Tokuda, Kyuichi (1894–1953)

Japanese political communist activist. He became leader of the Communist Party in 1945 and was elected to the Diet (Japanese parliament) in 1946. Forced to go underground by the US-directed ‘Red Purge’ in 1950, Tokuda fled to China where he died in Beijing in 1953.

He came from a poor Okinawan background and was an early member of the Japanese Communist Party, formed in 1922. He made repeated visits to Moscow during the 1920s. After earlier short spells of imprisonment, he was arrested in 1928 and not released from prison until 1945.