KANAGAWA (TR) – In February 2024, Tokyo Metropolitan Police confirmed {that a} man who died in a hospital right here the month earlier than was Satoshi Kirishima, a fugitive needed over a sequence of bomb assaults in 1974 and 1975.
According to investigative sources, the person was admitted to a hospital in Kamakura City in early January beneath the identify “Hiroshi Uchida.” He was affected by terminal abdomen most cancers. When he died the subsequent month he was 70 years outdated.
On January 25, he disclosed his actual identify to the hospital workers, saying, “In the end, I want to die as ‘Satoshi Kirishima.’” He died 4 days later.
Kirishima had remained on the run for practically half a century. One 12 months after his dying, TBS News (Mar. 1) visited the house the place he lived. Through interviews, the community was capable of get a glimpse into his life on the run, one the place he was hiding in plain sight.
Hiroshi Uchida
{A photograph} introduced by the community reveals a person smiling with a wine glass in hand. This is Satoshi Kirishima, the suspect who dedicated a sequence of company bombings within the Seventies.
The picture obtained completely by this system was taken 30 years after he was placed on a nationwide needed checklist. His joyful look, within the firm of mates, doesn’t appear to be that of a needed felony who fears arrest.
In Fujisawa City, there’s a constructing the place suspect Kirishima lived till simply earlier than his dying. With particular permission, this system was capable of movie the within.
There, he was left along with his life beneath the pseudonym Hiroshi Uchida and the inside battle of being a fugitive.
His guitar, handwritten lyrics playing cards, manga, film DVDs, and different objects have been piled up in a cluttered mess. Medicines prescribed beneath the identify “Uchida” and books on most cancers additionally gave a glimpse into his later years.
There is {a magazine} wanting again on the 12 months 1974, the 12 months of the bombing. Plenty of phrases are scribbled: selflessness, braveness, tenacity, weak point.
Maruonouchi blast
Kirishima was a member of Sasori (Scorpion), a unit for extremist group East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front. The extremist group was tied to a sequence of bombings within the Seventies.
In the mid-Seventies, the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front mentioned they have been behind greater than 10 bombings that focused contractors and different organizations.
In 1974, a time bomb exploded at an workplace of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. within the Marunouchi enterprise district of Tokyo. The blast killed eight folks and injured 380. It was the worst terrorist assault in Japan for the reason that finish of World War II.
Kirishima is suspected of being concerned in a bombing at a constructing of the Economic Research Institute of Korea within the capital’s Ginza district on April 19, 1975. The subsequent day, he was listed as needed.
Before he died final 12 months, Kirishima denied involvement within the Ginza blast. However, he did admit to finishing up at the least one of many three blasts on February 28, 1975 that rocked the Hazama Corp. headquarters and its plant in Saitama Prefecture.
According to the Asahi Shimbun (Feb. 27, 2024), Kirishima informed police, “I had worked day-labor jobs in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, before living and working at the construction company in Fujisawa.”
On the day of the publication of Asahi article, Tokyo police despatched Kirishima to prosecutors over 5 instances on suspicion of violating the Explosives Control Law and tried homicide.
Of the ten members of the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, police arrested 9. Kirishima had been the one one to evade arrest.
Daichi no Kiba
Sasori joined East Asia Anti-Japanese Armed Front after the Mitsubishi blast, which means Kirishima was not concerned. Sasori was accompanied by one other group, Daichi no Kiba (Fang of the Earth), in becoming a member of the extremist group. Either individually or collectively, the three teams carried out a complete of 12 bombings.
Sasori had a coverage of not inflicting any casualties, however in 1975, a person was significantly injured by a bomb set by Kirishima.
Afterward, eight member of the three teams have been arrested. Kirishima and Toshikazu Ugajin, 72, a former member of Daichi no Kiba, weren’t amongst them.
Ugajin tells TBS News that he instantly went to Kirishima’s residence. “The idea of using weapons or anything like that to achieve some goal was wrong in itself,” says Ugajin.
Kirishima was shaken.
“[Kirishima] had a look on his face saying, ‘What have I done?’ He said, ‘I’ve done something that can’t be undone,’” Ugajin remembers.
The two males have been afraid that the investigation would attain them, in order that they saved watch over one another’s flats as investigators closed in.
Ugajin lived close to Saginomiya Station on the Seibu Shinjuku Line in Tokyo. Meanwhile Kirishima was at a residence two stations away. “There were no investigators at Kirishima’s apartment,” Ugajin says. “But when Kirishima went to my apartment, there were about 10 people wearing white gloves.”
The escape
Ugajin explains to the community how the 2 escaped 50 years in the past.
“As we were walking, two of the [men in white gloves] followed us and said, ‘Let’s take a taxi to Shinjuku,’” Ugajin says. “We have been mendacity down on the grass and asking, ‘What on earth should we do?’”
While moving from one cheap lodging to another, Ugajin cut Kirishima’s lengthy hair with scissors.
“I thought if I cut his hair, they wouldn’t know,” he says. “The blade started moving around, and I wound up cutting it short.”
After studying within the newspaper that they have been needed, the 2 determined to separate up and go on the run.
“I was in a panic,” Ugajin says. “It was bad to be together, so we decided to split up, run away and meet again.”
“Never says no”
Despite that promise, they by no means did meet once more.,Ugajin was arrested seven years later and sentenced to 18 years in jail. Meanwhile, Kirishima continued to flee.
There are folks in his hometown in Hiroshima Prefecture, the place he was born in 1954, who have been caught up in Kirishima’s flight.
Kirishima’s highschool classmate, Ryutaro Okada, 71, went on to a unique college in Tokyo than Kirishima.
