- [Narrator] Here in the US, around 1 in every 200
people are incarcerated. But out of this staggering
1.9 million felons in the prison system, only
3% ever managed to break out. And most of those are from
low security facilities. However, in Japan, a prisoner
named Yoshie Shiratori became infamous for escaping
maximum security incarceration, not once, not twice, but
a whopping four times. And believe it or not, two of those times he used a bowl of miso soup to do it. Unsurprisingly, his story's pretty crazy. So stick around to find out why no jail could hold this incredible escape artist. (bright music) - Whoa.
(bell dings) - [Narrator] We'd like to
think life is fair, right? The good get rewarded and the
bad get punished accordingly. But does it actually work like that? For Yoshie Shiratori it didn't. Born in Aomori, Japan in 1907, he never knew his mother, and his father tragically passed when Shiratori was just two years old. Little orphan Shiratori
was adopted by a new family who owned a tofu shop. However, this was no free board. Every day he'd have to work
sunrise to sunset making tofu, which he did. And by the age of 21, he had a wife of his own and
three beautiful children. Yet Shiratori dreamed of giving
his children a better life. So he left the tofu shop
to work as a fisherman, but life aboard the
fishing boats was grueling. Many crew mates relied on
unsavory vices to get by. Shiratori's became gambling. The rush he got knowing one big win could change his family's
life forever got too much, and he squandered every yin he made until soon he was borrowing money to settle his gambling debts, then resorting to petty crimes to pay back the money he'd borrowed. Even with the best intentions, Shiratori's situation
spiraled into desperation. In 1933, at the age of 25, Shiratori and an accomplice
entered a general good store in the city of Aomori. But they weren't there for light shopping. Oh no, they were there to rob the place. However, a concerned shopper
named Takezo stepped in, defended the store, and
chased them down the street. Only there was a scuffle
between the three men where Takezo got seriously injured and devastatingly lost his life. To what degree Shiratori was involved, we can't be sure. We do know, however, that both Shiratori and his accomplice fled
and went into hiding. Two years later, Aomori
police eventually tracked down Shiratori's accomplice
who immediately snitched on Shiratori's whereabouts. After catching word of this,
Shiratori had two choices. He could run and pray the law or his conscious never caught up with him, or he could be the bigger
man and turn himself in. He chose the latter and put his fate in the hands of the law. Big mistake. After going to the the police, he realized they were less
interested in the truth and more interested in getting someone, anyone to pay for
Takezo's untimely passing. And it seemed Shiratori was
their number one target. Despite some intense physical
interrogation tactics by the police, however,
Shiratori told them nothing. But that in itself was
enough to find him guilty. And in 1936, he was sent to Aomori prison. If life outside of Aomori
was hard for Shiratori, life inside was even harder. His violent reputation
had prompted the guards to give him extra special punishments. And I don't mean went willies. Shiratori was treated worse
than any other inmate. And after enduring this for some time, he was thrown in solitary confinement where he spent four long months all alone. Well, not quite alone. His guards would regularly
stop by to rough him up. Day in, day out, the
violent treatment continued. Then early in the morning
of June 18th, 1936, the police chief's house
phone unexpectedly rang. (phone ringing) - [Police Chief] Hello. - S-s-sir, we've got a problem that requires your urgent attention. - [Police Chief] Go on. - Sir, some of the viewers haven't hit the like and subscribe buttons. - They what? Well, tell them to do it straight away. Don't they know it's the
only way to keep up-to-date with all of my amazing content? (Police chief clears throat) - Come on, you don't want to
anger the police chief now, do you? Let's get back to the video. - [Narrator] Okay, that was a joke. But there was a phone call to
the police chief that morning. It was from the guard on duty. At 5:30 a.m. he'd noticed
something looked off about Shiratori's bed and
called out to check on him. There was no response, so
he'd called again, louder. Still no response. In a fit of rage, the guard had marched in ready to teach the
disrespectful prisoner a lesson. Only when he pulled back the blanket, he realized the bed was full of pillows. Shiratori had gone. Upon hearing this, the police
chief immediately ordered a search party to set out and
look for the jilting jailbird. And hours later they
returned empty handed. How had this happened? Shiratori had been held
in solitary confinement day and night. It seems impossible he
could have slipped out, totally undetected, yet somehow he had. Boy, what a head scratcher. So what gives? Well, remember, Shiratori
had been spending almost every second of every day alone. Rather than wasting that time, he'd quietly studied the guards. He'd figured out that
after passing a cell, it took them about 15 minutes
to circle back around. This was the window of opportunity. The next issue was the hulking iron door he was locked behind. However, Shiratori had
a solution for that too. When he took a bath, he was given a bucket with a
metal wire handle to wash with. He secretly removed this
