Posted on 07/11/2004 2:40:55 PM PDT by wagglebee
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - An alleged U.S. Army deserter who fled to North Korea 40 years ago said he wants his reunited family to remain together but he has yet to say where they would live, a Japanese official said Sunday.
Meanwhile, the family of North Carolina native Charles Robert Jenkins has reportedly asked President Bush to pardon the former sergeant, who is still wanted on desertion charges.
Jenkins and his two daughters had an emotional reunion with his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga, at Jakarta's international airport on Friday before going to a five-star hotel in central Jakarta. The family had been apart since Soga returned to Japan in 2002 - 24 years after being abducted by North Korean agents.
The reunion was held in Indonesia because it does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
The family has stayed in a 14th-floor suite since Friday, Japanese officials said. Its future has yet to be addressed.
"It's too early for the Japanese government to bring up that discussion," Japanese government spokesman Kyoko Nakayama told a press conference.
"He told us, 'The four of us want to stay together always.'"
A large delegation of Japanese officials - and a few North Koreans - were supervising the reunion.
Indonesia has said the family can stay here as long as it wants. Soga reportedly wants to persuade her husband to return to Japan.
In North Carolina, lawyer James B. Craven III mailed a petition Friday to the Justice Department on behalf of Jenkins' family in North Carolina, the Raleigh News and Observer reported.
Jenkins, 64, is still wanted on U.S. desertion charges. He was serving in an Army unit based on the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea when he disappeared during a routine patrol in 1965.
Craven said former presidents granted executive clemency to Vietnam War resisters, soldiers who were absent without leave and those who, like Jenkins, were accused of desertion but never tried.
Jenkins' family in North Carolina has had no contact with him since 1965. His mother, now 91, is in poor health.
"I just thought it was time to do this," Craven told the newspaper.
The family drama has entranced Japan, leading to accusations the reunion was engineered by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to offset his sagging popularity before Sunday's parliamentary elections. The government denies that.
The Japanese government is footing the bill for the visit, including chartering a special plane to fly Jenkins and his daughters from Pyongyang to Jakarta.
Soga was abducted by North Korean spies in 1978 to teach them the customs and language of Japan. North Korea allowed her and four other Japanese kidnap victims to return home in 2002 while leaving their families behind.
Jenkins did not accompany Soga, fearful that he could be extradited to the United States and tried for desertion. Their teenage daughters decided to stay with their father.
The CIA needs to go into Indonesia, grab this traitor and bring him back to America so we can execute him.
No, we need to get to him so we can find out what happened to American POWs held after the Korean War. That's far more important than vengeance, trying to track down the fate of those we left behind.
Perhaps you are right, though I doubt there are any American POWs still alive in North Korea. But I agree, this traitor needs to be debriefed by us.
YES>
He is in far too good a physical condition to have been a nobody in a country suffering decades of famine.
He was obviously important in some way.
So9
Pardon the bastard I could care less, But I dont want him living in this country or entering it, he gave up that right years ago.
Be there a man with soul so dead,
who never to himself has said
This is mine own , My native land.
Like the man without a country, he doesnt deserve to return to this one.
The difference is that the Viet Nam War is officially OVER. The Korean War IS STILL ON. It never officially ended but was merely put on hiatus by an armistice.
Put him on the waiting list for immigration from NK.
How soon we forget the treason of the leftist leaders among us.
The MacNeil/Lehrer Report -- January 21, 1977 CARTER'S PARDON
Does anyone doubt this is Clinton's fault? I'll bet he was getting a hummer from Monica while on the phone to his friend Kim in North Korea.
Does anyone doubt this is Clinton's fault? I'll bet he was getting a hummer from Monica while on the phone to his friend Kim in North Korea.
Because your sending a message that if you want to shirk your duty to the nation and can get away with it, eventually you'll get pardoned.
I'd say don't waste the resources to go after him though - we have enough deserters from the past two years just in this country, that need to be brought in and made examples of. Just make sure that he can never ever come into this country again or receive any kind of benefits from having once upon a time been an American.
That may sound contradictory - but I don't think he's worth as much as the current crop of traitors we have running around, unless he could provide information on American POWs in North Korea.
Yeah if Jimmy did it lets do it again !.........NOT !
Hang this loser yesterday.....
Nope on the pardon. He made his choice. Live with it.
One deserter is one too many. ZERO tolerance.
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