United Red Army
The United Red Army (連合赤軍, Rengō Sekigun) was a militant organization that operated in Japan between July 1971 and March 1972.
[3] The URA came to a sudden end with the Asama-Sanso incident, a 9-day siege and hostage situation that occurred at the group’s mountain hideout in the Nagano Prefecture in February 1972.
The Red Army Faction was an organization led by Japanese college students after having split from its parent group, Bund, otherwise known as the Communist League.
[3] The group consisted mainly of students from regional Japan that attended elite universities with the intention to "do something bold and different that would move the process of revolution forward".
[6] The Red Army Faction lost its numbers over time due to deaths resulting from violent missions and protests, as well as arrests.
They reached the peak of their popularity in the 1960s where they garnered support from university and high school students for their controversial view that such higher education institutions were acting only to serve the state.
The formation of their United Red Army was publicly announced on 15 July 1971 in the magazine that the groups had created, entitled Jūka, meaning "Gunfire".
[7] However, after troubleshooting their conflicting underlying beliefs and purposes, a unified resolve "to fight a war of annihilation of guns, against the Japanese authorities" was decided to be the group's manifesto.
In December 1971, by the order of their leader Mori, the URA moved its headquarters to the training camps that the Red Army Faction had previously made use of.
[5] However, Mori quickly introduced an element of violence to this process in keeping with the New Left’s demand for individuals to demonstrate their commitment.
Mori argued that beating members into unconsciousness would allow for them to be reborn with true "communistic subjectivity" when they were brought back to consciousness.
Kato Yoshitaka was selected for self-criticism as he had spoken to police during an earlier interrogation, and Kojima Kazuko for lacking the ability to fight her “bourgeois thinking”.
[7] The members that had fled the training base took a dangerous route through the mountains to Nagano prefecture in order to avoid leaving traces of footsteps and the strong odor of dead bodies that they carried due to lack of bathing facilities.
[7] Before the police cut off power to the lodge after a few days, group members watched media coverage of the siege on TV.
[7] After a battle that lasted eight hours and the killing of two police officers,[3] the members and their hostage were found taking shelter behind a mattress on the top floor of the building.
With police having provided information about the group’s killings, media communicated an image of the URA that associated “armed resistance with the murder of comrades”.
This student remarked "When they were captured without being completely defeated, I thought that they were definitely revolutionaries, and I felt a sense of resistance when adults labelled them a crazed group.
Mori wrote to police in the month following the Asama Sanso incident to take responsibility for the killings and to ask for the group members bodies to be returned to their families.
