-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/25/1035504882647.html
Print this article | Close this window Forgotten man emerges into the light October 26 2002 In the bitter cold of a winter's night in 1965, US Army Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins was leading his three-man squad on patrol near the demilitarised zone that divides North and South Korea. It was just past 2.30am when Jenkins signalled to his troops to wait while he went forward to check something. That was the last they would see of him. Three weeks later, North Korean radio triumphantly announced that Jenkins, a 25-year-old from small town America, had seen the light and defected. For the best part of 40 years, Jenkins was essentially a forgotten man, leaving behind an army that regarded him as a traitor. However, his family in North Carolina refused to believe he had gone of his own free will. Suddenly, almost 38 years after he left his patrol, Charles Jenkins has emerged from the shadows in a most unexpected and unusual way. When Japan's Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, returned from his historic meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong-il last month, he brought news that the Stalinist state had admitted abducting 13 Japanese nationals. In a strange twist to an already bizarre story, Japan learnt that one of the five surviving abductees, Hitomi Soga, had married a US Army defector. His name: Charles Robert Jenkins. Ms Soga, now 43, had been shopping with her mother on Sado Island off the Sea of Japan coast in 1978 when they were bundled into bags by agents of Pyongyang. Ms Soga, a teenage nursing student, was spirited away to North Korea to train its agents in Japanese language and culture. She never saw her mother again. Gradually accepting her fate, she asked to learn English. Her teacher was Charles Jenkins. They fell in love and married in 1980, and have two daughters, Mika, 19, and Belinda, 17. In the past week, since Ms Soga returned to Japan with the four other survivors for a visit, the missing years in the life of Charles Jenkins have started to assume some form. Jenkins, now 62, and his daughters came to the airport at Pyongyang to see off Ms Soga. Japanese officials asked Jenkins if he wanted to go with her, but explained that because of his situation "it's not easy". Jenkins also told the officials about his life with Soga. "Hitomi is almost 20 years younger than me, but she made us a very good family," he told the officials, the newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported. "I do appreciate her for that, even though she may have felt lonely for marrying a man this much older." Jenkins stood at the fence waving goodbye, a "very lonely figure". Ms Soga has told her relatives of their life in Pyongyang, getting up early to make lunches for their daughters, who are students at the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies. Her husband, she said, was kind, "though we sometimes argue". As debate continues over whether Ms Soga and the other returnees will eventually settle back in Japan, Jenkins's official status as a deserter has emerged as a pressing issue. He would presumably face immediate arrest should he leave North Korea. In a move that underlines how strongly Japan wants the five abductees to come home, Tokyo has made a special request to Washington that Jenkins be granted amnesty. Back in North Carolina, his family is elated to know he is alive, but refuses to accept that any amnesty is necessary. "I don't believe this about him being a deserter," his sister, Pat Harrell, told The New York Times. His family has always questioned the authenticity of a farewell letter the army says Jenkins left behind, which began: "Dear Mother, I am sorry for the trouble I will cause you." For the past 37 years the question has been whether Jenkins was a deserter or was abducted. Now, as the story of the Japanese abductees unfolds, we are tantalisingly close to the answer. On the superficial evidence, it would seem that Jenkins did betray his country. He is one of four US servicemen who are alleged to have deserted to the North during the 1960s, subsequently used as Cold War trophies by Pyongyang in propaganda material. In 1996 the Pentagon classed Jenkins and the other three servicemen as defectors. In addition, there are apparently between 10 and 15 US prisoners of war from the Korean War still in North Korea. What would make Jenkins, an average young man from an average American town, turn to the embrace of a communist enemy? His life until then holds few clues. In his home town of Rich Square, a farming hamlet of 1000 people, Jenkins was given the nickname Super because his strength was out of proportion to his slender frame. After struggling at school, he seemed to have found his niche with the army, a logical extension of enjoyable days in the National Guard. He served at a US base in Japan before his tour of duty in South Korea. While family and friends have remained loyal, others are not so sure. "I think Jenkins's friends and relatives are in denial and engaged in wishful thinking," said Bill Sizemore, a journalist who has written on the Jenkins case for the newspaper The Virginian-Pilot. "One of his friends told me six years ago that Jenkins told him on his last visit home, in late '64 or early '65, that 'when he left this time, he wasn't coming back'." Ms Soga also reportedly told Japanese officials in Pyongyang recently that her husband had gone to North Korea to avoid service in Vietnam. "That sounds plausible to me," Sizemore said. The only person who really knows what happened on that winter's night near the DMZ is Charles Jenkins. "We don't know if he was abducted or deserted," said Lynn O'Shea, of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen. "However, based on the evidence, one must consider the possibility that he was abducted. Until someone can question Charles Jenkins on neutral ground with his family protected, we don't think we will ever have the answer to that question. "We know the North Koreans kidnapped foreign nationals. An obvious question is: why wouldn't they want Americans for their spy school also?" 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