U.S. President Donald Trump has reportedly sent a letter to the widow of a leading Japanese campaigner for Japanese citizens allegedly abducted by North Korea. 

Japan’s Sankei Shimbun reported on Wednesday that Trump expressed his and his wife’s condolences in the letter over the recent death of Shigeru Yokota, who has spearheaded for the last two decades a public awareness campaign for the abductees, including his own daughter Megumi. 

Assessing the efforts by Yokota and his wife, Sakie, as instrumental to the promotion of the issue into a joint major task for the U.S. and Japan, Trump vowed to join continued efforts to bring back their child. 

Tokyo has argued at least 17 Japanese citizens were abducted by the North. While five of them were repatriated in 2002, the North claims eight, including Megumi, have died and the other four never entered the communist country. 

Megumi, then a 13-year-old, was reportedly abducted in 1977 on her way back from school.