Soga laments separation from her mother

The Yomiuri Shimbun

12:36 JST, October 18, 2022

Hitomi Soga, 63, abducted by North Korea in the late 1970s, on Monday expressed her current state of mind, saying, “It’s hard not being able to see my precious mother even once.” At the press conference where she was speaking in Sado, Niigata Prefecture, on the 20th anniversary of her return to Japan, she added, “When my mother returns to Sado, I want to talk with her without end.”

Soga was abducted from Sado in August 1978 and returned to Japan in October 2002. Her husband, Charles Jenkins, and two daughters returned to Japan in July 2004, but nothing is known of the whereabouts of her mother, Miyoshi, then 46, who was abducted along with Soga.

She also mentioned Jenkins, who passed away five years ago, and said that she wished she could have spent more time with him.

Soga has been collecting signatures for petitions and giving lectures across the country in an effort to have all the abduction victims brought back home as soon as possible.