The Childhood Friend Of St. Paul Miki, S.J. Was His Exacutioner

Father Baptiste had sent a letter to the Jesuits of Nagasaki asking that, if possible, arrangements be made for administering the sacraments to the prisoners. All that the officials would grant was that Father Paez might go to one of the towns through which the captives would pass and there shrive Miki and his two companions. Paez received the vows of the two latter, thus admitting them into the Society. Father Rodriguez, who had come to Nagasaki, managed to gain access to the prisoners and to administer the sacraments to some of them. As Terasawa, the Governor of Nagasaki, who had been secretly baptised, was absent at this time, the care of the execution came upon his brother Hasaburo. He as a boy had been a playmate of Paul Miki, and for years he had seen nothing of him until he met him among the captives that he must put to death.

Link (here) to the book entitled, A History of the Catholic Church in Japan by Otis Cary