Camp Zama, Japan ? U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins was released from military jail on Saturday after serving 25 days for abandoning his squadron in 1965 and defecting to North Korea, where he lived for nearly four decades.

Jenkins, 64, left the prison at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka and was taken by helicopter to the Camp Zama Army base, where he was to join his family for several days before moving to his wife’s hometown in northern Japan.

“Forty years is a long time,” a sobbing Jenkins, still in uniform, told The Associated Press after he arrived at Camp Zama. “My plan is to stay in Japan, if they will accept me. I want to go back to the United States, but only once. With my wife, I’ll live in Japan, with my family.”

The release ends the longest desertion case on U.S. record. Although American deserters from the 1940s are still on the military’s wanted list, none has turned himself in.

Jenkins, a native of Rich Square, N.C., testified in his Nov. 3 court-martial that he fled the Army on Jan. 5, 1965, to avoid service in Vietnam. He said he intended to cross into North Korea, then defect to the Soviet Embassy and eventually make his way back to the United States.

Instead, the communist regime in Pyongyang kept him there for 39 years along with three other American deserters. He was used as a propaganda tool in broadcasts across the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea and was forced to teach English to North Korean military officer cadets, he said.

“We’re very happy that he’s out and free,” said Jenkins’ brother-in-law, Lee Harrell, in Weldon, N.C. Harrell, who is married to Jenkins’ younger sister Pat, said the family would welcome a visit from him.