Kikumura, Yu (1952–)

Yu Kikumura was a member of the Japanese Red Army (JRA) who was apprehended on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1988 with bombs and bomb-making materials. He may have been planning to bomb targets in New York City.

Kikumura was born on the island of Kyushu, Japan, on July 18, 1952. Little is known of his early life, although he has stated that he was politically influenced by his father, a labor organizer and political activist. In the late 1960s, he participated in the Japanese student protest movement, although he has claimed that his involvement was slight. He is known to have lived in London and Athens for a number of years during the 1970s.

At some point, he became a member of the JRA, a radical Marxist terror group that conducted many hijackings and terrorist attacks during the 1970s. Realizing the difficulty of fomenting a Communist revolution in Japan, a large number of the group's members, led by Fusako Shigenobu, left that country in 1971 and moved to Lebanon. There they became protégés of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Middle Eastern Marxist group that was affiliated with many Western terrorists groups during the 1970s. Kikumura may have been trained in the manufacture and use of explosives at a PFLP training camp during this time.

In April 1986 the U.S. government bombed Libya in retaliation for Colonel Muammar el Qaddafi's role in the La Belle disco bombing in West Berlin, in which an American serviceman was killed. In response, the JRA planned a campaign of reprisals against U.S. targets. In May 1986, Kikumura was arrested in Amsterdam, after airport security discovered more than a kilogram of plastic explosives and several detonators concealed in his luggage. After Kikumura spent four months in prison, a Dutch judge ruled that the search of his luggage had been conducted illegally, and he was freed and deported to Japan. Kikumura traveled extensively on a false passport during the next year. He left Madrid, Spain, days after a cache of bombs believed to be intended for the U.S. embassy was discovered, but no connection between Kikumura and the Madrid bombs could be proved.

On March 8, 1988, Kikumura entered the United States. He spent the next several weeks crisscrossing the country collecting bomb materials. On April 12, a New Jersey state trooper searched Kikumura's car while he was parked at a rest stop. Three bombs, consisting of shrapnel and gunpowder encased in fire extinguishers, were discovered, along with bomb-making materials and maps of New York City, including the subway system.

Two days later, on the anniversary of the Libyan bombings, a USO canteen in Naples, Italy, was bombed by the JRA. Kikumura's thwarted attack may have been planned to coincide with the Naples bombing. An ambiguous mark on one of his maps led investigators to believe that he intended to bomb a naval recruitment office in Manhattan. In February 1989, Kikumura was [Page 328]tried in the United States and sentenced to 30 years in prison for terrorist activities. In 1991 this sentence was reduced to 21 years and 10 months.

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