As the Japanese originally speculated, Japanese leftist extremists were behind the last week’s Camp Zama explosion:

The same group that claimed responsibility for a 2002 blast near Camp Zama said it also was responsible for the explosions reported near the base last week, local Japanese police said.

A group calling itself the “Revolutionary Army” sent letters to several Japanese media outlets in Tokyo on Saturday claiming responsibility for an incident in which a projectile was found on the base, Zama city police official said. The police believe the group is connected to Kakuryokyo, a leftist extremist group, he said.

In the letter, the group said it is opposed to relocating the Army’s new headquarters to Camp Zama, which was agreed upon last year by the United States and Japan as part of an overall plan to realign U.S. military forces in Japan, the official said. He said the group also wants to stop Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit to Japan this week.

Though Japanese authorities claimed from the beginning of this story that Japanese leftists were probably behind the explosion, it didn’t stop the US media from making claims of a possible Al Qaida attack.  The US media doing yet more scare mongering.

What is kind of interesting about this leftist attack was that Chirol at Coming Anarchy just had a post that discussed leftist terrorism.  Leftist extremism is on the rise and Japan has a long history of leftist extremism, namely the Japanese Red Army that was responsible for a variety of terror attacks in the 1970′s and 1980′s.