Japan’s Anxiety Turns to Joy as 3 Hostages Are Freed

After a week of anxiety, there was joy in Japan on Thursday as three Japanese held hostage in Iraq and threatened with death were freed unharmed. But concern remained for two other citizens missing and presumed kidnapped.

In Tokyo, relatives of the three freed hostages hugged and shouted as television broadcast footage of cameraman Soichiro Koriyama and aid workers Nahoko Takato and Noriaki Imai safe in Baghdad.

“I’m grateful to the Iraqi people for understanding the preciousness of human life. I am so glad he is coming back,” 18-year-old Imai’s father, Takashi, said later. Relatives said the three looked exhausted and were in the clothes they had been wearing when abducted, but otherwise seemed healthy.

After her release, 34-year-old Takato said: “There is a lot I want to say, but now I am extremely tired. Lots of shocking things happened and lots of scary things, but I cannot hate the Iraqi people.”

Koriyama, 32, told his mother by phone that he wants to continue his work in Iraq because “taking pictures is my job.”

The release came one week after the Arabic-language satellite TV channel Al Jazeera first showed a videotape of the three blindfolded, bound and being threatened with knives. A previously unknown group, calling itself the Mujahedin Squadrons, had promised to burn them alive unless Japan withdrew its 550 noncombat troops from Iraq.

The government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi refused to consider withdrawal, despite tearful appeals from the relatives of the hostages and Wednesday’s execution of an Italian hostage -- apparently by a different group of abductors.

The government said Thursday that no deals had been made to win the release. Koizumi’s stance won praise from U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who visited Tokyo this week.

The three hostages were handed over to Abdel Salam Kubaisi, a leader of the Assn. of Muslim Scholars, which had condemned the kidnappings and negotiated for the hostages’ release. He received a call from the kidnappers saying they were willing to free the hostages to “pressure American forces to release Iraqi women prisoners.”

“I set the meeting place, and I told the kidnappers that the Japanese are a gift in your hands and you must present them to us unharmed,” said Kubaisi, adding that kidnapping is against Koranic law. Armed men dropped off the three Japanese at the mosque of Kubaisi’s tribe in Baghdad.

“They were so happy to be released. The Japanese woman was crying.... We went to the Japanese Embassy, drank soft drinks and chatted,” he said.

With the three in safe hands, there was a sense that Koizumi’s government had weathered a crisis -- even though two more Japanese, 30-year-old journalist Jumpei Yasuda and 36-year-old nongovernmental agency worker Nobutaka Watanabe, may have been kidnapped in Iraq.

Two Japanese diplomats were killed in Iraq last year, but Japan has had relatively little experience with its nationals being slain or held hostage in conflicts overseas.

Perhaps because of that inexperience, the government reported prematurely that the three were to be freed Sunday. Despair followed when the expected release didn’t occur.

The crisis took a heavy toll on the hostages’ relatives. They had initially called on the government to withdraw Japanese troops from Iraq. But by Wednesday, after being criticized themselves, they stopped making such demands. They then began to apologize for the trouble they had caused.

The families received angry phone calls and death threats, demanding that they acknowledge that the hostages were at fault. The three abductees had ignored government warnings not to travel to Iraq.

Shuichi Takato, brother of Nahoko, who went to Iraq to help street children, said Thursday that the kidnappings were the result of “our ill-judged decisions.” He added: “We must offer the prime minister our apologies for causing such trouble.”

The three are expected to return to Japan on Saturday.

News of the hostage situation dominated Japanese media for the last week. The crisis brought home to Japanese the worsening security situation in Iraq and may affect their fragile support for Japan’s humanitarian mission in southern Iraq.

Under Japan’s post-World War II constitution, the nation renounced war and is to use troops for self-defense only. Japanese troops were dispatched to Iraq on the understanding that they would operate only in noncombat zones. However, many members of the opposition Democratic Party called for withdrawal this week, saying there were now no clearly safe areas in Iraq.

Special correspondent Joyce reported from Tokyo and Times staff writer Fleishman reported from Baghdad.