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Japanese Red Army
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The was a militant far-left group founded by Fusako Shigenobu in February 1971 after she broke away from the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction. The group claimed to have about 40 members at its height and was at one time one of the best-known armed leftist groups in the world. The JRA has close ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but the claim that it ran operations alongside the PFLP has never been proven and a letter claiming the responsibility for the Lod Airport Massacre was rejected by the JRA and PFLP as an attempt to arrest leading members of the PFLP.
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The was a militant far-left group founded by Fusako Shigenobu in February 1971 after she broke away from the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction. The group claimed to have about 40 members at its height and was at one time one of the best-known armed leftist groups in the world. The JRA has close ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but the claim that it ran operations alongside the PFLP has never been proven and a letter claiming the responsibility for the Lod Airport Massacre was rejected by the JRA and PFLP as an attempt to arrest leading members of the PFLP. By the early 1980s, the JRA was no longer active in Japan and was almost entirely dependent on the PFLP for financing, training and weaponry. The United Red Army wasn't the Japanese Red Army, but they had the same origin (the group in Japan was called Rengo Sekigun and the group outside Japan was called Nihon Sekigun).
The JRA's stated goals were to overthrow the Japanese government and monarchy and to start a world revolution.
The group was also known as the Anti-Imperialist International Brigade (AIIB), Nippon Sekigun, Nihon Sekigun, Holy War Brigade, and the Anti-War Democratic Front.
In April 2001, Shigenobu issued a statement from detention declaring the Japanese Red Army had disbanded.
Members
- Haruo Wako, former leader, arrested in February 1997.
- Osamu Maruoka, former leader, arrested in November 1987.
- Fusako Shigenobu, founder and leader. In November 2000, she was arrested in Osaka, Japan. This surprised many people since she was thought to live in Lebanon. Shigenobu is accused of orchestrating attacks, kidnappings and hijackings. At one time labeled by critics as "the most feared female terrorist in the world", she helped plan the 1972 attack at Lod Airport. A court in Tokyo sentenced her in February 2006 to serve 20 years in prison.
- Yu Kikumura was arrested with explosives on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1988 and served a long prison sentence in the United States. In April 2007 Kikumura was released from US incarceration and immediately arrested upon his return to Japan. He was released in October, 2007.
- Yoshimi Tanaka was sentenced to 12 years for the hijacking that ended in North Korea.
- Yukiko Ekita, a long-time JRA leader, was arrested in March 1995 in Romania and subsequently deported to Japan. She received a sentence of 20 years for attempted murder and violating the explosives law in a series of bombings targeting large companies in 1974 and 1975. The trial of Ekita was originally started in 1975 but was suspended when she was released from prison in 1977. Her release was part of a deal with the Japanese Red Army during the hijacking of a Japanese airliner to Bangladesh.
- Kozo Okamoto was one of the members involved in the attack on the Israeli Lod airport, now Ben Gurion International Airport, in 1972. He was jailed in Israel following the Tel Aviv airport attack. In May 1985, Okamoto was freed in an exchange of prisoners between Israeli and Palestinian forces. Subsequently, he was imprisoned in Lebanon for three years for forging visas and passports. The Lebanese authorities granted Okamoto asylum in 1999 because he was alleged to have been tortured in prison in Israel.
- Masao Adachi, Kazuo Tohira, Haruo Wako, and Mariko Yamamoto were also imprisoned in Lebanon on charges of forgery yet were sent to Jordan. As the Jordanian authorities refused to allow them into Jordan, they were handed over to Japan. In January 2005, Yamamoto shoplifted dried cuttlefish (a Japanese popular relish taken with beer) at a supermarket in Tokyo and was arrested.
- Kuniya Akagi, a collaborator of the JRA, was arrested after returning to Osaka from Pyongyang via Beijing in order to be questioned over the kidnapping of three Japanese nationals in Europe by North Korean spies in the 1980s. He is linked to Shiro Akagi, a JRA urban guerilla who participated in the Japan Airlines Flight 351 hijacking.
