Selected by Annie of For the Lost fame, this week’s Select It Sunday case is Jitsuro D. Hiramoto. This seventeen-year-old Japanese-American young man vanished from Berkeley, California three days into 1984, and was never seen again.
Although it says “few details are available in his case” I actually know a little bit more about Jitsuro’s disappearance than it says on Charley. I got an email nearly five years ago from a high school friend of his. But I didn’t feel comfortable putting it all on the website, since it wasn’t from any “official” source and since it was information that might upset Jitsuro’s family.
Here’s what little I feel like I can say: Jitsuro dropped out of sight mysteriously in 1984, but it wasn’t until his high school’s ten-year class reunion in 1994 that my correspondent found out he was missing. Fliers were mailed out with the class reunion invitations, asking people who knew Jits (that was his nickname) to get in touch with a private investigator who was looking into his disappearance. My correspondent did speak to the P.I., who said Jits left a note when he disappeared. Suffice it to say that the person who wrote me believes Jitsuro is probably dead.
His family, according to the email I got, still lives in Berkeley.
The Charley Project Blog 