Photo/Illutration Takuya Yokota, the new head of a group representing families of those abducted by North Korean agents (Photo by Kazuyoshi Sako)

Takuya Yokota is determined to see his sister again no matter what, but wonders when, or indeed ever, he will be reunited with his older sibling, abducted decades ago to North Korea.

He says the only means he has at his disposal is the power of words to get politicians to take up the cause in earnest.

Efforts over the years initially spearhead by his late father, Shigeru Yokota, to force the issue bore little fruit until Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made a landmark visit to North Korea in 2002 that resulted in five abductees returning to Japan.

By Japanese government estimates, there are still a dozen or so Japanese nationals being held against their will after being snatched in the late 1970s and ’80s to train North Korean spies in Japanese language, customs and culture.

“We are private citizens with no special authority,” said Takuya, 53, the new head of a group representing families of abductees. “The only weapon available for us is words. By meeting directly with officials and pressing our case in the strongest terms possible can we hope to make them relate to the problem.”

Takuya and his father first raised the issue with the United Nations back in around 2002 and he has met with successive U.S. presidents to bring pressure to bear on Pyongyang to resolve the longstanding issue.

Takuya’s elder sister, Megumi, was a 13-year-old junior high school student when she was snatched while walking home from school in Niigata facing the Sea of Japan in 1977. Takuya and his younger twin brother, Tetsuya, were aged 9 at the time.

Had Megumi been born a boy, she would have been named Takuya. Instead, the name was given to the Yokotas’ second child.

Takuya said Megumi’s disappearance felt as if all light has been extinguished within the household, recalling how she used to smile cheerfully like the sun.

In 1997, news reports emerged that Megumi might had been abducted to North Korea. This led to the formation of the families’ group headed by Takuya’s father, Shigeru.

Koizumi’s historic visit to Pyongyang resulted in the North’s acknowledgement of involvement in the abductions although it asserted Megumi had died years earlier and it had no records on other suspected abductees.

Yet Takuya optimistically hoped the problem, exacerbated by the fact the two countries do not have diplomatic relations, “may be finally settled with this.” But years passed without further signs of progress and Shigeru died in 2020. His successor, Shigeo Iizuka, died in 2021 and Takuya took charge a week before his death.

Throughout the 45 years since his sister vanished, Takuya never imagined he would become head of the victimized families’ group. In spite of that, he resolved to take over his father’s role.

“I feel it (the reality of my becoming the group head) constitutes a great inconsistency,” Takuya said. “It is, however, impossible for me to evade my responsibility. I have no choice but to serve as the head of the group.”

Looking to the future, Takuya said he dearly wants his mother, Sakie, 86, to “see my cheerful and upbeat elder sister as soon as possible.”

When he is eventually reunited with his older sibling, he will apologize to her for “having been unable to rescue her earlier.”

“I will tell her (Megumi) that my father wanted desperately to see her until his dying breath,” said Takuya, adding that he keeps his father’s cremated remains at hand in lieu of burying them so Megumi will be able to see her father when she finally returns home.

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