Japan

Though its crew proudly remembers the aircraft carrier Midway as the queen bee of the U.S. 7th Fleet, the vessel looks more like a beached whale nowadays.

"It seems impossible that I climbed that far," said Rene Gagnon as he looked down the rugged face of Mount Suribachi.

When accused U.S. Army deserter Sgt. Charles Jenkins arrived, saluted and turned himself over to Camp Zama authorities Saturday, this small, quiet Army base outside Tokyo found itself in a very unaccustomed spot: the cross hairs of the international media.

U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins left Camp Zama on Tuesday morning and was greeted by a cheering crowd Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, with his wife, Hitomi Soga, and their two North Korean-born daughters.

The Charles Jenkins saga drew nearer an end Wednesday when the Army sergeant was reduced in rank to E-1, dishonorably discharged and ordered to forfeit all pay and allowances and serve six months in prison after pleading guilty to desertion and aiding the enemy.

Though the subject of a media frenzy in Japan and South Korea, the plight of a former U.S. Army soldier labeled a deserter after spending the past 40 years in North Korea stirs little passion or sympathy among servicemembers in the Pacific.