- The government hopes to extradite several others members from North Korea, which granted them asylum. The issue is one of several blocking the establishment of diplomatic ties between Pyongyang and Tokyo.
Activities
During the 1970s and 1980s, JRA carried out a series of attacks around the world, including:
- March 31, 1970: Nine members of the JRA's predecessor, the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction, conducted Japan's most infamous hijacking, that of Japan Airlines Flight 351, a domestic Japan Airlines Boeing 727 carrying 129 people at Tokyo International Airport. Wielding katanas and a bomb, they forced the plane to fly to Fukuoka and later Gimpo Airport in Seoul, where all the passengers were freed. It then flew to North Korea, where the hijackers abandoned the plane and the crewmembers were released. Tanaka was the only one to be convicted. Three of Tanaka's alleged accomplices later died in North Korea and five remain there. According to Japan's National Police Agency, another accomplice may also have died in North Korea.
- May 30, 1972: The Lod Airport Massacre: an assault rifle (Sa vz.58) and grenade attack on Israel's Lod Airport in Tel Aviv, now Ben Gurion International Airport, killed 24 people; about 80 others were injured. One of the three attackers then killed themselves with a grenade, although some believe this to be an accident. Another was shot in the crossfire of the only surviving attacker Kozo Okamoto. Some speculate that this act inspired later Palestinian suicide attacks. It has been claimed that the PFLP was behind the attack but this has never been proven but the PFLP has supported the JRA for their stand against Israel.
- July 1973: Red Army members led a hijacking of Japan Airlines (JAL) plane over the Netherlands. The passengers and crew were released in Libya, where hijackers blew up the plane.
- January 1974: Laju incident: Red Army attacked a Shell facility in Singapore and took five hostages; simultaneously, the PFLP seized the Japanese embassy in Kuwait. The hostages were exchanged for a ransom and safe passage to South Yemen in a Japan Airlines plane.
- September 13, 1974: The French Embassy in The Hague, Netherlands was stormed. The ambassador and ten other people were taken hostage and a Dutch policewoman, Hanke Remmerswaal, was shot in the back, puncturing a lung. After lengthy negotiatons, the hostages were freed in exchange for the release of a jailed Red Army member (Yatsuka Furuya), $300,000 and the use of a plane. The plane flew the hostage-takers first to Aden, South Yemen, where they were not accepted and then to Syria. Syria did not consider hostage taking for money revolutionary, and forced them to give up their ransom.
- August 1975: The Red Army took more than 50 hostages at the AIA building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hostages included the US consul and the Swedish chargé d'affaires. The gunmen won the release of five imprisoned comrades and flew with them to Libya.
- September 1977: The Red Army hijacked Japan Airlines Flight 472 over India and forced it to land in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Japanese Government freed six imprisoned members of the group and allegedly paid a $6M ransom.
- December 1977: A suspected lone member of the army hijacked Malaysia Airlines Flight 653. The flight was carrying the Cuban ambassador to Tokyo, Mario Garcia. The Boeing 737 then crashed killing all onboard after he shot both pilots and himself.
- May 1986: The Red Army fired mortar rounds at the embassies of Japan, Canada and the United States in Jakarta, Indonesia.
- June 1987: A similar attack was launched on the British and United States embassies in Rome, Italy.
- April 1988: Red Army members bombed the US military recreational (USO) club in Naples, Italy, killing five.
- In the same month, JRA operative Yu Kikumura was arrested with explosives on the New Jersey Turnpike highway, apparently to coincide with the USO bombing. He was convicted of these charges and served time in a United States prison until his release in April 2007. Upon his return to Japan he was immediately arrested on suspicion of using fraudulent travel documents.
- The JRA launched a series of 17 bombings on buildings belonging to large corporations, including Mitsui & Co. and Taisei Corp, injuring 20 people. Eight people were killed in the bombing of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.'s head office building in Tokyo.
Depiction in media
- In 2008, Japanese director Koji Wakamatsu released the movie Jitsuroku Rengo Sekigun depicting the events that took place during the student movements in Japan.
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