A man thought to be the suspect on a decades-old wanted list for one of a series of bombings in the 1970s may have worked in Kanagawa Prefecture near Tokyo before being admitted to a hospital for cancer treatment earlier this month, investigative sources said Saturday.
The man, believed to be Satoshi Kirishima, is likely to have kept himself hidden in the prefecture, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is investigating whether anyone was supporting him, the sources said.
Also, the man was undergoing treatment at the hospital in Kanagawa Prefecture at his own expense without using a health insurance card, the sources said, adding he initially gave a different name upon admission to the facility. If he is the suspect, he might have tried to conceal his identity.
The man, meanwhile, had worked for an extended period at a building contractor in the prefecture, using the same alias that he gave at the hospital, the sources said.
While Tokyo police's Public Security Bureau is questioning the man, who is receiving treatment in the hospital in Kamakura for terminal cancer, it will likely take time to determine his identity through DNA testing and other measures.
His physical features, including his height, seem to match those of the bombing suspect pursued by the police. The man also mentioned details of suspect's family makeup, the sources said.
Even if he is confirmed as Kirishima, the police may not be able to arrest him due to the severity of his health condition caused by stomach cancer, the sources said.
As his condition worsened to the point that he crouched on the street, he was hospitalized this month, the sources said, adding that he was accompanied to the hospital by a coworker.
The sources quoted the man as saying, "I want to draw the curtain on my life under my real name."
The man told police he was Kirishima on Thursday, 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 that he planted and detonated a homemade bomb in a building in Tokyo's Ginza district on April 19, 1975.
The extreme left-wing group Kirishima belonged to carried out a number of attacks on Japanese companies and entities, including the bombing of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.'s headquarters in central Tokyo in 1974 that killed eight people and injured 165 people.
The group 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.
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