♯６ ”Impossible….” Increasing anxiety

The defense attorneys requested partial release of visitation prohibition for us; however it was only accepted for the second daughter ‘Umi’(This is her pen name.).  She was able to meet our father on August 17, 2004 for the first time as a family member.  Since communication between defense attorneys and our father was never successful, Umi was supposed to explain the background of selecting defense attorneys, etc. to him.  Defense attorneys told Umi to be prepared, saying, “He is probably not malingering.  He may be truly ill.  He might not understand even though it was Umi.  Please be prepared.”

Even though the defense attorneys warned us about our father’s illness, she did not believe he was ill.  She believed that her father would respond in some ways if she as a daughter went to see him.

Partial release of visitation prohibition was requested again for us, and Rika was finally allowed to see him as well.  After that, visitation was also allowed to our younger siblings.  Similar to Umi, Rika also believed that her father would understand her.

We remembered to always take our notebook to keep a record when we visited him.

In the beginning when visitation became possible, we just kept talking to our father since we had longed to see him and there were so many things to tell him. He nodded, smiled, and appeared to be listening to our stories.  As we kept talking to him, however, we became anxious and started to feel what the defense attorneys were saying to us might be true, suspecting that he might not recognize us but he might be just smiling irrelevantly and uttering some “noise” that sounded like nodding.  As we repeated visitation, such feeling of discomfort and anxiety rapidly grew more and more.