Edmonds father wants Obama’s help getting his kidnapped son back from Japan

While President Obama is in Japan, an Edmonds father is trying to get the president to give notice to something much closer to home. His son was kidnapped and kept in hiding by his estranged ex-wife somewhere in Japan.

Edmonds filmmaker Jeffery Morehouse filed for divorce in 2007 after a tumultuous relationship with his Japanese-born wife.

She was abusive and made numerous threats, so much so that he sought and was granted a restraining order and protective custody, and supervised visits with their young son, Mochi.

“She directly threatened,” Morehouse said. “She had said, ‘If we get divorced, I’ll take him to Japan and I’ll find a new father for him.’ So you know, I’m just a pair of shoes that can be replaced. And that was really her attitude, so I was very worried.”

A court agreed he had reason to worry, and granted travel and passport restrictions to prevent her from fleeing the country.

Morehouse notified all the Japanese consulates on the West Coast and Canada, urging them not to grant her a passport or visa to leave the U.S. with their son.

He had reason to worry.

“There had been hundreds of cases,” Morehouse said. “None had been returned. So I brought in all this information to the court and really tried to take all the steps that were available at the time to try to protect our child from this.”

She tried once in 2010 to get Mochi out of the country, but the Seattle consulate turned her down.

Three months later, the Japanese consulate in Portland granted her a passport, unbeknownst to Morehouse.

On Father’s Day 2010, Morehouse dropped his son off with his mother for what was supposed to be a week-long visit. It was the last time he would see him.

“The following Saturday I got a call from law enforcement saying that my son and ex-wife had been reported missing,” Morehouse said. “I knew instantly what had happened. She had done what she threatened to do. She had kidnapped him.”

Morehouse knew they had gone to Japan and tried to track them down, but with no success.

She hid the child, surfacing briefly in an effort to get a Japanese court to to grant her sole custody in Japan, but the judge denied her, saying the U.S. order granting Morehouse sole custody has legal standing.

But Mochi’s whereabouts remain a mystery. Morehouse’s ex-wife won’t cooperate and neither will her family.

The Japanese government won’t do a thing and the Obama administration has been silent on the issue.

Morehouse desperately hopes that changes this week.

With President Obama in Japan, Washington Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, and a number of Congress members, including Adam Smith and Jim McDermott, have sent strongly-worded letters urging the president to demand Japan take action.

“For years, we’ve been working with them, trying to get them to do more,” Morehouse said. “The only response we get is ‘We’re talking about it with Japanese counterparts in meetings, we’re raising cases.’ After 6 years of being told the same rhetoric, enough is enough. The only thing we’ve seen work in the past with Japan is when our government goes public.”

In the meantime, the anniversary of Mochi’s kidnapping again approaches, breaking Morehouse’s heart anew.

“Father’s Day is very, very tough,” he said. “I try to stay off the Internet, turn off the phone. Just keep myself occupied to get through the day.”

But he vows to keep fighting for his own son and the 400 other children kidnapped and taken to Japan.

If you want to learn more, you can go to BACHOME.org, or make a donation to the nonprofit to help in their continued efforts.

Follow @http://twitter.com/joshkerns38