US: Ailing US army deserter Charles Jenkins begins his new life in Japan today in a modest wooden house on the same remote, windswept island from where his Japanese wife was snatched by North Korean agents 26 years ago, writes David McNeill in Tokyo
Mr Jenkins arrived last night on Sado, off Japan's west coast, with his wife Hitomi Soga and their two-North Korean-born daughters, to a rapturous reception from the island's 69,000 residents, many of whom offered bouquets and made welcome signs in Korean and Japanese.
"I'm really happy for them," said future neighbour Tamae Takaoka. "We will make them feel at home here." Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said "The family can finally live in peace", after Jenkins left a US army base west of Tokyo for Sado yesterday.
The 64-year-old former sergeant is being dishonourably discharged from the army for deserting and defecting to North Korea in 1965 - "the stupidest thing I have ever done", he told a reporter while still in military custody.
He said he had left Pyongyang for the sake of his daughters, Mika and Brinda, who he feared would be used as future "spy fodder". Mr Jenkins spent 39 years in the reclusive communist state where he met and married Hitomi Soga in 1980. She was just 19 when she was snatched while walking home after shopping for groceries with her mother in 1978, bundled into a sack and spirited away to North Korea. Her mother has never been found.