A man thought to be the suspect wanted for one of a series of terrorist bombings in Japan in the 1970s died Monday morning, an investigative source said.
The man, who recently confessed to being the alleged bomber Satoshi Kirishima who was a member of an extreme left-wing group, had been hospitalized with terminal cancer.
The man died of natural causes at a hospital in Kanagawa Prefecture near Tokyo, according to the source.
The man, who last week confessed to being Kirishima, lived under the name Hiroshi Uchida, investigative sources have said earlier.
The man did not possess a health insurance card or driver’s license and had been receiving cancer treatment at a hospital in Kamakura at his own expense.
According to the sources, the man initially claimed to be Hiroshi Uchida at the hospital when he was admitted earlier this month.
Kirishima, who would have been 70, was a member of the radical group East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front. He had 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 terrorist group Kirishima belonged to carried out a number of attacks on Japanese companies and entities, including the bombing of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ headquarters in central Tokyo in 1974 that killed eight people and injured 165.
The group also targeted Japanese companies operating overseas, including major trading house Mitsui & Co. as well as construction companies Taisei and Kajima, as a protest against Japan’s military and commercial expansion in East Asia before and after World War II.