Interview: Dr. Patricia Steinhoff 3
PART 3 – THE MOVEMENT GOES UNDERGROUND
| Red Army Background: The “Red Army” (赤軍) usually refers to three related, but distinct Japanese revolutionary leftist organizations. In 1969, radical members of the Japanese student movement formed the Red Army Faction of the Communist League (共産主義者同盟赤軍派) — an underground paramilitary unit aiming to actively foment socialist revolution in Japan. This new group quickly became the target of serious police suppression, but managed to execute numerous robberies and other small-scale attacks. The Red Army Faction reached a new level of infamy, however, after their dramatic hijacking of the JAL flight 351 “Yodo-go” from Tokyo to Fukuoka on March 31, 1970. The nine hijackers forced the plane to fly to North Korea, where they received exile but spent the next decade in re-education camps and out of contact with the rest of the world. See video of the Yodo. |
In 1969, the SDS in the U.S. breaks down and the super-radical Weathermen are formed. Same thing happens with the Red Army Faction coming out of Bund. These transformations from student groups to underground terrorist cells seem very parallel. Did the Red Army look at the Weathermen and say, hey, we need to make the same shift?
Actually, the Japanese movement was ahead of the American movement, so the Red Army Faction was certainly not “copying” the Weathermen. But there was a certain amount of mutual awareness and interaction. There were conferences in Japan in 1968 and 1969, and they invited a lot of people from the U.S. — the Black Panthers and SDS, etc. They were very aware of the American movement. Shiomi Takaya (the intellectual leader of the Red Army Faction) himself was meeting with these people, and one of their early actions was timed to coincide with the Chicago Days of Rage. So they saw themselves as part of an international student movement. They also identified with the student movements in Europe at the same time and with revolutionary movements all over the world — the Cuban revolution, etc.
Who was Shiomi Takaya and where did he come from?
The original Sekigun-ha (Red Army Faction) was a faction of Kyōsanshugisha Dōmei or Bund. Shiomi Takaya went to Kyōdai (Kyoto University) and was a little bit older, but he was working in the Bund office in Tokyo as a full-time activist during the late ’60s. The movement was hitting a stone wall, the state began cracking down on violent protest in the streets, and the Kansai Bund people wanted to move into an underground army and more violence. So he became the central figure of that group, and he was the wordsmith. He was the guy who would come up with these incomprehensible but charismatic phrases for what they wanted to do. Tamiya was the person who would organize their activities, but Shiomi was the intellectual leader. In the summer of 1969 Bund threw out the Red Army Faction, which had operated as an internal faction for at least half a year before that, and the Red Army became independent at that point.
Shiomi was arrested two weeks before the hijacking of the Yodo-go in March 1970 on an arrest warrant for having planned some earlier actions. By that time, the Red Army was under tremendous pressure and many people were already in hiding. Shiomi had the record for a while for being held incommunicado after his arrest for a year and a half — now that’s nothing, everyone is held incommunicado for a year and a half. But at the time, it was the record. He had a long trial and all these appeals and served his sentence until about 1990.
How many people did the Red Army Faction have at first?
The Red Army had a lot of people until they started doing violent actions and the police started cracking down. In the Fall of ’69, they announced themselves publicly — “We are going to have an underground army, and we are looking for weapons.” They were making “Peace can bombs.” I don’t know if they still have them, but Peace cigarettes used to come in these little blue cans, so you could take the can and load it with pachinko balls and an explosive. They also experimented with pipe bombs. They were making homemade explosives.
Tamiya had devised an elaborate plan. Prime Minister Sato was supposed to travel to the U.S. to discuss Japan’s cooperation in the Vietnam War. This was to be a big, high-profile protest event with street demonstrations. But Sekigun had this elaborate plot that they were going to surround the Prime Minister’s residence the day before and lock him up so he couldn’t go. They couldn’t stop him forever, but they could obstruct his trip. That was going to be their sensational thing.
To prepare for it, they had gone to a mountain area fairly near Tokyo called Daibosatsu Tōge (大菩薩峠). They had rented rooms in an inn, and they were doing training on how to throw pipe bombs so they wouldn’t blow up in your face. So they were doing that, but they were so semi-open about everything they were doing and a lot of the people were already being followed on a 24-hour basis. So the police knew they were there. They sneaked up on them, and early in the morning when they were all still asleep, they surrounded the place and arrested 53 people. That was a big chunk of the membership.