“[Kirishima] was easily influenced by others,” says Okada. “If someone says, ‘Hey, Kirishima, let’s go hang out,’ he’ll go. He was the kind of guy who never says no.”
When Kirishima was in his fourth 12 months of college, his classmate was subjected to relentless questioning after Kirishima was placed on the needed checklist.
“Because he ran away, the police investigated his classmates in various ways, and I think his family got it even worse,” says Okada. “I felt strongly that he should have come out quickly and say at least one word of apology.”
“I’ve seen you somewhere before”
When Kirishima began his escape, he wound up at a steelworks plant in Fujisawa City. He was launched to the supervisor by a gang member beneath the identify “Uchida.”
Takashi Komura, 76, was that supervisor: “The gang member said, ‘Please take care of him for a bit.’”
After working there for about three months, Kirishima disappeared.
Komura remembers, “I said to Kirishima, ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before.’ He responded, ‘There are a lot of people who look like me.’ Then he disappeared at the end of the month.”
Kirishima then labored at one other development firm for about 40 years.
Acquaintances mentioned that though he was quiet at work. But additionally they mentioned that in his personal life he acted boldly, which was onerous to imagine for a needed man.
At the peak of the so-called “bubble economy,” he danced at discos and visited Tokyo and Yokohama to observe dwell music. He additionally went snowboarding, tenting and fishing with mates.
“Excited about movies and music”
Kirishima frequented a bar in Fujisawa for 25 years. TBS News bought the proprietor to talk on digital camera for the primary time.
“We called him ‘Woo-yan,’ the manager says. “He seemed to like getting excited about movies and music the most.”
The nickname “Woo-yan” can also be written on the occasion checklist on the bar. The supervisor felt a particular bond with Kirishima as a pal.
“He remembered my birthday and brought me something every year,” the supervisor says. “He would give me old movie videos, or if he happened to go to a discount store and saw some clothes that looked good on me, he would buy them for me.”
He was a cheerful determine on the bar, livening up the environment with the regulars.
“There was a musician he loved,” the supervisor remembers, “and he would save up cans of canned chuhai that he drank every day, put a lot of pebbles in them, tie them up with duct tape, and make dozens of them as maracas for all the customers who came in, telling them to support him.”
In 2023, Kirishima confessed his sickness to the supervisor.
“He told me he had pharyngeal cancer and said he couldn’t go out drinking for a while,” he says. “About a month later, he said he’d had surgery and was cured, so he’d come again.”
That by no means occurred.
Afterward
Ugajin was launched from jail in 2003. On January 29 this 12 months, the anniversary of Kirishima’s dying, he visited a shrine in Kamakura.
“The place where I met Kirishima. The place where we agreed to meet again, three months after we started our escape,” he says. “We parted ways, agreeing to talk things over [another time].”
On the appointed day, 50 years in the past, Ugajin walked across the shrine grounds, however couldn’t discover Kirishima. After that, he visited the shrine virtually yearly.
“I couldn’t meet him. I couldn’t meet him. I haven’t seen him for 50 years,” he says.
Kirishima’s classmate Okada mentioned he felt uncomfortable with the experiences that Kirishima was concerned within the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries bombing.
“He’s being treated like a villain,” Okada says. “There were some things about that that I couldn’t forgive. But I want to make it clear to what extent Kirishima was actually involved. For Kirishima’s sake.”
For Okada, one query stays: Why did Kirishima be part of the extremists? To discover out, he visited Kamakura to ask Ugajin.
“I thought that Kirishima was a man who was easily influenced by others. So I always had a strong feeling that he was pulled in that direction,” Okada says.
Ugajin disagrees. He says, “He’s not the kind of person who is influenced by others.”
After Okada suggests it was Ugajin who compelled Kirishima to affix the group, Ugajin says, “Do I look like the kind of person who would pull someone along? Me? He wasn’t pulled along by someone, he chose that fight of his own volition. That he’s just a person who doesn’t think about anything. That’s absolutely wrong. It’s wrong.”
“An apology”
Okada and Ugajin’s opinions have been at odds. Later, the 2 visited visited the Fujisawa bar.
“When we talk, we only have happy memories,” the proprietor says. “When I think about the victims, I can’t express those feelings honestly. To me, Uchida is Uchida, and because we were close, it feels like a friend has died, so I’m sad.”
In 2024, Ugajin wrote in his memoir that Kirishima’s escape was a “victory against the public security police.” Since then, his emotions have modified.
“He will live life anew as an ordinary human being, not a terrorist,” he says. “It’s not becoming to name it a ‘declaration of victory.’”
In January 2024, Kirishima was found unable to move on a street and was taken to the hospital. Stricken with cancer, he made the aforementioned confession as to his identity on his deathbed.
When police arrived, he divulged information about the attacks and the background of Kirishimia that only the man himself could have known. The results of a DNA analysis verified his identity.
Why did Kirishima reveal his real name at the end?
“He wanted people to know that it wasn’t just a few anonymous particular person named Uchida who died, however that he was residing as Satoshi Kirishima, pretending to be Uchida,” Ugajin says.
The proprietor thinks the explanation would possibly run deeper.
“I think he was a serious person, so I feel like he drew a line under himself in the end,” he says. “By calling himself Satoshi Kirishima, it felt like he erased Satoshi Kirishima, partly as an apology for the incident.”
Ugajin additionally visited the constructing the place Kirishima lived for the primary time.
“I made a mistake, or rather, I fought in a way that I shouldn’t have,” he says. “I’ve come to understand that. I think that’s natural. When I look at the people he’s been with, there’s not much difference between my feelings and theirs. I really want to know what he was thinking. I wish I did.”
A chunk of paper was left behind in Kirishima’s room. Handwritten on it have been the phrases of a thinker: “You can understand life by looking backwards.”