Akiyoshi Umekawa

[citation needed] Umekawa shot dead two employees (20-year-old sales clerk Hiroshi Hagio and 47-year-old branch manager Koji Morioka) and two policemen (52-year-old Inspector Masami Kusumoto and 29-year-old Officer Kazuaki Maebata) on January 26, 1979, in a Mitsubishi Bank in Sumiyoshi-ku, Osaka.

He stripped women of their clothes, forcing them to form a human shield around him as he inflicted a drawn out regime of terror amongst them and the male hostages.

Various methods were considered or attempted to observe or disable Umekawa, but were consistently foiled by him forcing the hostages to counteract them and keep police away.

Multiple hostages (26-year-old loan clerk Kunihiko Yoshitani was shot and severely wounded in the back of the head; 54-year-old general affairs clerk Koichiro Hirao was hit in the face) were injured during the standoff, largely as a result of ricochet from Umekawa firing his shotgun to intimidate them.

Rokuro Yoshida, who joined the criminal investigations of Kiyoshi Ōkubo and the United Red Army, was appointed as the incident commander.