Families Call for Early Return Home of Abductees

Naka, Ibaraki Pref., June 1 (Jiji Press)--Relatives of Japanese nationals abducted to North Korea expressed their strong wishes on Sunday to see their loved ones return home as soon as possible, after Pyongyang recently promised to reopen its probe on the abduction issue. At a government-sponsored meeting on the abduction issue in Naka, Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, Yasutoshi Nishimura, senior vice minister at the Cabinet Office, said: "The North Korean promise marks a big step forward. We will steadily proceed with talks with the nation to fully resolve the problem." Shigeo Iizuka, 75, leader of a group of families of abduction victims, said, "We've been deceived by North Korea for decades." "This time, however, we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance," Iizuka said, adding that he hopes all abduction victims will come back to Japan. Sakie Yokota, 78, the mother of Megumi Yokota, who was abducted to North Korea in 1977 when she was 13 years old, said that the only thing she wants is to see her daughter and all other victims return home. Megumi's father, Shigeru, 81, said, "We need your support to achieve the return home of all abduction victims." In high-level bilateral talks with Japan in Stockholm through Wednesday, Pyongyang vowed to fully restart investigations into the whereabouts of not only Japanese nationals officially recognized by Tokyo as abductees but also those who are not on the official list but were possibly abducted to North Korea. Kiyoko Nemoto, 70, the mother of Naomi Nemoto, one of the suspected victims, said, "I don't know if my daughter is in North Korea." She added that she hopes the name of her daughter will be included in a list of abductees North Korea is expected to compile. Naomi went missing in the former Ibaraki Prefecture town of Fujishiro, now integrated into the city of Toride in the same prefecture, in 1987 when she was 15 years old. In the Stockholm talks, the Japanese government agreed to lift part of its sanctions on North Korea once the country starts the promised reinvestigation. In this regard, Kazuhiro Araki, 57, head of a group that is conducting investigations on suspected abduction victims, said at the government-sponsored meeting that the Japanese decision was "too careless and premature." The government thinks that the North Korean reinvestigation will take within a year before completion. Araki criticized this, saying, "Are you really serious about bringing the victims back home? If we wait for as long as a year, North Korea will break its promise." END