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- Jailed
in Japan
- By: Dan Bloom
- The UMJ Volume 2.1
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You think America has immigration problems? Check out what happened to me this past summer in Japan. On July 26, I was arrested in Tokyo for having violated the Japanese Immigration Law in January 1992. By law, I was supposed to leave Japan at that time to change my 90-day tourist visa into a one-year work visa. However, due to a very severe fear of flying phobia, I was unable to fly out of Japan, unable to get help from the Immigration Bureau, and as a result became, much to my chagrin, an illegal foreign worker. I had a valid passport and a valid work contract with a major Japanese newspaper. I just could not bring myself to fly out of Japan and back again due to my phobia, the result of a near-fatal plane accident in Alaska in 1983. My flight to Japan to visit a friend in Tokyo was my first flight in 8 years, and I only succeeded in going through with it because I had 6 valium tablets with me, four of which I took before the plane left Anchorage. I worked in Tokyo for almost 5 years as a journalist, employed by the Yomiuri Shimbun's English-language section. I committed no crimes, I did not fraternize with the yakuza and I joined no crazy religious cults. Yet in late July I was arrested, indicted, handcuffed and put in the same jail as Shoko Asahara, the mastermind behind the sarin gassing of the Tokyo subway system in March 1995. I was held in solitary confinement for 6 weeks. I was denied contact with my Japanese lawyer for the first 10 days of my incarceration. I was not allowed to have a pen or paper in my cell for the first 18 days. I treated like a convicted criminal by the jail guards, although my case had not yet gone to trial. When it did, on Sept. 4, I was sentenced to 1.5 years in jail suspended for 3 years and deported back to the United States. On the day of my departure, I was led through the Tokyo International Airport passenger terminal in handcuffs, escorted by two uniformed Immigration Bureau officials. Me, a balding 47-year-old American journalist who wouldn't hurt a flea, was kicked out of Japan for having a phobia! During my 6-week stay in jail, I kept thinking that the Japanese government should have been treating me for my phobia (or at least showing some understanding for how phobias affect people), not punishing me for having one. I have been encouraged by Japanese friends who were aghast at the way I was treated to yell from rooftops in America that the Japanese detention system for overstaying foreign work-ers is deplorable, uncivilized and unbecoming a modern democratic nation. During my recent ordeal, I saw the dark side of Japan, a side that even the Japanese themselves don't know about. What made my case even stranger is the fact that 99% of illegal foreign workers who scheme to enter Japan as unskilled workers to earn good yen and who are eventually caught and deported, are never arrested, sent to jail or made to face trial. For some reason, the Japanese government targeted me, an American journalist who loves Japan, for special treatment. Why? Rumors in my newsroom said I was singled out in retaliation. for the way the U.S. government treated a Japanese national last year. If this is true, there's a funny little tit-for-tat war going on. Stop it, you guys. DAN BLOOM worked in Tokyo for the last 5 years at a Major English Language Newspaper, He is currently in Guam awaiting visa approval. To return to Japan but he has told that he must wait one year before he will be allowed to re-enter Japan.
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