HONOLULU -- Shame on Pyongyang . . . and shame on Tokyo, too!

My heart goes out to the five Japanese citizens currently "visiting" Japan for the first time since being abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. For decades, they had been forcibly separated from family and loved ones, with Pyongyang refusing even to admit their existence. Now they are being forcibly separated from their own children, who had to be left behind in Pyongyang as a precondition to their being allowed to conduct what was to have been a one- or two-week visit home.

I am by no means equating Pyongyang's original act of kidnapping these five innocents (and at least eight others who have since died) with Tokyo's current refusal, in response to the demands of their families and the Japanese public in general, to send them back. But, Tokyo's well-intentioned actions notwithstanding, the same victims who for so long were unable to see their parents now cannot see their children. This is an unacceptable trade-off. As a parent, I deeply sympathize with their trauma.