Deserter's hometown divided about his visit
Toolbox
By JIM NESBITT Raleigh News & Observer - Published: June 12, 2005
RICH SQUARE, N.C. — Charles Robert Jenkins, the aging Army deserter who crossed into North Korea in the snowy, pre-dawn darkness 40 years ago, faces another emotional passage when he returns to North Carolina next week to see his mother.
So do the people who live in and around the withered Northampton County farming community he left behind, struggling to deal with the reappearance of a man many have regarded as a ghost they'd rather forget.
There's the anger and bitterness of Grady Flythe, a Vietnam veteran who was shot down twice flying low-and-slow missions as an Air Force forward air control observer, fighting the war Jenkins deserted to avoid. Every time he thinks of Jenkins, he sees the face of an Air Force buddy who didnt make it home.
"Know what I think of him? He's a son of a bitch," said Flythe, 62. "A man that deserts his country deserves to be in prison the rest of his life. He don't deserve nothing but a cell with no light and the word 'Vietnam' written across it so he has to think about it every day of his life."
Flythe's vitriol represents the sharp, strident end of the spectrum of reactions to Jenkins' announcement he will return Tuesday to North Carolina for the first time since his Jan. 5, 1965, defection. Others are more charitable.
Reginald White, 51, a town commissioner, thinks it would be OK if Jenkins made a permanent return to Rich Square.
"I don't see why not it's his home," White said. "Everybody ought to be able to come back home if they cant live nowhere else."
Dennis R. Arrington, a state transportation maintenance worker and former police officer in the county seat of Jackson, agreed.
"It's been that long a time, I don't see why they'd object to him coming to see his mama," he said. "He ain't the first person to do this. He won't be the last."
In a statement released Friday in Japan and reported by the Associated Press, Jenkins, 65, said he wants to see his 91-year-old mother, Pattie, who lives in a Roanoke Rapids nursing home. He also plans to visit his sister and other relatives during a stay of about a week.
"It has been my strong wish for a long time to see my mother again," Jenkins said in the statement.
Aging and frail, Jenkins has lived in Japan since leaving North Korea in July to reunite with his wife, Hitomi Soga, who was kidnapped by North Korean agents in 1978 but allowed to return home in 2002. He served 25 days in a U.S. military jail last year after a court-martial and admission that he defected to North Korea to avoid combat in Vietnam.
Since then, Jenkins has been living on Sado Island, where his wife is from. It is an isolated community on Japan's storm-lashed northern coast and an ancient place of exile for political prisoners, according to travel writer Stephen Mansfield.
Jenkins and Soga married in North Korea in 1980 and have two daughters. In previous interviews, he has said he has no plans to permanently return to the United States.
It is unclear whether Jenkins' family will accompany him during his North Carolina visit. It is also unclear whether he will visit Rich Square, a declining farm-to-market town of 886 people settled in the 1750s by Quakers from Virginia.
The whitewashed, two-story wood house where Jenkins was reared still stands on the east side of town, near the railroad tracks and the cotton gin.
But most of Jenkins' family have left town — one sister lives in Scotland Neck, about 16 miles south of town; another sister lives in the Halifax County town of Weldon, adjacent to Roanoke Rapids, where Jenkins' mother lives. They are hoping for a peaceful, private reunion.
"Can't wait to see him," said Faye Hyman, the sister who lives in Scotland Neck. "It's been 40 years."
Few in Rich Square have face-to-face memories of Jenkins.
"Most of the people who knew him are either dead or moved away," said Wayne Pope, 61, whose father owned the now-defunct Ford dealership where Jenkins once worked.
While Flythe, who lives in nearby Lasker, represents the angry end of community feelings about a prodigal's return, Pope symbolizes an attitude that teeters between acceptance and indifference.
"I really don't care — it don't matter to me whether he comes or goes," he said.
Pope thinks it's time to forgive and forget what Jenkins did and heal the wounds of past wars.
"We forgive Japan, we forgive North Vietnam, we forgive Germany," Pope said. "I think he served his time in prison being over in North Korea. That's like a 40-year sentence in Alcatraz, as far as I'm concerned."
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