On May 30th, 1972, Kōzō Okamoto, Tsuyoshi Okudaira, and Yasuyuki Yasuda opened fire at the Lod Airport (Ben-Gurion), killing 26 people and injuring 80 others. Okamoto, Okudaira, and Yasuda were members of the Japanese Red Army, a militant communist organization that carried out more than a dozen violent attacks around the world in the 1970s and ‘80s with the goal of inciting terror. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terror organization, enlisted them to assist with an assault on Israel that would come to be known as the Lod Airport Massacre. The three arrived at Lod Airport on an Air France flight from Rome at about 10 p.m. They attracted minimal attention in their business suits as they retrieved what seemed like violin cases from the baggage area. As they stood in the waiting area, they pulled assault rifles from the cases and began shooting indiscriminately while tossing grenades into the crowd.It remains unclear how Yasuda was killed—either by on-site security forces or mistakenly by one of the other attackers. As Okudaira dashed onto the tarmac to shoot individuals stepping off a plane, one of his own explosives killed him. Okamoto, the only survivor, was shot while attempting to escape from security before being taken down by an El-Al employee. Okamoto was tried in an Israeli military court and sentenced to life in prison. He served only 13 years until he was released in 1985 as part of the Jibril Agreement prisoner exchange, which released 1,100 prisoners in exchange for two detained Israeli soldiers. He eventually moved to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, where he resides to this day. He has been given political refugee status in Lebanon since the turn of the 21st century and is still wanted by the Japanese government. Following this attack, Israeli airport security increased significantly, both in Israel and abroad. Security duty is divided between the police, airport security, and the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, and since the 1972 massacre, no other successful terror attacks have occurred at the Lod Airport.Given the high number of Puerto Rican casualties, the island enacted May 30 as Lod Massacre Remembrance Day.