On Bruce Gherbetti's right forearm, the names of his three lost children are permanently inscribed in a swirling script of dark blue tattoo ink.
"They go with me everywhere I go," he says, smiling. "It is a physical representation of the fact that my children and I will never be separated. They are my everything — the reason I am alive."
It was a very long, painful two years and two weeks before Gherbetti, a Canadian, was finally reunited with his children in Japan this September and was able, if only briefly, to see and speak with them again.