Alleged 1970s Japanese Bomber Dies

Tokyo, Jan. 29 (Jiji Press)--A man who claimed to be a suspect involved in one of a series of bombings against companies in Japan in the 1970s died at a hospital Monday morning, investigative sources said.
 

The Public Security Bureau of Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department plans to send papers on the man, who identified himself as Satoshi Kirishima, to public prosecutors on suspicion of violating the explosives control law even after his death, if it confirms his identify through a DNA test or other methods.
 

According to the sources, the man was suffering from terminal cancer and was admitted to the hospital in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, earlier this month.
 

He is believed to have used a different name initially. He confessed he was Satoshi Kirishima, however, after he realized his death was imminent, saying that he wanted to use his real name in his last days.
 

In questioning by the Public Security Bureau from Thursday, the man gave detailed information about Kirishima's family. His physical characteristics, including his height, also matched those of Kirishima, the sources said.
 

The man worked as a live-in employee at a building contractor in Fujisawa, also Kanagawa, under the name Hiroshi Uchida, apparently a false identity, for decades until he was hospitalized, the sources said.
 

Details of his life and whether he had any supporters are unknown. He was not carrying any identification documents when he was admitted to the hospital.
 

Kirishima was born in the western prefecture of Hiroshima in January 1954. He formed a three-member group called "sasori" (scorpion) after entering Meiji Gakuin University and joined activities of the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, an extreme leftist organization.
 

Kirishima was put on the wanted list in May 1975 for his alleged involvement in the bombing of a building in Tokyo's upscale Ginza district the previous month.
 

The East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front carried out 12 bomb attacks over about eight months from August 1974, when it killed eight people in a bombing at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. building.
 

Nine people have been arrested over the bombings, while Kirishima was not. Norio Sasaki, 75, and Ayako Daidoji, 75, former members of the group, are still at large after being released in the 1970s under extralegal measures over incidents involving the Japanse Red Army.
 

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