|
 Yukawa was captured in August outside the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Goto, who had returned to Syria in late October to try to help his
friend, has been missing since then.
For Yukawa, who dreamed of becoming a military contractor, traveling
to Syria had been part of an effort to turn his life around after
going bankrupt, losing his wife to cancer and attempting suicide,
according to associates and his own accounts.
A unit at Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been seeking
information on him since August, people involved in that effort
said. Goto’s disappearance had not been reported until Tuesday's
video apparently showing him and Yukawa kneeling in orange t-shirts
next to a masked Islamic State militant wielding a knife.
Yukawa first met Goto in Syria in April and asked him to take him to
Iraq. He wanted to know how to operate in a conflict zone and they
went together in June.
Yukawa returned to Syria in July on his own.
 "He was hapless and didn't know what he was doing. He needed someone
with experience to help him," Goto, 47, told Reuters in Tokyo in
August.
Yukawa's abduction that month haunted Goto, who felt he had to do
something to help the man, a few years his junior.
"I need to go there at least once and see my fixers and ask them
what the current situation is. I need to talk to them face to face.
I think that's necessary," Goto said, referring to locals who work
freelance for foreign correspondents, setting up meetings and
helping with the language.
Goto began working as a full-time war correspondent in 1996 and had
established a reputation as a careful and reliable operator for
Japanese broadcasters, including NHK.
"He understood what he had to do and he was cautious," said Naomi
Toyoda, who reported with him from Jordan in the 1990s.
Goto, who converted to Christianity in 1997, also spoke of his faith
in the context of his job.
"I have seen horrible places and have risked my life, but I know
that somehow God will always save me," he said in a May article for
the Japanese publication Christian Today. But he told the same
publication that he never risked anything dangerous, citing a
passage in the Bible, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."
In October, Goto's wife had a baby, the couple's second child. He
has an older daughter from a previous marriage, people who know the
family said.
[to top of second column] |
Around the same time, he made plans to leave for Syria and uploaded
several short video clips to his Twitter feed, one showing him with
media credentials issued by anti-government rebels in Aleppo.
On Oct. 22, he emailed an acquaintance, a high school teacher, to
say he planned to be back in Japan at the end of the month.
Goto told a business partner with whom he was working to create an
online news application that he expected to be able to travel in
territory held by the Islamic State because of his nationality.
"He said that as a Japanese journalist he expected to be treated
differently than American or British journalists," Toshi Maeda said,
recalling a conversation with Goto before his departure for Syria.
"Japan has not participated in bombing and has only provided
humanitarian aid. For that reason, he thought he could secure the
cooperation of ISIS."
Friends say Goto traveled from Tokyo to Istanbul and traveled from
there to Syria, sending a message on Oct. 25 that he had crossed the
border and was safe.
"Whatever happens, this is my responsibility," Goto said on a video
recorded shortly before he set out for Raqqa, the capital of the
Islamic State.
That was the last time he was seen before the IS video this week.
(Additional reporting by Nobuhiro Kubo, Teppei Kasai and Mari Saito;
Editing by Will Waterman and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
