A Japanese woman who was abducted to North Korea decades ago and repatriated to Japan in 2002 says she is simply grateful for her late husband's encouragement to return to her homeland.

In a statement issued Tuesday — just over two weeks after the death of her 77-year-old husband Charles Jenkins — Hitomi Soga recalled that she was initially hesitant to return to Japan — as she would leave Jenkins and their two daughters behind. But it was her husband who helped push her along, she recalled.

Soga, 58, was one of five Japanese citizens who repatriated in 2002 after a landmark summit in Pyongyang held between Kim Jong Il, the North's leader at the time, and then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. The summit resulted in Kim admitting his country's involvement in the abductions that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s.