Shigeru Yokota, father of Megumi Yokota, a tragic heroine in the issue of North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, died of old age in Kawasaki City, south of Tokyo, on Friday. He was 87.

Yokota  -- who formed the Association of the Families of Victims Kidnapped by North Korea in 1997 and served its representative for a decade -- worked tirelessly for more than four decades to get his daughter back, but ultimately passed away without seeing her again.