handle so he could use it as a makeshift lock pick. See, just beneath the
lock of his cell door was a small window guards used
to pass his meals through. By sticking his hand out this window, Shiratori could reach the
lock and try to pick it. It must have taken months of
persistent trial and error. But eventually Shiratori cracked it. Once it was done, he jimmied the lock, made his bed up to look
like he was still sleeping, then waited for the guard to pass. Okay, now he had 15 minutes to dash out, pick another lock at
the end of the corridor and make his getaway. Luckily, Shiratori didn't have to try and pick this one blind, so
amazingly he pulled it off. Phew, not bad for a
first time breakout, hey. As the days passed, word
spread around Aomori about a vicious criminal
who'd escaped isolation and was now stalking their streets, looking for his next victim. In reality, Shiratori had
run into the mountains and was living off whatever
berries he could forage. But after three days, he had to head back towards
the town in search of supplies. As an escaped con, he couldn't
just walk into a store and buy them, he had no dinero. And besides someone might recognize him. Instead, he resorted to
pre-prison tactics, stealing. But he got caught red-handed
trying to pull for supplies from a hospital. Dang. Shiratori begged for forgiveness, saying he'd only escaped because of how brutally he'd
been treated by the guards. But nobody cared. He was sent back to Aomori prison, only this time with a life sentence. (gulps)
Yikes. With this new sentence,
Shiratori was transferred from Aomori to Miyagi Prison
where he spent three years before moving again to Kosuge in Tokyo. Man, I bet he tried to break out again like a hundred times, right? Actually, no. He kept his head down
and did as he was asked. This is because Shiratori
actually had a good relationship with the guards,
especially the head guard, Ryomiya Kobayashi, who saw
Shiratori as a model prisoner. As the years rolled by, life at Kosuge was about
as good as prison can be. However, by 1941, Japan
was drawn into World War II and prisoners were evacuated out of Tokyo. Shiratori was moved once again, this time to Akita Prison. And here things really
took a turn for the worse. In Akita years of good
behavior didn't mean squat. Shiratori's reputation
as a vicious man outside and a disappearing delinquent
inside had followed him. And the guards at Akita
didn't take well to that. They placed him in a special cell, specifically designed for escapists. The ceiling was too high to reach and the walls were too smooth to climb. Aside from a tiny skylight in the roof, there was practically no sunlight. There wasn't even a window
to pass his food through. On top of that, Akita was bitterly cold. The guards forced
Shiratori to stay in seiza, a kneeling position all day. If they caught him disobeying orders, well, they'd teach him a painful lesson. Despite his terrible predicament though, Shiratori stayed surprisingly resolute. He taunted the guards threatening
to escape on their watch, so they'd get punished. In response, they became even more brutal. All the while, Shiratori was
scheming his next escape. And this one would be far
more ambitious than the first. The morning of June 15th, 1942
was wet from a heavy storm the night before. The guards began their usual
rounds banging on cell doors to wake the prisoners. But when they rattled Shiratori's door, there was no response. By now, their mutual hatred had peaked, so this was no surprise. The guard got ready to administer
Shiratori's first lesson of the day, except when
he swung the door open, the room was empty. Against all odds, Shiratori
had broken out from a cell, specially designed to keep him inside. And only he knew how. Immediately, the guards
contacted the district police who set up a cordon around the
area to catch the prisoner. Last time, Shiratori had shown up after just a couple of days, with enough patience, he'd mess up again, or so they thought. Days went by with no sign of Shiratori. Days became weeks and weeks became months. It wasn't until three
months after his escape that an unlikely associate
heard a knock at the door in the dead of the night. When Ryomiya Kobayashi opened his door, he found a thin, frail
man shivering in the cold. It was Shiratori. Kobayashi had heard of Shiratori's escape, but never would've dreamed
that he'd show up at his house. He invited him inside,
fed him, and gave him tea. Now, you're probably wondering
why an escaped prisoner would visit his former keeper
instead of, I don't know, writing him a letter. But Kobayashi had been kind to Shiratori and he had nowhere else to turn. The journey from Akita to
Kobayashi's house in Tokyo is an astonishing 339 miles. Shiratori explained that
he'd walked the whole way under the cover of darkness
to avoid recapture, eating whatever he could forage or steal. Once he'd arrived in Tokyo, he'd ask anyone that
would listen if they knew where Kobayashi lived. Eventually, he got lucky. Kobayashi was stunned. He knew Shiratori was honest, but he also knew he couldn't stay here. Together, they agreed
Shiratori would turn himself in at Kosuge police station and give evidence of his
poor treatment at Akita. Hopefully, they'd take pity on him and he'd get a fair trial than before. So that's what he did. Only things didn't go
exactly according to plan. Shiratori told the judge
about the brutal punishments he'd suffered at Akita, the isolation, the kneeling, the violence. But the judge only cared about one thing, how he'd escaped the cell. Shiratori sighed.
