Aliens

From Prayer by Yancy

For several years I have tried to help a Japanese family, the Yokatas, in their desperate search for justice. In 1977 their thirteen- year old daughter Megumi vanished on her way home from badmitten pracitice. Police dogs tracked her scent to a nearby beach, but the distraught Yokatas had no clues that might explain their daughter's sudden disappearance.

Sixteen years later, long after the Yokatas had resigned themselves to Megumi's death, a North Korean defector made a stunning claim: a Japanese woman named Megumi was living in North Korea at a training institue for intellgenice agients. Scores of Japanese, he said, had been kidnapped and forced teach Korean spies the Japanese language and culture. He provided heartrending details of Megumi's abduction: agents had seized her, wrapped her in a straw mat, and rowed her to a waiting spy ship, where she had spent the night scratching against the hold with bloody fingers crying out for her mother.

For years North Korea dismissed all such reports. But in the face of mouonting pressure, Kim Jong-il himself at long last admitted to the abduction of 13 Japanese, including Megumi. Five returned to Japan, but North Koreans insisteted the other eight had died, including megumi who, they said, in 1993 had used a kimono to hang herself. Much information supplied by North Korea proved false, however, and the Yokatas refused to believe the reports of their daughter's death. All over Japan, prayer groups sprang up to support the abductees. Mrs. Yokata traveled across the globe in her quest for justice, becoming in the process one of the most familiar faces on Japanese media. Eventually she visited the oval office and told her story to President George W. Bush, who took up her cause.

In 2004, 27 years after the abduction, the North Koreans gave Megumi's parents three photos of their daughter. The most poignant taken just after her capture, shows her at age 13 still in her Japanese schoolgirls' uniform, looking unbearably forlorn. "We couldn't help crying when we saw the picture," her mother tearfully told reporters. Two other photos showed her as an adult, a woman in her 30s standing outdoors in a winter coat.

The Yokatas fondled the photos over and over, finding some solace in the fact that the later photos showed their daughter looking healthy and reasonably well cared for. They tried to imagine Megumi's life. Had she met with other abductees and conversed with them to keep from forgetting her mother tongue? What had helped her remember who she was? Had she tried to sneak a message back to them? Attempted an escape? What memories did she retain of her life in Japan, life as their daughter? How many times had Megumi looked toward the island of Japan and scoured newspapers of clues of her former house?