Sakie Yokota expressed hopes for a reunion with her daughter, Megumi, a Japanese abductee to North Korea who turned 60 on Saturday.
“I feel empty for keeping waiting for as long as 47 years. I believe she is doing well, and I will wait to meet her,” the 88-year-old mother told reporters Thursday.
Megumi was abducted on her way home from school in the city of Niigata on Nov. 15, 1977, when she was 13 years old.
“I imagined how she looked until she turned college-age, but I can’t imagine my daughter in her 60s,” Sakie said.
Sakie showed a small pot that Megumi bought her on a school trip to Hagi, Yamaguchi Prefecture. “I was happy for her thoughtful present,” she said.
Sakie, and Akihiro Arimoto, 96, father of Keiko, who was kidnapped in the early 1980s at the age of 23, are now the only living parents of Japanese abductees to North Korea.
“I don’t know how much longer I can live, or whether (abductees) in North Korea are alive,” Sakie said. “I don’t want to live more while knowing nothing about what is happening there.”
If the reunion with her daughter is realized, “I just hope to hug her silently,” she said.
On Tuesday’s inauguration of new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Sakie said: “I have met many prime ministers, and all of them said they would work hard. I want my daughter back in any way.”