Army deserter Charles Jenkins came home to North Carolina in 2005. We were there.

Editor’s note: Charles Jenkins, a soldier and North Carolina native who deserted to North Korea in 1965, died Monday. In 2005, when Jenkins returned to his hometown, The News & Observer offered extensive coverage. Here is one of the stories we wrote then.

For the first time in more than 40 years, Army deserter Charles Robert Jenkins had a front-porch moment with his mother.

In shirt sleeves and gray slacks, Jenkins, 65, who flew from Tokyo with his family Tuesday, held the left arm of his ailing 91-year-old mother, Pattie Casper, giving her support in the dense afternoon heat. Hitomi Soga, the Japanese woman Jenkins married while living in North Korea, held the right arm of the mother-in-law she had met just an hour before.

The couple’s daughters, Mika, 21, and Brinda, 19 -- both born in North Korea -- flanked their elders. One daughter stood by the shoulder of each parent on the porch of the two-story brick home of Jenkins’ sister, Pat Harrell, on a tree-lined street in this historic railroad and cotton market town about 85 miles northeast of Raleigh.

Just an hour earlier, shortly before 3 p.m., Jenkins saw his mother for the first time since a 1964 visit home. His unit, a regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division, shipped out for Korea soon after that visit, and he defected to the North in 1965.

Tuesday was the start of a weeklong reunion with family and friends.

“I feel very happy. Thank you – especially you who came all the way from Japan,” Jenkins said after a smile and a short wave to about 40 journalists standing at the foot of his sister’s front walk.

Earlier, when he and his family arrived at his sister’s house in a red Dodge van after a flight from suburban Washington to Richmond, Va., he was asked whether he was glad to be home in North Carolina – he was born and raised in Rich Square, a Northampton County farming community about 25 miles southeast of Weldon.

“Of course,” he said, as he led his family into the house – a signature moment captured by a private video crew Jenkins hired to record the reunion.

Relatives repeated their plea for privacy.

“We just want to reconcile and meet as a family,” said Lee Harrell, Jenkins’ brother-in-law. “We’re reconciling after 40 years apart.”

Watching the reunion from her front porch, next-door neighbor Janet King, 73, said she felt a pang as Jenkins walked across the porch and his sister, Pat, flashed King a quick thumbs-up.

“When he goes in that door, he’s going to see his mother and 40 years will be wiped away,” she said.

In the snowy early-morning darkness of Jan. 5, 1965, Jenkins left the squad he was leading on patrol in the dangerous demilitarized zone that buffers the two Koreas and crossed the border into the isolated communist country.

In North Korea, he appeared in propaganda films and played an American in at least one movie. Jenkins, who never graduated from high school, also taught English. That’s how he met his wife.

Soga was allowed to return to Japan in 2002, but Jenkins and their daughters remained in North Korea and were reunited with Soga only in July, after intense negotiations led by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

After admitting he deserted to avoid service in Vietnam, Jenkins was court-martialed and served 25 days in a U.S. military jail in Japan.

His light punishment and return to the United States have drawn a mixed reaction from veterans – some bitter and angry about a man they see as a traitor, others more forgiving.

King’s husband of 50 years, Calvin, 78, falls in the charitable category. He served a two-year stateside hitch in the Army during the Korean War and is a retired quartermaster with the Merchant Marine.

“I’m glad for him and glad for his 91-year-old mother,” he said. “I wish him all the best. The damage is done. I don’t think he’s got anybody to blame but himself.”

Many reporters who crowded Pat Harrell’s Sycamore Street neighborhood were from Japan, where the saga of Jenkins and Soga has generated intense and enduring interest ever since North Korea admitted she was one of several Japanese citizens its agents had abducted.

“Her return and the life after her return has been a very big concern in Japan,” said Kentaro Sugino, 26, of Tokyo, a reporter for the newspaper Yomiuri who flew to North Carolina to cover the reunion.

“Bringing him back from North Korea became a political issue for Japan. Him returning to his home for the first time in 40 years kind of put a period on Hitomi’s story.”

Jenkins’ reunion has been a closed affair, marked by brief prepared statements by him or short remarks by family members. At his request, relatives have declined interviews.

He was accompanied on the North Carolina trip by Jim Frederick, a Tokyo-based Time magazine writer who is helping Jenkins with his autobiography.

Frederick said Jenkins already has a publisher and paid for the trip himself, including the videographer who met him at the door of his sister’s house.

Jenkins’ trip from Tokyo had a “Where’s Waldo” quality as Japanese and American reporters struggled to keep abreast of his itinerary. At first it appeared he would be flying into Raleigh-Durham International Airport from Dulles airport near Washington. Then the rumor was a flight to Richmond, which turned out to be true.

In Richmond, Lee and Pat Harrell picked up Jenkins and his family and took them by van to Weldon, where city police escorted them the final mile to Sycamore Street.

When asked how it felt to be in North Carolina after a 40-year absence, Jenkins said simply: “Very good.”

This story was originally published December 12, 2017 at 10:30 AM with the headline "Army deserter Charles Jenkins came home to North Carolina in 2005. We were there.."