He heard the footsteps approaching down the hall outside. He sat still, barely breathing. The other cells lay equally silent. None of the other condemned prisoners moved. No one spoke. Those footsteps meant only one thing: there was going to be a hanging.

For 28 years, Kenjiro Ishii spent every morning on death row in sheer terror. Fearing that he would hear the footsteps, and that this time they would stop outside his cell door, and that he would then be led away. All that time, though, he hoped against hope that someone might believe in his innocence and that of his co-accused, Takeo Nishi, and that they would be freed.

Then, one day in June 1975, the footsteps stopped at Ishii's cell. This is it, he thought, hurriedly scribbling down a will. Then he was swept out of his cell -- not, as he'd thought, to be taken to his death on the scaffold, but to be taken to the office of the governor, who informed him that his death sentence had been commuted to one of life imprisonment.

"I was so sure that I was going to be executed," said Ishii.

"I was so happy. Nishi and I had a dream of going to an onsen to clean our bodies before meeting up with Tairyu Furukawa [a Buddhist priest, and their former death-row chaplain who campaigned ceaselessly for their retrial] once we were out.

"But that was when they told me -- Nishi had been executed that same morning." However, no reason has ever been given for the two men's different fates.

In 1956, Ishii and Nishi were sentenced to death after being convicted of robbery and murder in 1947 in what came to be known as the Fukuoka Incident. After two clothes merchants were shot dead on a street in downtown Fukuoka City, seven men were arrested. Of those, five were jailed for various terms, while Ishii and Nishi -- the alleged ringleaders -- were sentenced to death.

Prosecutors said the pair conspired in planning and carrying out the crime, with Nishi the mastermind and Ishii the hit man.

World War II had just ended and Ishii, a former soldier, had a gun. He admitted shooting the two men -- but claimed self-defense. He said he thought the other men were gangsters and it looked like one of them was reaching into a pocket for a gun.

Nishi, however, was not at the scene of the crime. Both also swore they had met each other for the first time that day, so could not have been co-conspirators. But the court didn't believe them.

"It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life," said Ishii, of the day his death sentence was commuted. "Instead, Nishi was executed. A warden kindly told me Nishi's final words, which were: 'Ishii, you fight for both of us till the end.' And I promised myself that I would."

After serving 28 years on death row, Ishii, now 87, spent 14 more years in Kumamoto Prison before finally being released on parole in 1989.

That Ishii was not left to die alone in a cell may owe a lot to that Buddhist priest, Furukawa, from the Seimeizan Schweitzer Temple in Kumamoto Prefecture. Furukawa, who died in 2000, first met the men during their trial in 1952, when he was a chaplain at Fukuoka Detention House. Over the next 10 years, he and the condemned men had countless conversations about the incident and these, together with his own intensive research, convinced him of their innocence.

In 1961, Furukawa started a campaign calling for a retrial, and from then on he dedicated his life to traveling around Japan spreading word of their wrongful convictions.

"That is why we were all so shocked when Nishi was executed," said Michiko Furukawa, the priest's widow. "We collected Nishi's remains and took them to see the scene of the crime because he had never been there. Nishi was a wonderful person. We were in tears that day."

So convinced of his mission was Furukawa that he spent virtually everything he had on it. Michiko even recalled that at times their water and gas were cut off because they had run out of cash. As well, the priest submitted a handwritten, 2,000-page dossier to the justice minister presenting evidence, which he believed merited a retrial.

At the heart of the controversy that still surrounds the Fukuoka Incident is the issue of forced confessions extracted by the police and presented to prosecutors as the basis of a case.

"I had three men holding me down, forcing me to stamp my thumb on the record," said Ishii. "Nishi stamped his on a blank piece of paper, believing the policemen when they said they would make sure things would go in his favor."

This appears to have happened to all those detained over the incident. Kiyoki Fujinaga, who was jailed for five years for aiding and abetting a robbery and murder, said he was also forced to confess.

"The police put pencils between each of my fingers and squeezed my hand tightly," said Fujinaga. "They also said that I better confess because Nishi wasn't talking and [Fujinaga and the other four] could end up with a death sentence. So, during our exercise hour [at the detention center], we got together and cooked up a story that was sure to put [Nishi and Ishii] in a bad position."

According to Mitsuhide Yahiro, the lawyer representing Nishi and Ishii in the ongoing campaign for a retrial, forced confessions are extracted all the time in Japan.

"The fact is, every investigator gets the urge to force a confession," said the Fukuoka-based lawyer. "Because when the accused are in the hands of the police, there is a vertical psychological relationship between them. It's like putting a mouse into the cat's cage. If you were locked up in police hands for 20 days, anyone would confess because you are driven to despair."

Throughout the 40 years of the Fukuoka Incident campaign, which is now led by Furukawa's wife and children, requests for a retrial of Nishi and Ishii's case have been denied five times. Undaunted, though, the campaigners, together with Yahiro, are now preparing a sixth appeal.

"The criminal-justice system is very fragile because those who are administering justice also control the investigation and the information," said Yahiro. "But if someone insists on their innocence, we must at least be doubtful of their guilt. And the system must be changed so that false accusations and forced confessions are never simply accepted as fact."