Charles Jenkins, a former U.S. Army sergeant jailed by the U.S. military last month in Japan for deserting to DPRK nearly 40 years ago, said Tuesday he hopes to live in Japan with his family for the rest of his life.

''It is here, on the island of Sado in Japan, that I will hopefully live my remaining days with my wife and children,'' Jenkins, 64, told reporters after arriving in Sado Island, Niigata Prefecture, to start a new life with his family in the hometown of his Japanese wife.

It is his first visit to the island city on the Sea of Japan since leaving DPRK this summer on the arrangements by the Japanese government.

Appearing with Jenkins and their two daughters at a news conference, his wife Hitomi Soga, 45, who was abducted to DPRK in 1978 and repatriated in 2002, showed mixed feelings, saying, ''Although I feel relieved and happy, I have concerns about our lives from now on.''

''I would like us to take things slowly'' and think about the future, she said.

''I'm happy to live in Japan,'' the elder daughter Mika, 21, said, while Brinda, 19, said, ''I'm delighted to have come to Sado, my mother's hometown. I'll study the Japanese language hard.'' The daughters spoke in Japanese.

The Sado municipal and Niigata prefectural governments are preparing to support the family's new life, in part by finding them work and asking Niigata University to admit the daughters. The Japanese government has also promised to support them.

If the family expresses willingness to live in Japan permanently, it will be entitled to 300,000 yen per month for five years under a law to support victims of North Korean abductions.

Arranged by the Japanese government, Jenkins left Pyongyang in July for the first time in 39 years with the couple's daughters and traveled to Jakarta to be reunited with Soga.

Source: Kyodo News