(sighs) It looked like coming
clean was the only way to help his case. Now, Shiratori had two
rather unique skills most people don't have. Firstly, he could dislocate
almost every joint in his body. This made him really good at
squeezing through tight spaces. If a gap was big enough for his head, he could wriggle the
rest of his body through. And the little skylight in his cell was just about big enough. Hold on though, wasn't the
skylight really high up? There's no way Shiratori
could have reached it to squeeze his body through, right? Well, that's where his
second skill comes in. He was outrageously strong, way stronger than the average human. Aside from me, of course. I'm freaking yoked.
(chuckles) Anyways, remember I said
the walls to his cell were deliberately smooth so you couldn't climb them vertically? Well, the cell was so small that Shiratori could press his palms against one wall and his feet against the opposite one and shimmy up horizontally. Whoa. Now, the only issue was
removing the skylight. Luckily, Mother Nature had
given him a head start. The wooden frame holding it
in place was old and rotten. With enough pressure, Shiratori could force it slightly open. Night after night he'd scale the wall to push the skylight a little further. Eventually, it got loose enough that he could push his whole head through, so he knew his body could follow suit. All that was left to do
was wait for a heavy storm so the guards wouldn't hear him scampering across the roof and make a break for it. Darn, that's impressive. Everyone in the courtroom was bewildered. Everyone, that is, except the judge. He added three years to
Shiratori's life sentence and sent him back to jail. Hold up, how do you
add to a life sentence? Well, life sentence
doesn't necessarily mean the rest of your life. It's indefinite, but most
have a clause called parole where the prisoner makes
a case for their release by showing evidence they've changed. If Shiratori got paroled,
he'd still have to serve three years after having
his life sentence dropped. Comprende? Great. Hopefully, you'll never
need that information again. Shiratori was prepared to go back to jail. After all, he was still a criminal. Only the cold at Akita had got to him. So he asked the judge if he
could do his time in Tokyo where it was warmer. The judge laughed and
instead sent Shiratori to Abashiri in the very north of Japan. And if you thought Akita sounded bad, (scoffs)
you ain't seen nothing. Abashiri was so numbingly cold, your breath froze against your eyebrows. Now, 35 years old, Shiratori was thrown into a bitter cell in nothing more than thin summer clothes. His new guards were taking
no chances this time, cuffing both hands and feet, and banning him from
working outside his cell like the other prisoners. And because he didn't work, Shiratori was only given
half the amount of food that his fellow prisoners ate, which was basic at best. Japanese prison food mainly
consisted of a bowl of rice and some salty miso soup. Still, I'd rather that than British food. Shiratori's only connection
to the outside world was a small surveillance
window in the door of his cell. Shiratori ignored any instructions or demands the guards made of him. Once a model prisoner, now he laid bound in his
cell, totally unresponsive. One morning a passing guard
saw Shiratori on his knees, face down with the handcuffs
removed from his wrist, and laid out in front of him. They charged in, searched his cell, and found a piece of metal
wire wrapped in paraffin paper. How he got hold of this, nobody knew. But one thing was clear, Shiratori was sending them a message, He could escape no matter
what they did to him. The guards were shaken. It was on them to send
a message in response. And boy oh boy, they did. Shiratori's handcuffs were replaced with new, far more burdensome ones. The new cuffs weighed over 40 pounds and fastened behind his
back with a thick metal bolt that needed two men to tighten it. In other words, there was
no keyhole for him to pick. Washing or bathing became impossible as removing the cuffs meant
filing through the metal. All he could do was sit there. As the weeks and months went by, the cuffs rubbed on his wrist and ankles and they became infested with maggots. Ugh, that's gross. I'm gonna barf. As for meal times, his food
portions were cut in half again. Now, Shiratori's rations
were a measly quarter of what his fellow prisoners ate. And because of the heavy
cuffs he had to eat face down in his soup bowl like a pig. Shiratori was in such dire straits that some guards even felt bad for him. But their job was to stop him escaping. And that's exactly what they'd
done or so they thought. Whilst on evening patrol on
the 26th of August, 1944, two guards heard a
shattering crash above them. As they looked up, they saw
a darting figure disappear through a broken skylight. Panic set in, as they rushed to check which prisoner had escaped. Everyone was accounted
for except Shiratori. When they looked through his cell window, they saw his bed was made,
his clothes folded on top, and the special handcuffs
were lying on the floor. A search party immediately
