely be alive today. The two officers faced major backlash from the community (rightfully so) and would be fired for not following proper procedures.

The arrest of Jo Ogura, Yasushi Watanabe, Nobuharu Minato, and Hiroshi's brother would follow the confession. Although this was shocking, widespread, national news, the names, and identities of the boys who killed Junko were withheld because the Japanese court considered them juveniles and not adults, despite them being between the ages of 17-19 years old at the time of her murder. Although they were tried as juveniles, they would face adult sentences. These sentences would be moot, as each perpetrator served less than 9 years in jail, except for Hiroshi. Hiroshi was originally set to 17 years in prison for the crime but was given an added three years by a high court judge when he attempted to appeal his sentence. After the men’s release from prison, they all changed their names to keep their anonymity. As a way to make some amends for the atrocities her son committed in her home, Hiroshi's mother ultimately paid Junko's family 50 million yen (which translates to $425,000 US dollars) after she sold the home where the torture took place.

Junko would have her funeral helps on April 2nd, 1989. One memorial card from a friend read:

"Jun-chan, welcome back. I have never dreamed that we would see you again in this way. You must have been in so much pain ... so much suffering ... The happi we all made for the school festival looked really good on you. We will never forget you. I have heard that the headmaster has presented you with a graduation certificate. So we graduated together – all of us. Jun-chan, there is no more pain, no more suffering. Please rest in peace"

The location where Junko's body was found in the cement drum has been developed since and is now a park.