When Dámaris Pérez heard the news last week of the death of Kozo Okamoto — one of the three terrorists who carried out the deadly 1972 terror attack at Lod Airport — she felt deeply shaken.

Okamoto was part of a Japanese Red Army terrorist squad that killed 26 people: eight Israelis, one Canadian, and 17 US citizens from Puerto Rico. The US citizens included Pérez’s mother, Vasthi Zila Morales, who had flown to Israel on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. At the time, Pérez was 15 months old.

Pérez’s father, Pastor José Vega Franqui, was wounded in the attack, which was carried out by the Japanese Red Army on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), at what is now known as Ben Gurion International Airport.

The pastor says he survived because of a small copy of The New Testament that he was carrying in his shirt pocket.

“I was very emotional when I heard the news because he [Okamoto] never asked for forgiveness or showed any repentance,” Demaris told The Times of Israel in a video call. “He never said, ‘I’m sorry.’ He never had a change of heart; he never realized that what he did was wrong. He lived 78 years and had a full life, but my mother lived only 26 years.”

Demaris said that, for years, she was “the baby crying at the window, waiting for my mom to come back. I was the girl with the sad eyes.”

The attack at the baggage claim area of Lod Airport

On May 30, 1972, Okamoto, along with Tsuyoshi Okudaira and Yasuyuki Yasuda, arrived in Israel on an Air France flight using fake passports.

Prior PFLP hijackings had led to increased passenger screening by airlines, but inspection of check-in luggage was still rare. Okamoto and his two accomplices passed through immigration untroubled, picked up their baggage from the carousel, and whipped out assault rifles and grenades from violin cases. The three then opened fire.

Okudaira and Yasuda were killed in the attack, but Okamoto was wounded by Israeli security,........

© The Times of Israel