Dad with custody can’t get kids from ex-wife in Japan

Japan not member of 1980 Hague Convention that calls for swift return of abducted children.

Kent Swaim cries as he speaks about his two young sons, William and James, who were taken to Japan by his then-wife Miyuki in July 2008.

Lisa Powell/Staff photographer Kent Swaim cries as he speaks about his two young sons, William and James, who were taken to Japan by his then-wife Miyuki in July 2008.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Submitted William Swaim, photo taken in 2008 when he was 8 years old.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Submitted James Swaim, photo taken in 2008 when he was 3-years-old.

ENLARGE PHOTO

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By Lou Grieco and Mary McCarty
Staff Writers Updated 1:25 AM Sunday, August 15, 2010

CLAYTON — Kent Swaim read his sons William, 8, and James, 3, a bedtime story July 7, 2008, as he did most nights.

He came home the next day to an empty house. His wife, Miyuki, had taken the family pictures from the walls, the family car, the family cats and the boys.

For nearly a month he had no contact with his wife or his children. Finally, he reached his wife’s parents’ home in Okinawa and Miyuki answered the phone. “What are you doing in Japan?” he demanded. She told him she did not want to be married to him and that he could keep the house and the car, which she had abandoned in a downtown Dayton parking lot.

She would keep the boys.

Had Swaim’s wife taken their sons to Great Britain, or Australia, or Mexico, he probably would have them back by now. At the very least, Swaim would have a legal mechanism to pursue their return — since those countries have signed onto the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

But Japan has not signed on. And though he was awarded custody by the Montgomery County Juvenile Court, it doesn’t mean much, at least it hasn’t yet.

According to State Department officials, Japanese-born parents have been accused of abducting a total of 127 American children. And not one of them has been returned from Japan without the voluntary consent of the abducting parent, said Michelle Heads, a supervisor with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s Family Abduction Unit, which is trying to help Swaim recover his children.

Swaim hasn’t seen his sons in more than two years, other than intermittent and unsatisfying Skype conversations when his now ex-wife allows them. “It’s heart-wrenching,” he said. “It’s about 1 percent of what being a parent is all about.”

Swaim couldn’t have imagined this nightmare when he married his Japanese-born wife in 1999. “Who would guess that such a world power such as Japan would be this far behind on this human rights issue?” Swaim asked. “The bottom line is that Japan harbors people who abduct children.”

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