Mrs. Yokota Goes to Washington

Sakie and Shigeru Yokota calling for signatures on the streets of Niigata, May 1997 Photos Courtesy of Vertical Inc.

On April 27, 2006, a joint US House subcommittee held the first congressional hearing on North Korea’s abduction of foreign citizens. Sakie Yokota flew to Washington, D.C., to testify. The interpretation transcribed below was provided at the hearing.

Chairman Leach, Chairman Smith, honorable members of the committee, I would like to thank you for this valuable opportunity to speak to you today. I am Sakie Yokota, the mother of Megumi Yokota, who was 13 years old when she was abducted to North Korea in November of 1977, 29 long years ago.

For 20 long agonizing years after Megumi disappeared while on her way home from junior high school, we didn’t know what happened to her. It was 1997 when we finally learned that she had been kidnapped by North Korean agents.

Naturally we were immediately overjoyed with the thought that Megumi is alive and the hope of being able to see her right away. Since then, nine more years have passed, and I feel so profoundly sad and humiliated when I think about why we still cannot rescue her.

After years of lies and denial, at his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi in September 2002, Kim Jong-il suddenly reversed himself and acknowledged the abduction of just 13 Japanese. However, the number of Japanese citizens that North Korea has abducted goes way beyond 13. Our list of suspected victims includes more than 450 cases. In the case of most victims, North Korea to this day refuses to acknowledge the kidnapping.

Of the 13 Japanese it has admitted kidnapping, North Korea claims that eight of the victims are dead. Among those are my daughter Megumi, Ms. Yaeko Taguchi, Ms. Rumiko Masumoto, and Mr. Shuichi Ichikawa, all four of whose family members are here with me today. To support its contention of their death, North Korea handed Japanese officials several things, including a container of ashes it said were my daughter Megumi’s remains. All of these things were thoroughly examined by the Japanese government, and all were judged to be totally worthless and unreliable.

This is the picture of my daughter Megumi taken in North Korea soon after her kidnapping. It was given to the Japanese government by North Korean authorities with the ashes in November of 2004. Megumi was a young girl who loved music and was always cheerful. But she looks so lonesome in this photograph that when I saw it I couldn’t resist caressing her picture and saying, “Oh Megumi, you were here, in this kind of a place, how frightened you must have been. Please forgive me for not rescuing you yet.”

Megumi shortly after her abduction to North Korea

In 2002, we learned of the existence of Kim Hye-gyong, Megumi’s daughter and our granddaughter. Then in April of this year, another DNA test revealed that our granddaughter’s father is actually a South Korean abduction victim himself by the name of Kim Yong-nam. Mr. Yong-nam was a 16-year-old high school student when he was kidnapped by the North. Beyond this, the victims of North Korean abduction include not only Japanese and South Koreans, but also citizens of at least 12 other countries including China, Thailand, Lebanon, and France.

In the case of my daughter Megumi, we learned of her abduction from a North Korean agent who later took asylum. He testified that when Megumi was kidnapped, “She was held in a small dark chamber in the bottom of a special intelligence ship where she scraped the walls with her fingers while crying out desperately, ‘Mother, help me! Mother, save me!’—and that is how she was carried across the dark sea.”

Even now, my daughter Megumi and other abductees must be alive somewhere in North Korea. We the families are fatigued both physically and mentally, yet we cannot stop as long as our own children are seeking our help.

We cannot recover the lost years for our children, but we can rescue the victims that were abducted from many countries of the world and allow them to spend the rest of their life in the lands of freedom. We must also not forget the North Korean people who suffered from the atrocities committed by their own government.

I plead now for all countries of the world to join us in saying that “we will not forgive the abductions—all of the victims must be returned immediately or we will initiate economic sanctions.” This is a sincere wish from the bottom of our hearts from all of the family members here.

Members of congress, members of the administration, and people of America, thank you for your strong hearts and thank you so much for your help.

Rep. Jim Leach: “Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Yokota, and I am sure I speak for the panel when I say that you are a model mother and all of us wish you well. This is a problem of the world family, the American family as well as the Japanese family