U.S. Army Deserter Charles Jenkins Warmly Welcomed on Japanese Island, Wife Says
By Audrey McAvoy Associated Press Writer
TOKYO (AP) - Villagers on the remote Japanese isle of Sado have warmly welcomed U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins since he arrived with his Japanese wife and their two North Korea-born daughters a week ago, his wife said Tuesday.
Jenkins moved to Sado to begin a new life in his wife's hometown last week after he finished serving a monthlong sentence in military prison for abandoning his Army post and defecting to North Korea in 1965.
His wife, Hitomi Soga, said Jenkins hadn't yet learned to speak much Japanese which limited his conversations with other residents. On Tuesday evening, though, she said he ventured out to meet the students at a nearby English language school.
"It was his first time to interact with local people he hadn't had the opportunity until then," Soga said in nationally televised news conference. "They welcomed him warmly. He was delighted."
Jenkins' arrival on Sado closed a bizarre Cold War saga started when he fled to the North because he was afraid of dangerous duty along the demilitarized zone on the Korean peninsula and of being sent to Vietnam.
Japan lobbied hard to bring Jenkins and the couple's daughters out of the North so they could join Soga on Sado, a small island in the Sea of Japan about 180 miles northwest of Tokyo.
Soga left the isolated communist state in 2002 after Pyongyang admitted to kidnapping her and 12 other Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to teach Japanese language and customs to its spies.
The couple's daughters, Mika, 21, and Brinda, 19, are studying Japanese "even harder than before" Soga said. The family has been watching music shows and other Japanese television programs together, while Jenkins never fails to watch the news, she said.
Soga said the family was still mulling what to do about the daughters' schooling.
Niigata University, the local public college, has said it would consider ways to accommodate Mika and Brinda if they asked to enroll. Soga said she would like her daughters to begin formal studies.
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U.S. Army Deserter Wants Japanese Citizenship
The Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) - U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins, settling in northern Japan after his release from a military prison and four decades in North Korea, has expressed hopes of becoming a Japanese citizen, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
The Asahi newspaper said Jenkins, who abandoned his Army unit in 1965 and defected to North Korea, would soon apply for permanent residency in Japan on the remote island of Sado, where he arrived on Tuesday.
Jenkins' wife, Hitomi Soga, is Japanese, and their two North Korean-born daughters, Mika, 21, and Brinda, 19, received Japanese citizenship soon after their arrival in Japan in July.
The North Carolina-native, who served 25 days in a U.S. military jail after being convicted of desertion, said Tuesday that he would like to spend the rest of his life in Japan, but he did not publicly mention the possibility of Japanese citizenship.
The Asahi report did not cite the source of its information. A local government official in Sado, Tatsuya Ando, said Jenkins had not taken any legal action to become a citizen.
Jenkins, 64, Soga and the daughters were greeted by cheering crowds in Sado on Tuesday, 180 miles northwest of Tokyo.
The family's plight has been closely followed in Japan, where Soga has won an outpouring of public sympathy. Soga met and married Jenkins in North Korea after she was kidnapped as a 19-year-old in 1978 by northern agents.
She returned home to Japan in 2002 after Pyongyang admitted to kidnapping her and 12 other Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, but left her family behind in North Korea.
A diplomatic offensive launched by Tokyo finally won the release of Jenkins and their two daughters earlier this year. The former sergeant later turned himself into the U.S. military.