During the 35-minute meeting, the relatives talked about their loved ones with Trump and his wife.

Trump listened intently and shook hands with all of the family members, according to Hitomi Soga, a former abductee who attended the meeting. She returned to Japan in 2002.

Later in the day, Trump told reporters that he had heard “very, very sad” stories about the victims.

“We will work with the prime minister, we will try to get them back” to Japan, Trump said.

Among the family members were Sakie Yokota, the mother of Megumi Yokota who was abducted in 1977 from a coastal town in Niigata Prefecture. Her daughter, then 13, was reportedly forced to work as a Japanese-language tutor in Pyongyang.

Yokota said that during the meeting she thanked Trump for mentioning her daughter in a speech he delivered at a general assembly meeting of the United Nations in New York, where he condemned Pyongyang.

“I thanked him for making clear at the United Nations such inhuman acts were conducted (by Pyongyang),” Yokota told a news conference later the same day.

Tokyo apparently arranged Monday’s meeting because Abe has labeled the abduction issue as one of his administration’s top priority issues. Bizarre and tragic stories about the abductees have drawn much attention and sympathy from the Japanese public. In 2006 Abe won his first prime ministership after gaining popularity among voters through his tough diplomatic stance against Pyongyang over the abduction issue.

“I, together with world leaders, would like to make my utmost efforts” to solve the abduction issue, Abe told reporters after Monday’s meeting.

Tokyo has claimed at least 17 Japanese were abducted by North Korean agents, five of which returned home in 2002.

But since 2002 little progress has been made, despite diplomatic efforts by Japan to repatriate the remaining abductees. Pyongyang has claimed the rest all either died in the North or never entered the country.

After paying a solemn visit to Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii on Friday, Trump on Sunday marked the start of his trip to Asia by disembarking from Air Force One at the U.S. Air Force’s Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo. Cheers erupted as he appeared on stage with his wife, first lady Melania Trump, prompting thousands of U.S. military personnel there to welcome the pair with enthusiastic chants of “USA! USA! USA!”

It was the first visit by Trump to Japan since his astonishing rise to the presidency last year. The trip will give him and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — touted as one of his best friends among world leaders — a chance to reaffirm their shared strategy of piling “maximum pressure” on the North while also demonstrating anew the strength of the two nations’ alliance.

After delivering his speech, Trump flew to Kasumigaseki Country Club in Saitama Prefecture for two hours of golf diplomacy with Abe — an informal setting that also involved 25-year-old professional golfer Hideki Matsuyama.

Before hitting the links, Abe presented Trump and Matsuyama with white baseball caps, each embroidered with the message “Donald & Shinzo Make Alliance Even Greater.” After nine holes, the two leaders were scheduled to enjoy a teppanyaki (iron-plate grill) steak dinner in Tokyo’s glitzy Ginza district.

But it was Trump’s speech at the Yokota base that had left the most indelible first impression from his visit.

There, Trump proudly exclaimed to the rowdy group of service members that “we dominate the sky. We dominate the sea. We dominate the land and space.”

The speech, infused with a hearty dose of patriotism, carefully avoided making any direct references to North Korea, which has this year test-fired missiles at a pace never seen before, including two that flew over the Japanese archipelago in August and September.

Still, Trump’s message was crystal clear to all watching: Mess with us, and you will be toast.

“Together with our allies, America’s warriors are prepared to defend our nation, using the full range of our unmatched capabilities. No one — no dictator, no regime and no nation — should underestimate, ever, American resolve,” he said.

“As long as I am president, the servicemen and women who defend our nation will have the equipment, the resources and the funding they need to secure our homeland, to respond to our enemies quickly and decisively, and when necessary to fight, to overpower and to always, always, always win,” he said, eliciting a burst of applause.

In another apparent dig at Pyongyang, Trump hailed U.S. military members as “brave warriors” who are the “greatest threat to tyrants and dictators who seek to prey on the innocent.”

The tyrant’s path, he said in an oblique reference to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, is a “steady march toward poverty, suffering and servitude.”

Yokota is the headquarters of both U.S. Forces Japan and the ASDF’s Air Defense Command — a fact that some say makes it particularly at risk of a missile attack by the North. In August, the Air Self-Defense Force tested for the first time the deployment of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) anti-missile systems at the base. The systems are designed to shoot down incoming short- and medium-range missiles in their terminal phase of flight.

“All of you have made Yokota one of the most capable operational bases in Japan, and actually anywhere in the world,” Trump said, adding that the base today serves as “a critical center for coordination for American and Japanese commanders to plan their missions.”

Senior airman Collin Eddington said Trump’s speech “really motivates us to do what we have been doing so far and keep doing the good job that we have been.”

Asked about North Korea’s repeated military provocations this year, Eddington said his team’s commitment to security remains unshaken.

“Yokota is as prepared and serious as we have always been,” he said after the ceremony wrapped up.

Monday will see Trump and Abe hold a summit dialogue where North Korea is expected to be a top issue. Trump is also scheduled that day to meet relatives of some of the Japanese abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.

Aside from North Korea, another issue likely to be high on the agenda is Trump’s push for a more favorable bilateral trade deal with Japan to fill the vacuum left after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the multinational Trans-Pacific Partnership trade framework pursued by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Kyodo News reported Saturday that Tokyo plans to sidestep the touchy issue even if Trump brings it up, to avoid creating a fissure in otherwise friendly ties between the two nations.

Over the next 10 days the U.S. leader will travel across Asia, including stops in South Korea and China, where he said he will seek “free, fair and reciprocal trade.”

“We will seek new opportunities for cooperation and commerce, and we will partner with friends and allies to pursue a free and open Indo-Pacific region,” he said.

The concept of a “free and open Indo-Pacific region” has been a key diplomatic goal for Abe, with its primary focus being to promote an international maritime order that is in line with the rule of law. The push is presumably designed as a counter to China’s growing assertiveness in the South and East China seas, although Tokyo maintains the stance that the strategy “targets no specific country.”

 

Trump told troops during an arrival ceremony at Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo that “no dictator” should ever underestimate his country.

“Nobody can predict when Trump does a reckless act,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency quoted the paper as saying. “The only and one way for checking his rash act is to tame him with absolute physical power.”

Trump, in his speech to a throng of U.S. and Japanese service members, did not mention North Korea or its leader, Kim Jong Un, by name, though he did offer some not-so-subtle digs at the young dictator and his country.

“No one, no dictator, no regime and no nation, should underestimate . . . American resolve,” Trump said. “Every once in a while in the past, they underestimated us. It was not pleasant for them, was it?” he added.

The isolated North has endured tough U.N. sanctions on its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs, managing to conduct a raft of weapons tests this year, including its most powerful atomic blast and launches of a long-range missile experts say could strike most of the U.S.

Trump has taken an approach of piling “maximum pressure” on the nuclear-armed North, but it has been his hard-line pronouncements that have riled Pyongyang.

Known to derisively refer to Kim as “rocket man,” Trump has also variously threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” and to “totally destroy” the country of 25 million people if the United States is forced to defend itself or its allies, including Japan.

In response, the North has pledged the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history,” saying that the “U.S. should be tamed with fire.”

The true meaning remains unclear, but North Korea’s foreign minister said in September the country might soon conduct a test of what it claims is a hydrogen bomb somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

“If the U.S. misjudges the DPRK’s toughest will and dares to act recklessly, the latter will be compelled to deal a resolute and merciless punishment upon the former with the mobilization of all forces,” Sunday’s commentary said, using the North’s formal name.

“We warn Trump’s coteries once again: If they want to get rid of ruin, do not make reckless remarks.”