Deserter Back Home After 40 Years

[David]

AP


A soldier who deserted his Army unit and crossed into North Korea returned to the United States Tuesday after 40 years.

Charles Jenkins arrived at Dulles International Airport here in midmorning en route to North Carolina, where he planned to see his ailing 91-year-old mother. He was accompanied by his Japanese wife and two daughters.

On arrival, Jenkins and his family were whisked to a connecting flight by police, who tried to keep the news media away from him. Jenkins initially declined to speak to reporters, saying he was under contract, though he did not elaborate.

Later, while Jenkins was waiting for a connecting flight to Richmond, an Associated Press reporter asked him how he felt being back after 40 years. "Very happy," he replied.

Asked if he was excited to see his mother, Jenkins said "Of course."

The frail 65-year-old was convicted in a court-martial and spent 25 days in a U.S. military jail in Japan last year.

"This has been a very emotional and special time," he said in a departure statement before leaving Japan. He requested privacy when he reunites with his mother at his sister's home.

"Upon arriving in the U.S., we will be picked up by my family and driven to my sister's house, where we will be staying all week," he said in the statement to the media. "I hope you will respect my family's privacy."

Jenkins has said he has no plans to move permanently back to his home country.

Jenkins traveled to Japan last July to be with his wife, Hitomi Soga, who was kidnapped by North Korean agents in 1978 but allowed to return home in 2002. The couple met in North Korea and had two daughters, Mika, 21, and Brinda, 19.

Public sympathy for Soga, who was abducted by spies when she was only 19, helped make her family's resettlement from North Korea to Japan a national cause. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi personally appealed to Pyongyang to allow Jenkins and their daughters to follow Soga to Japan.

The family has settled in Soga's hometown of Mano on Sado, a tiny island in northwestern Japan, where Jenkins has said he feels welcome and wants to live out his days, perhaps finding a regular job.

He is working on an autobiography.

Jenkins, a native of Rich Square, N.C., disappeared while on patrol along the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas. During his court-martial, he said he deserted because he was afraid of being sent to Vietnam. He pleaded guilty to desertion and aiding the enemy.

He has called his desertion a mistake, one that led to decades of deprivation and hardship in the isolated communist state. Jenkins, then a 25-year-old sergeant, said he drank heavily the night he decided to leave his men behind and walk across the border into the North.

He wasn't likely to find much sympathy in his hometown of Rich Square, N.C., however, where some were considering protests at what they called his betrayal of his country.

When Jenkins disappeared into the woods on patrol in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 15, 1965, many in Rich Square believed he had been kidnapped. Even when the Army confirmed two weeks later that he had defected, some believed there had to be more to the story, that he was somehow coerced.

But ahead of his return, some in the town of 1,000 expressed anger.

Jenkins and his family plan to return to Japan on June 22.





Charles Jenkins, center, is escorted by Japanese airline officials and airport security as he arrives from Tokyo at Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Va., Tuesday, June 14, 2005.