Machico Terauchi (Prager), Rui’s Mother, took my then 4 1/2 year-old son on a “three-week business trip” in mid-June, 2010, and never returned, gradually tapering phone and email contact to silence.
“Let the ears hearing this and its like be seared, for who has heard or seen the likes of it? … Why did the heavens not darken and the stars not withhold their radiance; why did not the sun and moon turn dark?”
Friday, November 19th, 2010
This is the 8th post I’ve written on this site. This is the sorrowful page I’ve most dreaded adding, identifying my wife’s family, the Terauchis.
Why do these family members cluelessly join in setting a little boy on a path of emotional disturbance? Look beyond appearances. Do decent people allow such a terrible thing to happen in their own homes?
Any and all families have a skeleton or two in the closet. But the number of incidents of children having been permanently removed from one or more of their parents in this family is more than coincidental. There are three victims of this involving the people pictured below, prior to my boy, Rui. It has become a new normal for them.
What have they done? They have stood by and encouraged Rui’s mother to commit a deep, sad form of child abuse: kidnapping my small, preschool boy to a place thousands of miles from home, out of contact and out of reach. No one knows when we’ll play ball, read stories, or kiss goodnight again.
Machico with her deeply enmeshed “sister” Kaori Ozai. Abducted my son from his Daddy and from the U.S. where he has grown up for 4 1/2 years to deliver the family its sole grandchild, isolate him from his roots, and from his father.
Rui’s Grandparents, Midori Matsumoto & Shunsuke Terauchi. There are no words for the disillusionment of seeing them betray their grandchild and support his abduction. They have shamed and defiled themselves.
Ai Terauchi- Rui’s aunt. Rui described to me the misery of staying with her while she filled the room with smoke and stared into her computer or iPhone, leaving him bored and anxious.
Kaori’s husband, Jun Ozai, who must know my boy’s whereabouts, haplessly or unwittingly involved himself with a family with a poor regard for men.
The family photo album can come down when our right to be together is respected and my Rui is returned home to the Daddy who loves him.
Brian,
Your pain is palpable and ever-present. My heart goes out to you both as you endure this outrage. I am in a non-fiction writing critique group here in Austin. One of the women is writing about how her children were kidnapped from her (this was probably 10 years ago) and how she found them and re-kidnapped them back. They were in California, not Japan. But, I have a good friend who is a journalist in Japan, and I forwarded your last post to her. She is an honorable woman and I’ll bet (I pray) that maybe she’ll have the chutzpah to investigate these practices.
Love is a powerful medium, friend. Do not give up on your son. Do not give up on yourself. Do not give up on prayer. Who knows? Perhaps you’ve been given this assignment to bring about social change in Japan? Let me know what I can do to help.