Hiroko Nagata - Purge Incident

Purge Incident

Japan's leftist student movement in the 1960s pervaded Japan's universities, and, by late in the decade, had become balkanised, competitive, and violent. After a series of incidents in which leftist student groups attacked and injured or killed law enforcement officials as well as 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 escape from the police, a core group of radicals from the URA, including Nagata, retreated to a compound in the mountains of Gunma Prefecture during the winter of 1972.

In the second week of February 1972 at the compound, URA's chairman Tsuneo Mori and Nagata initiated a violent purge of the group's members. In the purge, Nagata and Mori directed the beating deaths of eight members and one non-member who happened to be present. Six other members were tied to trees outside, subsequently freezing to death in the extremely cold weather. Nagata especially targeted group members who, in her opinion, "took too much interest in relations with women and did not devote enough ardour to the revolution." A few were killed for "attempting to escape"; one member was killed for asking for some tissue paper while inside his sleeping bag, an act that Nagata apparently construed as having a sexual significance.

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, eventually taking refuge in a mountain guest lodge, initiating the Asama-Sansō incident.