Tokyo police are questioning a man, believed to be Satoshi Kirishima, who is wanted for his suspected involvement in a bombing, one in a string of explosions that rocked the capital in the 1970s, at a hospital in Kanagawa Prefecture, investigative sources said Friday.
The man, who checked into the hospital in Kamakura under a different name to receive treatment for terminal cancer, was reported to the police by hospital staff after he confessed to being Kirishima, they said.
Kirishima, who would now be 70, was a member of the radical group East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front. He has long been wanted on suspicion he planted and detonated a homemade bomb near an office of the Economic Research Institute of Korea in a building in Tokyo's Ginza district on April 19, 1975.
According to the sources, the man has informed the police that he has a serious medical condition and expressed his desire to live out the remainder of his life under his real name. Police are now trying to confirm his identity.
The extreme left-wing group that Kirishima belonged to carried out a number of attacks on Japanese companies and entities, including a bombing at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.'s headquarters building in Tokyo in 1974 that killed eight people and injured 165 people.
The organization also targeted companies operating overseas, including major trading house Mitsui & Co. and construction companies Taisei Corp. and Kajima Corp., as a protest against Japan's military and commercial expansion in East Asia before and after World War II.
In May 1975, police arrested eight individuals, including Masashi Daidoji, over their involvement in the attacks. Daidoji died in May 2017 of blood cancer while in prison after his death sentence was finalized in March 1987.
