Japanese Red Army

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Japanese Red Army
日本赤軍
Leader(s) Fusako Shigenobu
Dates of operation 1971–2002
Motives Proletarian revolution in Japan, World Revolution
Active region(s) Japan, Southeast Asia and Middle East
Ideology Communism,
Marxism–Leninism,
Anti-imperialism,
Anti-Zionism
Notable attacks Lod Airport massacre
Japan Airlines Flight 351
Malaysian Airline System Flight 653 (suspected)
Status Defunct, now replaced by Movement Rentai

The Japanese Red Army (日本赤軍 Nihon Sekigun?, JRA) was a communist militant group founded by Fusako Shigenobu early in 1971 in Lebanon. After the Lod airport massacre, it sometimes called itself Arab-JRA. The JRA's stated goals were to overthrow the Japanese government and the monarchy, as well as to start a world revolution.

The group was also known as the Anti-Imperialist International Brigade (AIIB), Holy War Brigade, and the Anti-War Democratic Front.

Red Army Faction in Japan

Shigenobu had been a leading member of the Red Army Faction (Sekigun-ha) in Japan, whose roots lay in the militant new-left Communist League. Advocating imminent revolution, they set up their own group, declaring war on the state in September 1969. The police quickly arrested many of them, including founder and intellectual leader Takaya Shiomi, who was in jail by 1970. The Sekigun lost about 200 members, and the remnants merged with a Maoist group to form the Rengo Sekigun or United Red Army in July, 1971. This group became notable during the Asama-Sanso incident, when it purged twelve of its members in a training camp hideout on Mount Haruna, before a week-long siege involving hundreds of police. Fusako Shigenobu had left Japan with only a handful of dedicated people, but her group is said to have had about 40 members at its height and was from the Lod airport massacre on one of the best-known armed leftist groups in the world.[1] The Japanese Red Army, Nihon Sekigun from 1971 had very close ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). By 1972 the United Red Army in Japan was finished and the Shigenobu group dependent on the PFLP for financing, training and weaponry.

In April 2001, Shigenobu issued a statement from detention declaring the Japanese Red Army had disbanded.[2] A 2011 NPR reported Tsutomi Shirosaki, a member of this group was imprisoned in a highly restrictive Communication Management Unit in the American Midwest.[3]

The JRA was the only terrorist group to publicly claim responsibility for the September 11 attacks[citation needed]. Al-Jazeera and AFP both received anonymous phone calls from callers claiming responsibility for the 9/11 attacks in the name of the Red Army.[citation needed]

The National Police Agency publicly stated that a successor group to the JRA was founded called Movement Rentai.[4]

Known members

Activities

During the 1970s and 1980s, JRA carried out a series of attacks in Japan and around the world, including:

  • March 31, 1970: nine members of the JRA's predecessor, the Red Army Faction (whose leaders had been a part of the Communist League before they were thrown out), 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 crew to fly the airliner to Fukuoka and later Gimpo Airport in Seoul, where all the passengers were freed. The aircraft then flew to North Korea, where the hijackers abandoned it 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.[13]
  • May 30, 1972: the Lod Airport massacre; a gun- and grenade attack at Israel's Lod Airport in Tel Aviv, now Ben Gurion International Airport, killed 26 people; about 80 others were wounded.[14] One of the three attackers then committed suicide with a grenade, another was shot in the crossfire. The only surviving attacker was Kōzō Okamoto. It has been claimed that the PFLP was behind the attack.
  • July 1973: Red Army members led the hijacking of Japan Air Lines Flight 404 over the Netherlands. The passengers and crew were released in Libya, where the hijackers blew up the aircraft.
  • January 1974: the Laju incident; the JRA 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.
  • 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, Joke 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 an aircraft. The hostage-takers flew 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.[15]
  • 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.
  • August 11, 1976: in Istanbul, Turkey, four people were killed and twenty wounded by PFLP and Japanese Red Army terrorists in an attack at Istanbul Atatürk airport.[16]
  • 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 Malaysian Airline System Flight 653.[citation needed] The flight was carrying the Cuban ambassador to Tokyo, Mario Garcia. The Boeing 737 crashed killing all on board.
  • 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 Yū 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.

