(born 1 March 1973) is a Japanese journalist. She is the daughter of Japanese Red Army member Fusako Shigenobu and of an unnamed Palestinian who was reportedly the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Some news agencies have given her name as May Shigenobu. Early life Mei Shigenobu was born in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon in 1973. Her father was a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine guerilla leader (not named by Mei due to security reasons) and her mother was the Japanese Red Army member Fusako Shigenobu. After three Japanese volunteers for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine PFLP External Operations executed an attack on Israel's Lod Airport (see Lod Airport massacre) on 30 May 1972, PFLP leaders and other Japanese volunteers became targets for Israel's assassinations. In retaliation for the attack, PFLP's spokesman Ghassan Kanafani was killed on July 8, 1972, by the Israeli Intelligence Agency Mossad in a car bomb. Mei's mother became wanted by the INTERPOL in 1974 after the French embassy hostage-taking in The Hague in which she was thought to be involved, so Mei had to move frequently and used aliases to evade reprisals by her mother's enemies. Mei Shigenobu lived some of her childhood years in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon; Fusako Shigenobu was absent for months at a time and Mei was raised in those periods by her mother's comrades in the Japanese Red Army and Arab friends and supporters; while her birth father was killed sometime during her childhood. She had her early education in several schools in Lebanon and in other countries she refuses to name. She studied journalism at the Lebanese University as well as going to the American University of Beirut in Lebanon for her tertiary education where she continued her graduate studies in International Relations. During those years, she learned to speak fluent Arabic and English, but hid her knowledge of Japanese, fearing that if her identity as Fusako Shigenobu's daughter were to become known publicly, her mother might be captured. She was not a citizen of any country until March 2001, when she received Japanese citizenship. Return to Japan Mei came out of hiding after her mother was captured in Osaka, and visited Japan for the first time in April 2001, making her the first child of a Red Army member to return to Japan in five years.