Jenkins Gets 30 Days In Desertion Case

[thedrifter]

Jenkins Gets 30 Days In Desertion Case
Associated Press
November 3, 2004

CAMP ZAMA, Japan - Four decades after he vanished from his Army unit, a frail, tearful, 64 year old American soldier pleaded guilty Wednesday to desertion, saying he wanted to avoid dangerous duty on the Korean peninsula and Vietnam.

Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins was given a 30-day sentence and a dishonorable discharge, but the judge recommended suspending the jail term. The decision is up to the military, which was expected to rule on the recommendation soon.

The plea, which came during a court-martial at this Army camp outside of Tokyo, was part of a bargain with U.S. military officials to win Jenkins a lesser sentence.

The maximum sentence in his case was life in prison.

The North Carolina native lived in communist North Korea for 39 years after he fled his post on the Korea peninsula.

"Ma'am, I am in fact guilty," Jenkins told the judge, Col. Denise Vowell. He also pleaded guilty to aiding the enemy by teaching English to military cadets in the 1980s.

However he denied that he advocated the overthrow of the United States in propaganda broadcasts, and pleaded innocent to charges of making disloyal statements. Vowell dropped those accusations.

The American turned himself into U.S. military authorities on Sept. 11, two months after he left Pyongyang and came to Japan for medical treatment. Tokyo called for leniency in his case so he could live in Japan with his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga, and their two daughters.

In full military dress for the proceedings, Jenkins wept as he described his depression, fears of death and heavy drinking in the days leading up to his Jan. 5, 1965 disappearance from his unit.

He said he fled because he was afraid he would be transferred to dangerous daytime patrols in the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, or worse: Vietnam.




"I started to fear something for myself, but I started to fear even more that I might cause other soldiers to be killed. I started drinking alcohol," he said, bursting into tears. "I never drank so much before."

After 10 days of planning, he headed for North Korea with a white T-shirt tied to his rifle as a surrender flag.

Jenkins told the court of his unlikely plan to ask the North Koreans to send him to the Soviet Union, where he would turn himself in to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and return to the United States.

Instead, Jenkins said he was harshly mistreated in North Korea and forced to teach English to military cadets from 1981 until 1985, adding that refusing to do so would have brought "hardship to me and my family that would never end."

Soga, a Japanese citizen who married Jenkins after she was kidnapped by North Korean agents in 1978, also pleaded with the court for leniency, saying that Jenkins had provided for his family despite grueling conditions in North Korea.

Vowell had recommended a suspended sentence of six months in jail, but court-martial rules required her to abide by the pre-trial agreement setting the sentence at 30 days. She then recommended that also be suspended.

Jenkins was also demoted to the lowest military ranking, E-1, and was forced to forfeit all pay and stripped of his military benefits. He was to be taken to Yokosuka Naval Base just outside of Tokyo, where he is to be confined unless the sentence is suspended.

The court-martial was the climax to one of the Army's longest desertion sagas. Though Army deserters from the 1940s are still being sought, no deserter has surrendered after as long an absence as Jenkins.

Raised in poverty in Rich Square, N.C., Jenkins joined the Army as a teenager, received a Good Conduct Award after his first tour of duty in South Korea in 1961 and rose to the rank of sergeant.

But after deserting his unit, he participated in North Korean propaganda broadcasts, played an American villain in at least one anti-U.S. movie, and taught English at a university for military cadets.

His whereabouts were a mystery until the Pentagon confirmed in the mid-1980s that he and three other suspected American deserters were living in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital.

Jenkins became the focus of intense negotiations in 2002, when North Korean leader Kim Jong Il admitted in a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that Soga and others had been abducted.

Soga and four other Japanese abductees were allowed to return to Japan that year, but Jenkins and his daughters - Mika, 21, and Brinda, 19 - stayed behind.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Life in North Korea Harsh for Deserters

By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer

TOKYO - Far from finding a communist paradise, four American soldiers suspected of deserting to North Korea (news - web sites) in the 1960s were forced to live together in a tiny house under constant surveillance, to scrounge for food and to study the works of "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung for up to 16 hours a day.