Films

  • Sekigun – PFLP. Sekai Sensō Sengen, Red Army – PFLP: Declaration of World War, 1971, shot on location in Lebanon, produced by Kōji Wakamatsu. Patricia Steinhoff translates its title Manifesto for World Revolution which makes perhaps more sense. A propaganda film for the Red Army sympathisers in Japan.
One of the people showing the film around Japan with the producer was Mieko Toyama, a close friend of Fusako Shigenobu. She was murdered in the winter training camp massacre.
  • Jitsuroku Rengō Sekigun, Asama sansō e no michi, United Red Army (The Way to Asama Mountain Lodge), 2007, shows the horrors of the United Red Army winter camp, but also the history of the militant Japanese student movement. See also United Red Army (film)
  • Suatu Ketika... Soldadu Merah (Once Upon A Time... Red Soldier), an 8 episode Malaysian TV drama series based on the Japanese Red Army attack in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 1975. Produced by NSK Productions (Malaysia), the series was shot in 2009 and currently airs on Malaysia's local cable channel, ASTRO Citra 131. Read Hostage Drama article by TheStar newspapers.
  • In 2010, Fusako Shigenobu and Masao Adachi were featured in the documentary Children of the Revolution, which tells the story of Shigenobu and the Japanese Red Army through the eyes of Mei Shigenobu.
  • In the 2010 French TV Film Carlos members of the Japanese Red Army feature when they stormed the French Embassy in the Hague and associating with the PFLP and the German Revolutionary Cells
  • The 2011 Bangladeshi film The Young Man Was, Part 1: United Red Army by visual artist Naeem Mohaiemen is about the 1977 hijacking of JAL 472 and the subsequent consequences inside Bangladesh.
  • Rabih El-Amine's documentary Ahmad the Japanese, Lod-Roumié-Tokyo made in 1999 tells Okamoto's story from the perspective of five major personalities that knew him in Beirut.
  • Philippe Grandrieux and Nicole Brenez's documentary Masao Adachi. Portrait - First episode of the collection The Beauty May Have Strengthened Our Resoluteness, 2012, shot on location in Tokyo, which tells the daily life of Adachi and his reminiscences.

See also

References

  1. Japanese Red Army (JRA) Profile The National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism Terrorism Knowledge Base (online)
  2. Court uploads 20-yr prison term for ex-Japan Red Army head Shigenobu+. Retrieved on November 17, 2008.
  3. DATA & GRAPHICS: Population Of The Communications Management Units, Margot Williams and Alyson Hurt, NPR, 3-3-11, retrieved 2011 03 04 from npr.org
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  5. Kyodo News, "Ex-Red Army member Maruoka dies", Japan Times, May 30, 2011, p. 2.
  6. "Yu Kikumura." Federal Bureau of Prisons. Retrieved on January 6, 2010.
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  9. Man linked to Red Army Faction arrested upon return from Pyongyang. Retrieved on June 9, 2007.
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  11. Terrorism and guerrilla warfare: forecasts and remedies, page 171.
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  14. "In what became known as the Lod Airport Massacre three members of the terrorist group, Japanese Red Army, arrived at the airport aboard Air France Flight 132 from Rome. Once inside the airport they grabbed automatic firearms from their carry-on cases and fired at airport staff and visitors. In the end, 26 people died and 80 people were injured." CBC News, The Fifth Estate, "Fasten Your Seatbelts: Ben Gurion Airport in Israel", 2007. Retrieved June 2, 2008.
  15. Blood and Rage, The Story of the Japanese Red Army.[page needed]
  16. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Bibliography

External links