Asama-Sanso incident
The Asama-Sansō lodge surrounded by police during the incident
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| Date | February 19 – 28, 1972 |
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| Location |
Karuizawa, Nagano, Japan 36°17′20.93″N 138°37′19.38″E / 36.2891472°N 138.6220500°E |
| Participants |
United Red Army, Japanese National Police Agency |
| Outcome | 2 policemen and 1 civilian killed, 5 URA members arrested, 1 hostage freed |
The Asama-Sansō incident (あさま山荘事件 Asama sansō jiken?) was a hostage crisis and police siege in a mountain lodge near Karuizawa, Nagano prefecture, Japan that lasted from February 19, 1972 to February 28, 1972. The police rescue operation on the final day of the standoff was the first marathon live television broadcast in Japan, lasting 10 hours and 40 minutes.
The incident began when five armed members of the United Red Army (URA), following a bloody purge that left 14 members of the group plus one bystander dead, broke into a holiday lodge below Mount Asama, taking the wife of the lodge-keeper as a hostage. A standoff between police and the URA radicals took place, lasting ten days. The lodge was a natural fortress, solidly constructed of thick concrete on a steep hillside with only one entrance, which, along with their guns, enabled the hostage-takers to keep police at a distance.
On February 28, the police stormed the lodge. Two police officers were killed in the assault, the hostage was rescued and the URA radicals were taken into custody. The incident contributed to a decline in popularity of leftist movements in Japan.
Japan's leftist student movement in the 1960s pervaded Japan's universities, and, by late in the decade, had become very factionalized, competitive, and violent. After a series of incidents in which leftist student groups attacked and injured or killed law enforcement officials and the general public, Japan's national police agency cracked down on the student groups, raiding their hideouts and arresting dozens in 1971 and 1972. Attempting to conceal themselves from the police, a core group of radicals from the URA retreated to a compound in Gunma Prefecture during the winter of 1972.
In the second week of February 1972 at the compound, URA's chairman Tsuneo Mori and vice-chairman Hiroko Nagata (sometimes referred to as Yoko Nagata) initiated a violent purge of the group's members. In the purge, Nagata and Mori directed the deaths by beating of eight members and one non-member who happened to be present. Six other members were tied to trees outside where they froze to death in the frigid mountain winter air. On February 16, police arrested Mori, Nagata, and six other URA members at the compound or at a nearby village. Five others, armed with rifles and shotguns, managed to escape, fleeing on foot through the mountains towards Karuizawa in nearby Nagano prefecture. The five fugitives were Kunio Bandō, 25, a graduate of Kyoto University, Masakuni Yoshino, 23, a senior at Yokohama National University, Hiroshi Sakaguchi, 25, a dropout of Tokyo Suisan University, Jirō Katō, 19, and his brother Saburō Katō, 16.
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