Victim's husband describes loss of wife
By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer
Bobby Sakata knew something was wrong when he went to see his injured wife at The Queen's Medical Center after she had gotten into a scuffle with a man at the couple's Waikiki surfwear store.
Sakata told a Circuit Court jury yesterday that he was met by a chaplain instead of a nurse or doctor.
"He took me to a small room and gave me soft drinks and tried to comfort me," Sakata said. "I was thinking, how come I cannot go see her?"
Finally, he was taken to wife Michiko's bedside.
'When I was taken into the room, her eyes were blinking — open close, open close. The doctor told me, 'When the brain is gonna die, this happens.'
"Right away the doctor told me, 'Your wife is not coming back,' " Sakata said.
Sakata, 56, provided the emotional testimony as a prosecution witness in the trial of Daiki Iba on a charge of murdering Michiko Sakata at her Seawind Surf and Sea Store last year.
He testified the doctor asked him for permission to take his 44-year-old wife off life support. Sakata said he asked that she be kept alive for three days so her family and friends from Tokyo could come to see her a final time. They visited the hospital on April 25, 2003.
"The doctor ask me again, 'Are you ready?' I told him that when she is taken of the life support, I didn't want to see her suffering. He told me, 'Don't worry, we'll give her lotta morphine; she's not gonna feel anything.'
"I was there when he was removing the tubes. It was the hardest decision in my life," Sakata said, fighting back tears.
City Deputy Prosecutor Don Pacarro says that, on April 23, 2003, Iba went to the Sakatas' store at Royal Hawaiian Avenue under the guise of exchanging 3 million in Japanese yen for about $24,000 in U.S. currency.
But instead of yen, 35-year-old Iba was carrying worthless strips of paper contained in an envelope and hoped to trick Michiko Sakata into giving him the cash without checking the envelope, the prosecutor said.
Pacarro said that when Sakata demanded to see what was in the envelope, Iba panicked and attacked her and took about $8,400 out of the store's cash register.
But state Deputy Public Defender Edward Harada told the jury when the trial opened last week that Iba made a habit of carrying phony money after he was robbed of about $5,000 some months before the incident at the Sakata's store.
Harada said Sakata wanted to look at the phony money, gave Iba the $8,400 to hold while she looked at the fake money and then refused to give the phony money back to Iba.
Michiko Sakata had smoked crystal methamphetamine before the incident, became aggressive toward Iba and a scuffle ensued with Iba and Sakata falling to a narrow aisle behind a sunglass counter, Harada said.
The trial is expected to continue throughout this week.
Reach David Waite at dwaite@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8030.