set out to look for him. But after a few fruitless hours, they gave up. Their cruel efforts to
contain him had failed. Shiratori was gone again. Only this time, it didn't take
them long to figure out how. The thick metal bolt which
held the handcuffs together was horribly corroded. Over years this will
happen to most metals. But the bolt showed decades
of wear after mere months, and it had this weird
residue on the surface. A guard rather bravely tasted
it and realized it was salty. That same salty residue
was found on the bolts that held the surveillance window of Shiratori's cell together too. Hmm, over to you detectives. What do you reckon? (countdown beeping) All right, answers locked in. Excellente. Remember, I said prison
food was mostly rice and salty miso soup? Well, any other prisoner
would gulp down the hot soup to abate the deathly chill. Shiratori thought differently. He'd save a tiny amount of soup every day to drip onto the handcuffs and the bolts on the surveillance windows frame. To understand why we're gonna have to do a little bit of science. Basically, when water touches metal, it creates something called
an oxidation reaction, where the metal loses
electrons to the oxygen present in water. This makes the metal corrode and rust. With me so far? Cool. Now salt is an electrolyte, meaning when it's mixed
with water, like in a soup, the resulting solution conducts electrons much quicker than normal water. So the oxidation reaction happens faster and the metal corrodes faster too. In other words, the salty soup was perfect for wearing down the metal bolts and facilitating Shiratori's escape. (Narrator laughs) But wait, how the devil
would he know this? I'm not sure. But he was a fisherman at sea. Salt water, the ocean, big metal ships. Dangnabbit, he's a genius. After months of dripping
soup onto the bolts, they finally corroded and came loose. The door bolts went first, but Shiratori left them in so
the guards wouldn't notice. Then about a month before the escape, the large bolt on the
cuffs came loose too. After squeezing out of the shackles and getting loosey goosey with his joints through the surveillance window, Shiratori scampered up the wall and burst out through the skylight. Boom, gone. Mind frickin' blown. And that's not all. Shiratori had planned to escape
the night prior, the 25th, but the patrol guards that
night had been kind to him. Had he escaped whilst they were on duty, they'd have gotten in trouble for it. So Shiratori held on one day longer, further risking his plan getting
foiled all for the guards. (sniffing)
Now, that's a real bro. After this escape, Shiratori
went totally off grid. By now, he'd lost all
faith in the justice system and returning to society
would be too great of a risk. So he spent almost two years
living entirely by himself in the mountains. It's hard to know if he
even saw another person during this time. However, even with all his experience in solitary confinement, living so disconnected took its toll. One evening in 1946,
Shiratori traveled down into a nearby town, snuck into the school
and found a newspaper. As he read, it dawned on
him how much he'd missed in the year since his last escape. He was shocked to read
that two atomic bombs had been dropped on Japanese cities. Shiratori hadn't even known
Japan had lost the war. Maybe seeing life returning to normal, even after such tragedy, gave Shiratori hope that his
life too could do the same. Whatever it was, he knew
he couldn't continue living in the mountains alone. So he decided to head towards
the nearby city of Sapporo and figure out his next steps. Regrettably, things didn't go to plan. Along the way, he stumbled
across a vegetable garden. Whether he tried to steal from it or not, we'll never know. But the owner of the
garden mistook Shiratori for a local thief who'd
been plundering his fields. He chased Shiratori and attacked him. As Shiratori tried to defend himself, the gardener suffered a
mortal wound and bled out. Oh, rats. The commotion alerted local police and Shiratori was quickly arrested again. His pleas of self-defense were useless. His extensive record of murder, thievery, and, well, prison breaks said otherwise. Shiratori was sent to Sapporo
prison and sentenced to death. (scoffs)
Yikes. There go my hopes for a happy ending. Hold up, didn't I say he
escaped prison four times? I only count three so far. Surely slippery Shiratori can't
escape death though, right? (laughs)
Just you wait and see. See, Sapporo Prison
tried to play it smart. They acquired his previous escape records and reinforced Shiratori's
cell accordingly. A pair of armed guards kept
permanent watch outside. And every day, Shiratori and his cell were searched for any
evidence of an escape attempt. They never found anything. In fact, Shiratori was
on his best behavior. He did everything the guards asked. They were so confident he'd never escape, that they didn't even
bother handcuffing him. Their only suspicion
was he kept looking up, like he was scanning for an exit. Knowing his previous skylight antics, the guards knew better
than to take this lightly. So once a week when Shiratori was bathing, they'd thoroughly inspect the ceiling. They found nothing. Nevertheless, on April 1st, 1947, Shiratori disappeared for
