The daughter of a deceased Red Army Faction hijacking fugitive has expressed her intention to visit her grandmother's grave on her first visit to Japan, possibly next month.
"I want to visit the grave of my grandmother, who had long been waiting for my younger sister and me (to come to Japan)," Hiromi Okamoto, 25, wrote in a letter sent recently to Kyodo News.
Okamoto is the eldest daughter of the late Takeshi Okamoto, one of nine Red Army Faction members who hijacked a Japan Airlines jet and forced it to fly to North Korea in 1970.
Born and raised in North Korea, Okamoto is expected to arrive in Japan on Sept. 10 along with other family members of the hijacking fugitives.
"Although I am anxious, I am happy to finally be able to travel (to Japan). I would like to start building a new life as a Japanese," she said. She also expressed regret over never having met her grandmother, who died in January at the age of 84.
The grandmother submitted the sisters' birth registrations to a municipal government in Kochi Prefecture last December. The sisters acquired their Japanese citizenship in April.
In the letter, Okamoto describes Japan as her homeland but adds that she feels proud about having North Korea as a home and that she loves its unpretentious people and natural beauty.
Takeshi Okamoto reportedly married a woman from Kochi Prefecture in North Korea in 1976. The couple are believed to be dead.
The daughters apparently began living with other fugitives and their families around 1984.
In March 1970, nine members of the Red Army Faction, a radical group known as Sekigunha in Japan, hijacked a JAL jet with 138 passengers and crew en route from Tokyo to Fukuoka and eventually forced it to fly to Pyongyang.