[Editorial Note: The Partisan is publishing an unofficial translation of an article by the Japanese progressive organization, Orion Society, on the passing of Japanese-Palestinian proletarian internationalist, Kozo Okamoto. The Orion Society is an organization in support of Kozo Okamoto and other political prisoners and prisoners of war of the Japanese Red Army. It takes its name from a quote by Okamoto when facing trial at an Israeli military tribunal which compared revolutionary martyrs to the stars of Orion. The Partisan sends our deepest condolences to the family and colleagues of Mr. Okamoto as well as comrades of the Orion Society.]
Let Us Together Bury Kozo Okamoto, a Fighter for Solidarity with Palestine!
From the battlefields of Lebanon, he ascended to the sky as one of Orion’s Three Stars!
This July 23, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) announced the death of Kozo Okamoto, who had been living in political exile in Lebanon. On July 24, his remains, surrounded by comrades mourning his death and by mourners, were carried to the “Cemetery of Heroes,” where the heroic fighters of the Palestinian liberation struggle lie, and he was carefully laid to rest in a solemn burial ceremony.
Kozo Okamoto was unquestionably an internationalist who answered the call to fight for the liberation of Palestine. In 1972, he took part as one of the three Japanese fighters in the Lod Airport attack. The other two, Tsuyoshi Okudaira and Yasuyuki Yasuda, died in the course of the operation. Kozo Okamoto, who survived, was imprisoned in a military prison and sentenced by a military court to life imprisonment. Moreover, over the following thirteen years, prolonged torture left him physically and mentally broken.
Nevertheless, the successful execution of the Lod operation was met with consecutive days of mass demonstrations throughout Palestine and the Arab world, where people rallied under the slogans “Liberate Palestine!” and “Dismantle the occupying state of Israel!” Governments across the Arab world also declared their support for the struggle. They praised the operation as a counterattack against the ongoing brutality of the Israeli settler-colonial state, which had continued to occupy, ravage, massacre, and expel the Palestinian people from their homeland.
At the time, however, Israel, together with the Japanese government acting in concert with it, portrayed the operation as “an indiscriminate massacre carried out by cold-blooded Japanese terrorists.” Without raising any questions about what the text describes as Israel’s occupation and massacres, which it presents as the root cause of the conflict, and disregarding the sentiments of the Arab people, the Japanese government even paid condolence money to the Israeli victims.
That was indeed the situation. At the time, Japan was in the midst of a campaign against radical groups, as the police sought to strengthen what the text characterizes as an American FBI-style system of administrative fascism. Accordingly, it would have been highly inconvenient if the three Japanese fighters had been regarded as heroes of a liberation struggle. Instead, the authorities promoted what the text describes as false information, branding them as perpetrators of a “cold-blooded indiscriminate massacre” and working to popularize the equation of “revolution = terrorism.”
As a result, in direct contrast to the support the Lod Airport operation received from Arab peoples and governments, the incident was used to justify broader repression of the Palestinian solidarity movement as a whole. However, such cowardly government policies and deceptions are now being exposed one after another as the true nature of Israel’s ethnic exclusivism, now manifest in the blockade and genocide in the Gaza Strip, becomes clear, and support for the Palestinian liberation struggle has become the powerful global popular cry: “Free Palestine!”
Kozo Okamoto continued to be physically and mentally destroyed by Israeli torture during the 13 years until his release in a prisoner-of-war exchange in 1985. In 1997, at the repeated demand of the United States and the Japanese government, he was detained along with other comrades in Lebanon on charges of illegal residence, and in 2000, he was about to be deported to Japan. At that time, Lebanese youth demanded “Free Okamoto!” and continued their sit-in in front of the Ministry of the Interior. Faced with this popular pressure, the Lebanese government had no choice but to grant Kozo Okamoto political asylum. We in Japan must not forget that he gained overwhelming support and empathy from the Arab peoples through struggle.
Mr. Okamoto had been healthy enough to send a message titled “To Our Friends in Japan” for this year’s “Palestine Solidarity – 54th Anniversary of the May 30 Lod Struggle Memorial Gathering.” It was a vivid report stating that “amid the roaring explosions [in Beirut under Israeli airstrikes], I drink coffee with comrades who come to visit.”
Before this, one after another, our Japanese comrades who bore the Palestinian liberation struggle have passed away: Osamu Yamada, who died in an accident during training before the Lod struggle; Toshihiko Hidaka, who committed suicide under torture after his arrest in Jordan; Takao Himori, who immolated himself in Hibiya Park crying “Don’t kill Gaza’s children!”; Osamu Maruoka, who died in prison in Japan after being denied treatment for heart disease; Hiroshi Izumi, who died in Gifu Prison after being deported to Japan; Haruo Wako, who was forced to die in prison due to medical malpractice while serving life imprisonment; and Tsutomu Shiroki, who, after serving 30 years in the US, was deported to Japan and, in a retrial that ignored international law, died in prison due to medical malpractice while serving a 12-year sentence. To this funeral and celebration circle of Japanese fighters, Kozo Okamoto has now been added.
The Orion Society was founded with the purpose of standing alongside the struggle of the Palestinian people, learning from them, and continuously developing solidarity movements. This was also to carry on the spirit of the three fighters of the Lod struggle – the Three Stars of Orion (Tsuyoshi Okudaira, Yasuaki Yasuda, and Kozo Okamoto) – who, in 1972, aimed their gun muzzles at the occupier Israel with the will to illuminate the future of the oppressed peoples. The sole survivor, Mr. Okamoto, was granted political asylum in Lebanon in 2000. The Orion Society has made it its purpose and role to support his livelihood and medical care, together with local Palestinians and Lebanese friends.
Now, in mourning Kozo Okamoto, we vow to continue, together with the Palestinian people, to carry on the solidarity movement until the day of Palestine’s liberation, in order to realize his will.
As a continuation of the Great Return March, which began in 2018 when Palestinians broke through the boundary surrounding the Gaza Strip, transformed into an “open-air prison,” to demand their return to their homeland, young people centered around Hamas carried out a struggle in 2023 to breach the border, the separation wall.
This fierce struggle was a fight against the essential character of the war policies of Israel under Netanyahu and the United States under Trump: a policy of ethnic cleansing based on the principle that “everyone except us is the enemy,” and a struggle against the very essence of a project that, under the slogan “MAGA” (“Make America Great Again!”), seeks to destroy even the so-called “rule-based international order” created by modern Western capitalism.
The Japanese government, which collaborates with the war policies of Trump and Israel, now permits the export of offensive weapons and also permits the deployment of troops to the Middle East from US military bases in Japan. We, the Orion Society, have strongly opposed this policy of militarization and will further strengthen our resistance.
Under the constellation of Orion, which continues to shine tonight, we vow through this celebration that we will continue to raise our voices of solidarity for “Free Palestine!” so that, as in Kozo Okamoto’s May 30 message, he may rest assured and enjoy a cup of coffee with the fallen fighters of the Palestinian liberation struggle, with Mr. Okudaira and Mr. Yasuda.
Drawing on the experience we have gained through our goal of supporting Palestine solidarity and Kozo Okamoto’s struggle against illness, we will continue to develop and advance the Palestine solidarity movement in the future.
Together with the souls of the warriors who dwell in the constellation of Orion, let this be a celebration for liberation, rather than a funeral procession!
(Photo: Funeral of Kozo Okamoto in Beirut, July 24.)
