April 12 (1988) - Terror bomber apprehended at Vince Lombardi Service Area NJ Turnpike

Twenty-five years ago - before 0klahoma City, before 9/11/01 - three homemade bombs, composed of fertilizer and nails and other household chemicals, packed inside three emptied fire extinguishers - sat on the back seat of a green 1980 Mazda.

A NJ Turnpike policeman, on routine tour, entered the Vince Lombardi Service area - the final rest area for drivers on their way to Fort Lee, and noticed a car started up just as he entered. The driver threw some small items in a trash can and started for his ordinary looking sedan.

The trooper put on his lights and signaled for the driver to stop.

And for twenty-five years, an April bombing tragedy was averted - until two young brothers from Chechnya killed three people and injured nearly 200 others at the Boston Marathon last Monday, April 15, 2013.

The trooper was doing an ordinary job in an as yet not terror-attacked United States.

Yu Kikumura, driver of the car, was a known terrorist.  A Japanese terrorist.

The Japanese Red Army (known as sekigun) took responsibility for bombings in Europe and the Middle East and is thought to have booby-trapped a Japanese airport, during the turbulent 1960s and 70s.   Kikumura had been arrested in the Netherlands and imprisoned in Israel until he was released in an exchange of Middle-Eastern terrorists being held there.

Released to Japan, there was no record of him leaving Japan or entering the US, but receipts in his car showed him to be moving throughout the southern US, purchasing nails at one K-Mart, fertilizer in another, fire-extinguishers in yet a different store, so that his movements could not be traced.

Reports at the time said Kikumura's target was either New York or Boston - somewhere that the most people would be injured. 

He was held in the Bergen County Jail overnight until remanded to a US Penitentiary in Colorado.  Then, NJ State Attorney, Samuel A. Alito - now Supreme Court Justice - heard Kikumura's case.

In 1988 I had just begun friendships with Japanese families residing here in Fort Lee.  They knew about the "sekigun" but were shocked that Kikumura was here - and grateful that he was apprehended before carrying out his intentions.

Hearing the awful news from Boston last Monday, I did not recall the Kikumura incident at first - then, I Googled it.  The incident in Boston was April 15, 2012 -and Kikumura was apprehended on April 12, 1988.  News reports at the time said he was planning to set off the bombs on the anniversary of the United States bombing of Libya.