Sorge broke down in the Buddhist chaplain's room in Sugamo, after the signed statements by Klausen, Voukelitch, Ozaki, and Miyagi were shown to him. Yoshikawa made the following appeal: "What about your obligations as a human being? Your friends, who have risked their lives and families to work with you, for your cause, have confessed and may hope thereby to secure some mitigation, however slight, of their sentences. Are you going to abandon them to their fate? Are you going to betray them? Are you going to be remembered as a typical Western man, caring more about himself than anyone else? If I were in your place, I'd confess." Sorge said: "Honourable Procurator, I have been defeated, for which I congratulate you," after which he requested the pen (black-and-green Pelikan) and paper (blank sheet, hardcover notebook). He wrote an autobiographical confession, which amounted to some 50,000 words and began with the words: "For the first time in my life, I want to tell the truth: I have been a Communist since 1928."
 

 
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