Kyuichi Tokuda


Kyuichi Tokuda was a Japanese politician and first chairman of the Japanese Communist Party from 1945 until his death in 1953.

Biography

Kyuichi Tokuda was born in 1894 in Okinawa. He became a lawyer following graduation from Nihon University in 1920. He joined the Japanese Communist Party in 1922 and became a member of its Central Committee.
He was arrested in March 1928 on suspicion of violating the Peace Preservation Law, and spent 18 years in prison. He was released in October 1945. While in prison, he occupied a cell adjacent to fellow Communist leader Yoshio Shiga. Upon his release, he was reportedly hoisted to the shoulders of a crowd of Communists and Koreans chanting anti-imperial messages.
After World War II, he was elected to the House of Representatives in the general election of 1946. In 1948, he survived an assassination attempt by a dynamite-laden soda bottle thrown at his feet while he was giving a speech. By 1950 he was considered the second-in-command of the JCP and a key supporter of party leader Sanzo Nosaka. Along with other JCP leaders, he was purged from politics under the Allied occupation. He was later exiled to China, where he died in 1953. During his last years in China, he led a "mainstream" faction of the JCP and organized violent operations in Japan.

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