The student movement that began to protest revising the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in 1960 was 7 years old when Yasuhiro Uegaki entered Hirosaki University in Aomori Prefecture in April 1967. The campus in northern Japan was still quiet, and the physics student was indifferent to politics.

Five years later, however, he was deeply involved in antigovernment campaigns as a member of the United Red Army.

"I was a nonpolitical student at first. But I became one of the organizers of strikes on my university's campus (in 1969), pushed by my classmates just because I used to organize drinking parties," 59-year-old Uegaki recalled during a recent phone interview after explaining his actions at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan to discuss the film "Jitsuroku Rengo Sekigun: Asama Sanso e no Michi (United Red Army — The Path to Asama Mountain Lodge)."