Makoto and Satomi were abducted by their mother in 2003.
The last time Karen Macgregor saw her nephews was in 2000 at her parents' home in Ayrshire, Scotland. There were lots of driving noises, she remembers, as she played cars with four-year-old Satomi, the oldest son of her brother, Douglas Galbraith, and his Japanese wife Tomoko.
Satomi – "a kind, thoughtful little boy" – was fascinated by his grandmother's cat. He loved pushing a small green wheelbarrow, she recalls. His younger brother, Makoto, was in a high chair in the kitchen: "his little starfish hands reaching out for the bowl."
There was, Macgregor says, no hint of the tragedy that would devastate the family – a burden that her intensely private brother shouldered largely in silence. Indeed, it was only when she went through his papers, after his death in 2018, that she understood the sense of overwhelming despair he felt after Tomoko abducted their sons, returning with them to Japan and cutting off access.
That dreadful day came in the summer of 2003. Galbraith, a historical novelist, had travelled to London from the family home in rural Fife for a brief research trip. On returning, he was expecting to be picked up at the train station by his wife and sons – but no one turned up. After making his own way back to their house, he was greeted by a letter on the doormat from Royal Mail, confirming that Tomoko's post would be redirected to her new temporary address – in Japan.
For the first few years, there were a few scant phone calls with his sons. Then, after the family home in Scotland was sold, they stopped. When Galbraith took his own life in 2018, he had not seen or heard from them in nine years.
He had submitted multiple pleas to Japanese courts for simple confirmation that the boys – aged six and four when they were abducted – were safe. There were letters to lawyers and entreaties to the British government. Countless requests met a wall of silence. Japanese authorities declined to assist in any way, while the British government said it was helpless to act.
In the period leading up to the kidnapping there had, conceded Galbraith, been tensions in his marriage to Tomako, whom he met when they were both English post-graduate students at Cambridge University in the 1980s. In an interview with a newspaper, the author explained that his wife had been selling off their sons' possessions – a sign he ignored. She secretly obtained new passports for the children from the Japanese consulate in Edinburgh.
"It is hard to accept your wife is planning to abduct your children," he added.
A Telegraph review of the book, My Son, My Son, that Galbraith wrote about his loss in 2012, concluded that: "His portrait of his wife and his marriage is so desolating that the reader cannot but wonder how these two fatally ill-matched people came together."
Galbraith, originally from Glasgow, said in an interview at the time that he hoped his boys might one day discover the book and reach out. Six years later, with still no progress, he was dead at 52.
Now MacGregor hopes to continue her brother's search for his lost sons – and wants to reunite them with her mother, their grandmother, before it's too late. To this end, she has hired a private investigator and believes she is making progress.
"It's just horrendous," she says from her home in Glenborrodale, in the western Highlands. "He was my only brother and he had tried everything he could think of. He became more pessimistic as every avenue closed.
"I have taken on the task of finding them on behalf of a grandmother, aunts and cousins, to let them know that they have family in Scotland who are desperate to make contact with them.
"I'm sure it will be a shock because we do not know what they have been told about us, about their father, but they are both in their 20s now, probably at university, and I can only hope that when they look in the mirror, they see they are different and are curious about where they come from. Douglas always taught Satomi and Makoto to think for themselves. I hope they will."
When it came to reuniting father and sons, part of the problem was where the family had lived. In England and Wales, there is legislation that prevents a parent from taking their children overseas without the other's consent, meaning police will make efforts to find and return them. In Scotland, a legal loophole means that no such consent is needed unless past court orders have been put in place.
In addition, Japan has no provision for joint custody. Courts tend to award sole rights to the mother and do not enforce access to children for the other parent, despite Tokyo being a signatory to the Hague Convention on international child abduction.
Macgregor has been encouraged by the French judicial authorities recently taking a firmer line on abduction by Japanese nationals. In November, an arrest warrant was issued for the Japanese wife of Vincent Fichot, a French national who has been campaigning for access to his children for three years. In an echo of Galbraith's experiences, Fichot returned to the family home in Tokyo in 2018 to find that his wife had disappeared with their son and daughter.
Last summer, during the Tokyo Olympics, the 39-year-old went on hunger strike outside the stadium. His campaign attracted the attention of the Japanese media for the first time, as well as French diplomats – who he hopes will now pressure Japan to comply with international resolutions.
No official numbers exist, but rights groups believe as many as 150,000 children are forcibly separated from a parent every year in Japan, with a significant number the children of international marriages.
Galbraith was able to discover that his wife had moved the children to her home city of Osaka, but was never able to pinpoint an address. She is believed to have found a job at a local university.
In one passage in his book, Galbraith describes his wife's court submission for a case that was never heard, in which she is claimed to have said that she had "removed our children from the country by deception and without consent. She candidly explained that she did this because a) she felt like it and b) because of the poor quality of the sushi available from the local Tesco."
The private investigator hired by Karen Macgregor has cautioned her not to get her hopes up.
"We often find that in child abduction cases … mothers file fake claims of domestic violence against the father of the child to make it harder to be found", says Goro Koyama, of Tokyo-based Japan PI Inc. This tactic means that should the other parent approach the woman, the police are likely to arrest the parent whose child has been abducted.
Japanese can also change their names and effectively disappear into the nation's teeming cities, often impenetrable to foreigners, he adds.
Nevertheless, there has been progress in Macgregor's case – although Koyama declined to provide more details.
"Once we do locate them, I will report their contact information to the client, who is then supposed to send a letter or small gift to them," he explains. "We cannot intervene in complicated family relationships and if they still refuse to contact Mrs Macgregor, then there is nothing more that can be done."
Macgregor insists her brother would still be alive today if he had been allowed a degree of involvement in their lives. "He adored his sons," she says. "He kept and treasured every piece of art work and school work. He tried so hard, but eventually lost all sense of hope. It cost him his life."
Where to get help:
• Lifeline: 0800 543 354 (available 24/7)
• Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO) (available 24/7)
• Youthline: 0800 376 633 or text 234 (available 24/7)
• Kidsline: 0800 543 754 (available 24/7)
• Whatsup: 0800 942 8787 (12pm to 11pm)
• Depression helpline: 0800 111 757 or text 4202 (available 24/7)
• Anxiety helpline: 0800 269 4389 (0800 ANXIETY) (available 24/7)
• Rainbow Youth: (09) 376 4155
If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
Having a child with a rare genetic deletion is intense, but there is happiness, too.