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Crazy 1930s-40s Extremists Who Tried to Rewrite Japan’s History

Khalid Elhassan January 29, 2025 14 min

Japanese - League of Blood members await trial — League of Blood members await trial. Wikimedia

13. The League of Blood Turned Out Not to be as Bloody as It Wanted to Be

Members of the League of Blood were dedicated and bloodthirsty. Fortunately for their victims, however, they were relatively inept when it came to murder and the actual shedding of blood. As things turned out, of those targeted for assassination, group members managed to slay only two. They killed former Finance Minister Junnosuke Inoue in February, 1932, and industrialist Takuma Dan, director-general of the Mitsui Holding Company, a month later. Both assassins were immediately arrested on the spot. Inoue turned himself in to the police, who treated him with respect as a “patriot”.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.