thought, ‘Oh, this is a big lie!’” Finally, Takeshi emerged from the crowd. He hugged his father but not his mother. “I cried and cried, but he didn’t,” she says. “He had been instructed not to show too many emotions.”
Takeshi worked in a steel mill in a remote industrialarea three hours north of Pyongyang, near the Chinese border. His wife was a singer and a member of the corps of beautiful young women charged with entertaining Kim Il-sung. They’d met when Takeshi was in his twenties, having spent his formative years in the North, successfully passing as a full-fledged North Korean citizen. Ethnic purity is taken very seriously in North Korea, so Takeshi’s Japaneseheritage would have diminished his social standing and made him a much less desirable mate. He hid his past from his wife and in-laws, but in the back of his mind he feared that one day the truth would come out. In preparation for Tomoe’s visit, the regime shipped Takeshi’s whole family to Pyongyang for a month so that they could eat well and acquire the veneer of urban sophistication. The daybefore Tomoe arrived, Takeshi finally confessed to them that his mother, and therefore he, was from Japan. With the realization that she had unwittingly married an enemy foreigner, a match that would surely diminish her family’s status, Takeshi’s wife fainted.
Determined to make up for the lost years, Tomoe began visiting Takeshi once or twice a year, bringing as many clothes and electric appliancesas her small budget allowed. In between visits, she would send money, concealing Japanese yen in pickled plum jars or sewing bills into neckties and overcoats to keep them from being stolen. When she received a letter thanking her for the delicious plums, she knew Takeshi had received the money.
What Takeshi’s wife didn’t anticipate was that her husband’s new status as a Japanese-born North Koreanwho claimed he was living happily in his adopted home would overnight make him more valuable to the regime and thereby elevate his place in society. He was promoted to a position as the assistant director of the steelworkers’ union, and the family moved to Pyongyang permanently, living in a floor-through apartment in a modern, twenty-six-story building. With eight rooms and two bathrooms (oneWestern and one Japanese), it was located in fashionable central Pyongyang.
Tomoe’s emotions wavered over the years, and at one point she was persuaded to add Takeshi’s name to the official list of abductees. “Mother, is it your intention to cut relations with me forever?” he wrote. Takeshi insisted he had been rescued, not abducted, and explained that her saying otherwise would have unpleasantconsequences for him. She quickly begged the Japanese government to remove his name, which it did.
I ask Tomoe what she thinks really happened that night in 1963, and she looks away. “Well, he certainly didn’t walk to North Korea; I know that much,” she says with a sigh. “There are many complaints I want to make to North Korea. There also are many complaints I want to make to the Japanese government.But I never speak up. This is not a matter between two countries. This is a matter between a mother and her son.” I ask whether she feels a connection between herself and Sakie Yokota. Their stories of loss are similar, but Tomoe has been given the opportunity to establish a relationship, strained though it is, with her long-lost child. The two women have met, and Tomoe was for a time a memberof the association of families with abducted children that the Yokotas helped found. “I think that in our hearts we support each other as mothers who lost their children at age thirteen,” Tomoe replies. “However, the two mothers are now walking separate roads.”
12
AN AMERICAN IN PYONGYANG
The one-hundred-sixty-mile-long, two-and-a-half-mile-wide demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea is the most heavily fortified border in the world.
Takeshi worked in a steel mill in a remote industrialarea three hours north of Pyongyang, near the Chinese border. His wife was a singer and a member of the corps of beautiful young women charged with entertaining Kim Il-sung. They’d met when Takeshi was in his twenties, having spent his formative years in the North, successfully passing as a full-fledged North Korean citizen. Ethnic purity is taken very seriously in North Korea, so Takeshi’s Japaneseheritage would have diminished his social standing and made him a much less desirable mate. He hid his past from his wife and in-laws, but in the back of his mind he feared that one day the truth would come out. In preparation for Tomoe’s visit, the regime shipped Takeshi’s whole family to Pyongyang for a month so that they could eat well and acquire the veneer of urban sophistication. The daybefore Tomoe arrived, Takeshi finally confessed to them that his mother, and therefore he, was from Japan. With the realization that she had unwittingly married an enemy foreigner, a match that would surely diminish her family’s status, Takeshi’s wife fainted.
Determined to make up for the lost years, Tomoe began visiting Takeshi once or twice a year, bringing as many clothes and electric appliancesas her small budget allowed. In between visits, she would send money, concealing Japanese yen in pickled plum jars or sewing bills into neckties and overcoats to keep them from being stolen. When she received a letter thanking her for the delicious plums, she knew Takeshi had received the money.
What Takeshi’s wife didn’t anticipate was that her husband’s new status as a Japanese-born North Koreanwho claimed he was living happily in his adopted home would overnight make him more valuable to the regime and thereby elevate his place in society. He was promoted to a position as the assistant director of the steelworkers’ union, and the family moved to Pyongyang permanently, living in a floor-through apartment in a modern, twenty-six-story building. With eight rooms and two bathrooms (oneWestern and one Japanese), it was located in fashionable central Pyongyang.
Tomoe’s emotions wavered over the years, and at one point she was persuaded to add Takeshi’s name to the official list of abductees. “Mother, is it your intention to cut relations with me forever?” he wrote. Takeshi insisted he had been rescued, not abducted, and explained that her saying otherwise would have unpleasantconsequences for him. She quickly begged the Japanese government to remove his name, which it did.
I ask Tomoe what she thinks really happened that night in 1963, and she looks away. “Well, he certainly didn’t walk to North Korea; I know that much,” she says with a sigh. “There are many complaints I want to make to North Korea. There also are many complaints I want to make to the Japanese government.But I never speak up. This is not a matter between two countries. This is a matter between a mother and her son.” I ask whether she feels a connection between herself and Sakie Yokota. Their stories of loss are similar, but Tomoe has been given the opportunity to establish a relationship, strained though it is, with her long-lost child. The two women have met, and Tomoe was for a time a memberof the association of families with abducted children that the Yokotas helped found. “I think that in our hearts we support each other as mothers who lost their children at age thirteen,” Tomoe replies. “However, the two mothers are now walking separate roads.”
12
AN AMERICAN IN PYONGYANG
The one-hundred-sixty-mile-long, two-and-a-half-mile-wide demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea is the most heavily fortified border in the world.
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