Yoshiura Detention Center: Brothers in Arms Forged Behind Bars, 1947

Yoshiura Detention Center is a key setting for tracing the history of the yakuza in postwar Hiroshima. It corresponds to the current Kure Detention Branch of the Hiroshima Prison and is believed to have been called Yoshiura Detention Center because it was located in Yoshiura, Kure City. In 1947, Kozo Minou was arrested for a shooting incident in front of Kure Station and detained at Yoshiura Detention Center. There, Minou was reunited with Masahiro Onishi, who was already being held there. According to related online sources, the two are said to have formed a blood brotherhood in July of that same year within the detention center, where they were unable to perform the traditional sake-cup ritual. Masahiro Onishi was being held in connection with a case of assault resulting in death involving a Kure City Council member; he would later become known by the nickname “Devil Kewpie.” Kozo Minō, for his part, would also become deeply involved in the history of postwar gang conflicts in Kure and Hiroshima. While in detention, Minō was reportedly encouraged by Ōnishi to join the Yamamura-gumi; after being sentenced to 12 years in prison in September of that year, he was released on bail in December and subsequently became a junior member of the Yamamura-gumi. For this reason, the Yoshiura Detention Center can be viewed not merely as a detention facility, but as a place where personal and organizational relationships were reorganized during the postwar period of turmoil. It is important to note that personal connections leading to later power dynamics were formed not only through street gang warfare but also within the judicial system itself—through arrest, detention, trial, and imprisonment. As a place where Hiroshima’s postwar underworld and the judicial system intersected, the Yoshiura Detention Center provides a clue for understanding the history of Hiroshima’s gang wars from a different perspective.