Yoshie Shiratori

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Yoshie Shiratori (白鳥由栄, Shiratori Yoshie^?, July 31, 1907 - February 24, 1979) was a Japanese murderer. He is best known for having escaped from prisons four times.

He was born on Aomori Prefecture. He had a daughter. He committed a murder in 1933. He was arrested but he had complaints against prisons. There was no human right in prisons at that time. He escaped from the Aomori prison in 1936, but soon he was arrested again and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He escaped from the Akita prison in 1942. He was arrested again, and was sentenced to 3-years in prison. He rusted his handcuff and an inspection hole with miso soup and escaped from Abashiri prison in 1944. After the WW2, he injured a man and the man died. He was arrested again in 1946.

District court sentenced him to death and it made him angry. He dug a tunnel and escaped from Sapporo prison in 1947. In 1948, a policeman gave him a cigarette, and then Shiratori said that he was an escaped convict. High court revoked his death sentence and sentenced him to 20-years in prison, denying his intention of killing. He stayed in jail after that, and was paroled in 1961. He went to Aomori Prefecture in 1973, and he saw his daughter, but he didn't call her. He died of heart attack in 1979. His ashes were taken by a woman who was cared by him.

Shiratori became an anti-hero in Japan. Akira Yoshimura published a novel Hagoku based on him. There is his memorial in the Abashiri prison museum.^[1] His family name Shiratori means swan in Japanese.