Two died before ever again seeing the outside world.


Shedding new light on a bizarre Cold War tale, former U.S. Army Sgt. Charles Jenkins told a court-martial this week that he and the others lived for years as a tightly knit — if not always harmonious — group honed by hardship, poverty and frequent beatings.


Jenkins surrendered to U.S. military authorities in September after nearly 40 years in the secretive Stalinist state. He was convicted of desertion and aiding the enemy and began serving a 30-day sentence on Wednesday.


His confession detailed decades of virtual imprisonment for himself and the others: Pvt. Larry A. Abshier of Urbana, Ill., who the military says went missing in 1962 at age 19; Cpl. Jerry W. Parrish of Morganfield, Ky., who is accused of deserting in 1963 at age 19; and James Dresnock of Richmond, Va., a private when he crossed into North Korea in 1962.


"Of the three other Americans who lived in North Korea with me, only Dresnock and I are left," Jenkins said in a dramatic statement read to the court by his military lawyer. A copy of the unsworn statement and another document outlining the reasons for his desertion were obtained by The Associated Press.


Jenkins, a native of Rich Square, N.C., said Parrish died in 1996 of an abdominal infection. Abshier died of a heart attack in 1983. Dresnock still lives in the North.


From shortly after he crossed into North Korea in 1965 until 1972, Jenkins said, he lived in a house with the other three men. He did not say why the others left their units.


Jenkins, however, confessed that he deserted on Jan. 5, 1965, because he was afraid of being shot patrolling the Demilitarized Zone and of being sent to Vietnam. Jenkins, now a frail 64-year-old, said he had intended to somehow return to the United States.


He soon realized North Korea wasn't going to let him go.


"For many years we lived in a one-room house that we all shared," he said in the statement. "We slept on the floor, there was most often no electricity, and we had no running water. We were allowed to bathe once a month, though in the summer we bathed more often in the river."


Jenkins said their "job" was to study — in Korean — the philosophy of Kim Il Sung, which they did for 10 hours a day. He said he and the other Americans called it "the study of class struggle from the perspective of a crazy man."


"If we didn't memorize enough, or were not able to recite portions of our studies on demand, we were then forced to study 16 hours a day on Sunday, which was our only day of rest," he said.


"I longed to leave that place every day."


Jenkins said he and the others tried to escape by seeking asylum in the Soviet Embassy in 1966. Guards allowed them in, assuming they were Russian.


"Of course, when they found out who we were, they sent us out of the embassy, and none of us figured out why we weren't shot by the North Koreans later on," he said. "From then on, any time we did anything real stupid, we did it together, 'cause we figured they wouldn't want to kill all the Americans at one time."


Despite being under the constant watch of a minder, or "political leader," the four organized other little rebellions that could have cost them their lives.





"During the first 10 years or so, our political leader lived directly in our home," Jenkins said. "Once, when he was gone, we snuck up into the attic to see if we could scrounge some old electrical insulators. I was secretly building a fishing net to increase our food supply, and I needed the insulators as weights." In the attic, he said, "We found microphones everywhere, and realized that the leader was taping everything we said between us."

Parrish, he said, decided to bury the microphones in the backyard.

"Parrish told the leader he would give the microphones back if the leader would take him to Pyongyang to buy a bottle of wine," Jenkins said. "The leader could have had us all shot for this, but he was too worried that he would be in trouble himself for allowing us to climb into the attic. Parrish got the wine, though he did not share it."

By 1980, the three were allowed to live in houses of their own.

That year, Jenkins married Hitomi Soga, a Japanese who had been abducted by North Korean spies in 1978. Soga was allowed to return to Japan two years ago; Jenkins and their two North Korea-born daughters joined her in July.

Though Soga testified that Jenkins was a devoted father, she said their lives were hard.

"In the winter, we wore all the clothes we had just to stay warm," she said in testimony Wednesday. "There were times our daughters went to bed hungry."

