On July 16, Jeffery Morehouse and Brett Weed met with the Deputy Consul General of Japan in Portland, Mr. Hirofumi Murabayashi to follow up on BAC Home’s July 2, 2012 letter to the Prime Minister.
At length, we discussed:
• Japan’s complicity in providing passports in violation of their own April 2010 policy which has allowed kidnapping to continue.
• Japan’s refusal to assist Parents of Internationally Kidnapped Children is directly analogous the North Korea’s unwillingness to return its kidnapped citizens.
• Japanese Diet Member Masae Ido televised statement that, “Not many people think of this as kidnapping or a crime. If anything, they think it’s not a bad thing. It’s really a custom.”
The latter point prompted a written response by Representative Ido on her website. When this statement is accurately translated into English, she implies that her newfound cooperation in Japan’s accession to the Hague Convention is somehow linked to concessions from the United States to reduce U.S. military presence in Okinawa.
The suggestion by her that our children lives have been traded for base concessions is alarming on many levels. It has necessitated an additional letter to Prime Minister of Japan.
We continue to call on the Government of Japan to immediately aid and complete the safe return to the United States all American children abducted to Japan, and provide all American children abducted within Japan immediate and unfettered access to their U.S. parent.
• Japan’s complicity in providing passports in violation of their own April 2010 policy which has allowed kidnapping to continue.
• Japan’s refusal to assist Parents of Internationally Kidnapped Children is directly analogous the North Korea’s unwillingness to return its kidnapped citizens.
• Japanese Diet Member Masae Ido televised statement that, “Not many people think of this as kidnapping or a crime. If anything, they think it’s not a bad thing. It’s really a custom.”
The latter point prompted a written response by Representative Ido on her website. When this statement is accurately translated into English, she implies that her newfound cooperation in Japan’s accession to the Hague Convention is somehow linked to concessions from the United States to reduce U.S. military presence in Okinawa.
The suggestion by her that our children lives have been traded for base concessions is alarming on many levels. It has necessitated an additional letter to Prime Minister of Japan.
We continue to call on the Government of Japan to immediately aid and complete the safe return to the United States all American children abducted to Japan, and provide all American children abducted within Japan immediate and unfettered access to their U.S. parent.
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