a fourth and final time. Despite the best efforts
of the Sapporo guards, Shiratori had outsmarted them. Okay, so what the hell happened this time? Well, those looks he
shot up at the ceiling, were to draw their eye
away from where the action was really happening,
right below their feet. Upon inspecting Shiratori's empty cell, a guard found one of
the wooden floorboards beneath his bed was sawn in half. Beneath that was a small alcove and stashed inside was a metal hoop that had once been wrapped
around the cell toilet. Now, it was fashioned into a saw and laid beside a soup bowl left over from one of Shiratori's meals. It turns out Shiratori
had used an old nail to make serrated teeth on the hoop. For months he'd been secretly
sawing through the floorboard, squeezing through the gap, and using his trusty
old friend the soup bowl to grueling dig his way to freedom. He hadn't even had to
remove any cuffs to do so. The guards' overconfidence
had seen to that. Damn. Once more, search teams set
out and came back empty handed. This was Shiratori's final and perhaps most ingenious escape. Yet again, he fled into the mountains and was lost to the world. Over nine months later,
on January 19th, 1948, a police officer patrolling
Kotoni-Cho near Sapporo, spotted a strange looking
man carrying a large bindle. Sensing he was up to something shady, the officer asked his name. The man responded, "Kimura." The officer then asked if he
could look inside his bag. Kimura happily obliged. Inside were pots, kettles, and bowls. Nothing untoward like the
policeman had expected. He was ready to let Kimura go
when the man quietly asked, "Excuse me, sir? Could you please spare me a cigarette?" In the post-war years,
cigarettes were a lavish expense. But the officer took pity on Kimura and gave him what he asked for. Kimura smoked it for a
while before whispering, "Thank you, sir. Honestly, my name is not Kimura. It's Yoshie Shiratori. I'm an escaped convict who
fled from Sapporo prison last year." Shiratori's life had been
so devoid of kindness that the simple act of being
given a cigarette broke him. He followed the policeman to
the Sapporo police station where he awaited his next trial. Except this time when he made it to court, something was different. The judge recognized the
garden accident outside Sapporo was self-defense without malicious intent and revoked the death penalty. Whoa. Furthermore, the judge acknowledged that in spite of years of mistreatment by the prison service, Shiratori had never once tried
to harm any of the guards. And it wasn't like he couldn't have. In fact, apart from the
original crime in Aomori, he'd never actively tried to hurt anyone. The judge gave him a revised sentence of 20 years imprisonment and granted his request to serve his time at Fuchu Prison in Tokyo as he wished. Shiratori's arrival at Fuchu
put the guards on edge, but they trialled a softer
approach towards him. They gave him a job looking
after the prison gardens and let him participate in
prison sports and athletics. Even though he was well into his 40s, he'd now wrestle men
half his age with ease. One afternoon while Shiratori was resting in the prison grounds, the prison warden called out to him, "Hey, Shiratori. That wall is only 6 1/2 feet high, someone with your skills
could climb that easily. Why haven't you?" Shiratori looked at the
man smiled and said, "I'm tired." After escaping prison
four times in 11 years and spending three years on
the run, he'd had enough. It was a young man's game. He was still strong, yes, but not as strong as he once was. Moreover, he simply lacked the
motivation to escape again. Shiratori hadn't escaped so many times because of prison itself. It was for his own protection against the violent prison guards. But at Fuchu he finally felt safe. The warden smiled back at him and decided then and there to
apply for Shiratori's parole. It still took a whopping
10 years to clear. But eventually on December 21st, 1961, Shiratori left prison for the final time. Not through a skylight or tunnel, but through the front door as a free man. After his release, he spent
his final years in Tokyo working as a laborer. But even for our hoodlum Houdini, there's one sentence
none of us can escape. In 1979 at the age of
71, Shiratori passed away and his ashes were buried in a cemetery overlooking Mount Fuji. (sighs)
What a life. I'm not saying he didn't do
bad stuff, he definitely did. Still, you see how one bad move can lead to a million others. It's a slippery slope out there. Criminals are complicated people too. Just because your life may or may not have
led you down that path, doesn't necessarily make
you a good or bad person. Take me, as long as the
IRS don't figure out my true identity, my tiny
hiney's never going anywhere near a jail.
(screams) Right, that's enough of
my smooth and sultry voice for one video. Make sure you leave a comment down below 'cause I'd love to hear your
thoughts on Shiratori's story. Shirastory. Darn it, why'd it take so long
for me to come up with that? Anyways, thanks for watching. (gentle music)
