The judge’s question floored members of the prosecution. “Imagine,” Mountz wrote in a letter to his father, “the Judge asking the defense counsel what the law is.” The defense could only object, so often, in fact, that it prompted an unusual query one day from Yamashita’s former chief of staff, Muto. “Who is this Mr. Jackson?” he asked. The defense lawyers realized that he had mistaken the word “objection” for “Jackson.” The lawyers joked that his last name was “Not sustained.”
