About 24 miles or so into Sunday’s Honolulu Marathon, Hideichi Watanabe expects to feel the familiar spirit of his murdered daughter pushing him across the finish line after six hours on the road.
Watanabe, 57, will run his fourth marathon in a row on Sunday — all in Honolulu — to honor and remember his youngest of three children and only daughter, Masumi Watanabe, a 21-year-old Japanese visitor last seen walking along Pupukea Road on Oahu’s North Shore on April 12, 2007.
Her body has never been found.
"I feel her being-ness here, especially at the finish line," Watanabe said through a translator on the eve of the marathon. "As I get closer to the finish line, I feel Masumi encouraging me."
Watanabe and his wife, Fumiko, 58, have returned to Honolulu from their home in Sado City too many times to remember since Watanabe was last seen getting into a Hauoli Termite and Pest Control truck driven by her convicted killer, Kirk Matthew Lankford.
After Masumi disappeared, Hideichi said, "We went into a tunnel without an exit."
But in that dark place, the Watanabes found new friends on Oahu who were inspired by the Watanabes’ search for the truth about their daughter — and the hope that Lankford will some day reveal what really happened.
Lankford continues to serve Hawaii’s second-longest prison sentence of 150 years in Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona.
During his trial, Lankford testified that he accidentally hit Masumi with his company truck and slightly injured her. Lankford said he tried to drive Masumi home, but she jumped out, hit her head on a rock and died.
Lankford testified that he was afraid he would lose his job, so he stored Masumi’s body in the back of the truck on April 12, 2007, then later moved her body to his personal pickup truck and tried to bury her on the North Shore. After he was interrupted while digging Masumi’s grave, Lankford said, he wrapped her body in a garbage bag, walked several hundred yards across the reef off of Kualoa Ranch and released it. He then went home to his wife and child.
Circuit Judge Karl Sakamoto told Lankford that he was a "predator" and "an extreme danger to our community."
Neither Sakamoto nor Masumi’s parents believed Lankford’s version.
"I want to find out the truth, what happened, where she is," Hideichi said. "I want him to take responsibility for what he has done, for this crime."
Masumi’s mother, Fumiko, prays "that he will disclose the location of her body," she said through a translator.
Seven years after Masumi’s murder, Fumiko cried as she remembered her shy daughter who came to the North Shore to gain confidence.
Every June 26 — Masumi’s birthday — the family gathers at home in Japan and celebrates with a birthday cake.
"Hawaii is a wonderful place," Fumiko said. "But when I come here, I think of Masumi and regret that we sent her here."
The couple, married for 34 years, work at their construction painting company. Since Masumi’s disappearance, they’ve lost track of the number of times they have returned to Honolulu, but it’s somewhere around 20 trips over the past seven years.
Then, four years ago, Hideichi was inspired to run his first marathon by Bob Iinuma, a mortgage broker from Waipio Gentry.
Iinuma’s daughter, Jo-Ann, was the same age as Masumi when she disappeared. He was touched by the Watanabes’ plight dealing with an American judicial system in a foreign language.
"Wow, what a terrible thing," said Iinuma, 59. "They’re foreign to this place but their daughter’s here so that’s why they keep wanting to come back. I definitely feel a kinship, being the father of a daughter. As somebody from Hawaii, it’s affected me and I want her found. So I ran my first marathon in 2007 in Masumi’s honor."
Neither Iinuma nor Hideichi ran a marathon before, but Hideichi was inspired by Iinuma’s gesture to honor someone he never met.
The Watanabes also ended up inspiring Mieko Crans of Kailua, who reached out to translate the legal jargon related to Lankford’s court and parole hearing proceedings.
"I have a daughter, too, and I’m from Japan, too," Crans said. "They’re a very, very nice couple and a very nice family. It was heartbreaking because the family now has a connection to Hawaii, knowing that Masumi is still here. But I didn’t know myself about the legal system here."
After befriending the Watanabes and deciphering Hawaii’s judicial system for them, Crans became a certified Family Court translator.
"I never ever thought about that before I met the Watanabes," Crans said. "I have been here for 30 years. But now I want to get more involved in the community."
After Hideichi runs Sunday’s marathon, the family will hold a seventh-anniversary memorial on Monday at Kawaiahao Church in keeping with Buddhist tradition.
In a break from tradition, however, Hideichi plans to offer a prayer that no one else, whether from Hawaii or Japan, suffers the same fate as his daughter.
But Hideichi also has some advice for others who were, or will be, victimized: "We want them not to give up," he said.
Before they fly home on Wednesday, Masumi’s parents and older brothers will drive up to the North Shore on Tuesday.
There, along the side of Pupukea Road, they’ll once again lay flowers at the spot where Masumi was last seen alive — and pray for the return of her body.
"It’s very painful," Hideichi said. "But we cannot go forward if we don’t face reality. We want to find closure."