Jenkins said he kept in contact with the other Americans.

"Dresnock and myself had been given a small two-room house each, and our homes were relatively close to each other," he said. "Parrish and Abshier were moved miles away, and their homes were in close proximity as well."

He said he and Dresnock were forbidden from communicating with Parrish and Abshier but eventually visited each other, "though we could have been punished severely."

"In the end, I think we quietly hoped we would get caught and it would be done with," he said.

Jenkins said the North Koreans used Dresnock as an enforcer.

"The North Korean army often used Dresnock to beat the other three of us when we did wrong, though there were plenty of North Korean soldiers who put us down as well," he said. "I cannot remember how many times I was physically beaten during those times for this and that. I try not to think about that anymore, and usually I don't."

He said he was close to Abshier.

"Of us all, he was the simplest, the most scared, and my closest friend. I looked over him like a big brother," Jenkins said. "A little piece of me died that day when he left us."


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...us_deserters_1


Ellie

[Sgt. Smitty]

Leave the a$$hole in Japan, we don't want his kind here!!!!

[Phantom Blooper]

Veteran Sues After He Receives Duty Order

November 6, 2004 10:00 PM EST


HONOLULU - A veteran of the first Persian Gulf War is suing the Army after it ordered him to report for duty 13 years after he was honorably discharged from active duty and eight years after he left the reserves.

Kauai resident David Miyasato received word of his reactivation in September, but says he believes he completed his eight-year obligation to the Army long ago.

"I was shocked," Miyasato said Friday. "I never expected to see something like that after being out of the service for 13 years."

His federal lawsuit, filed Friday in Honolulu, seeks a judgment declaring that he has fulfilled his military obligations.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry Yee said his office would defend the Army. He declined to comment further. An Army spokewoman at the Pentagon declined to comment to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Miyasato, 34, was scheduled to report to a military facility in South Carolina on Tuesday.

Within hours of filing the lawsuit, however, Miyasato received a faxed letter from the Army's Human Resources Command saying his "exemption from active duty had not been finalized at this time" and that he has been given an administrative delay for up to 30 days, said his attorney, Eric Seitz.

Miyasato, his wife, Estelle, and their 7-month-old daughter, Abigail, live in Lihue, where he opened an auto-tinting shop two years ago.

His lawsuit states that Miyasato is suing not because he opposes the war in Iraq, but because his business and family would suffer "serious and irreparable harm" if he is required to serve.

Miyasato enlisted in the Army in 1987 and served in Iraq and Kuwait during the first Persian Gulf War as a petroleum supply specialist and truck driver.

Miyasato said he received an honorable discharge from active duty in 1991, then served in the reserves until 1996 to fulfill his eight-year enlistment commitment.

The Army announced last year that it would involuntarily activate an estimated 5,600 soldiers to serve in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Army officials would be tapping members of the Individual Ready Reserve - military members who have been discharged from the Army, Army Reserve or the Army National Guard, but still have contractual obligations to the military.

Miyasato said he never re-enlisted, signed up for any bonuses or was told that he had been transferred to the Individual Ready Reserve or any other Army Reserve unit.

"I fulfilled my contract," Miyasato said. "I just want to move on from this, and I'm optimistic that I'll be successful."

Miyasato speculated that he may have been picked because his skills as a truck driver and refueler are in demand in Iraq. He told reporters he did the same work as that done by a group of Army reservists who refused to deliver fuel along a dangerous route in Iraq last month.

[Toby M]

I'v been out since 1971-I wonder if I could be be next??? I never drove a truck or refueled one but heck, ya never know...Did we have contracts back in those days? Oh, that's right, I joined the Marine Corps!

[hrscowboy]

this is total BS this man had already done his time and well past the obligation period.

[greensideout]

Has the draft started?

I can't beleive that the goverment would order this vet back into service!

If they have, we are in deep doo!

[cjwright90]

Well, first off, it is the ARMY. They probably messed up the records.

[kentmitchell]

Hey, cjwright,

No one tops the Corps for screwing up records. You know that.