THE INCREDIBLE POWER OF SERENDIPITY! - Highlights of an Uncommon Life

The Incredible Power

of Serendipity! Highlights

Of an Uncommon Life!

—A Very Personal Memoir—

A VERY PERSONAL MEMOIR

II

Photo by Scott Holland

Life isn’t about finding

yourself.

Life is about creating

yourself.

—George Bernard Shaw—


III

The Incredible Power

of Serendipity! Highlights

Of an Uncommon Life!

—A Very Personal Memoir—

Boyé Lafayette De Mente

Phoenix Books / Publishers

Copyright © 2012 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente All Rights Reserved


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CONTENTS

Publisher’s Preface Introduction HIGHLIGHTS OF AN UNCOMMON LIFE Cutting Winnie’s Tongue! Doorway Squirrel Shoot! Killing a Pig Shattering an Elbow Deer Hunting & Rattlesnakes Running Over Winnie Moving to Sawmill Shack An Untimely Death Killing a Chicken Fern & the Hornet Attack School & Golden Cory My Nose in a Circle Almost Losing Fern Dad Loses a Thumb Coon Hunting Moving up the Valley & L’s Arrival The Shack that Dad Built Living on Potatoes My Jack-Off Uncle Flying off the Truck Hanging a Dog Chopping Down a Tree Hitting Don with an Ax Moving Again The Bologna & Cracker Treat Freezing for Pine Nuts The Chicken Pox Escapade Curling Wagon Wheel Hub Rings Losing a Toe Nail

My Jack-Off Uncle Again Impaled on a Log Moving to Redford Pell Pirtle’s Hole Sex Education 101 & 102 Avoiding Sunday School The Death of Uncle Bill My First Movie The Poisonous Snake Bite Going into Business Holy Roller Entertainment On the Dole Struck by Lightning Sex Ed 103 Logging with Dad Working in a Sawdust Pit Dad’s Copper SS Card The Move to St. Louis Clinton-Peabody School Pearl Harbor 1941 Becoming a Paperboy My First Boxing Match Visiting Mother Evans Hawking Stolen Goods Starting High School Working at the Lennox Hotel Discovering an Allergy Learning about Life My Second Boxing Match The Arizona Connection The New Mexico Adventure The End of World War II Joining the State Guard Sailing on the Mississippi Joining the Navy Getting to San Diego


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The Boot Camp Experience The Hard-On Show-Off Shipping Out and Falling The Shooting Fiasco The Life Changing Letter Living Next to Lincoln & Jefferson A Close Encounter with Admiral Nimitz Becoming a Writer My Biggest Embarrassment Out of the Navy The Search for Work Joining the Army Security Agency Meeting Brother Don Assignment in Japan Arriving in Tokyo Fixing Up the 1st Tokyo Arsenal The Ernie Pyle Theater Encounter with a Sumo Meeting my Hatsu-Koi Hamburger & Milk Shake The Mobile Whorehouse The Incredible Black Market Meeting the Imperial Hotel’s Famous Tetsuzo Inumaru My First Book / 1950 Seeing the American Caesar The Korean War Brother Don’s Ordeal Truman’s Year Starting a Newspaper A Visit from my Hatsu-Koi Losing my Security Clearance A Serendipitous Meeting Creating the Bender Bulletin Leaving Japan and the

Service. My Year at Thunderbird The Zǒri Story Going Back to Japan More Serendipity Kicks In End of the Zǒri Story Attending Jōchi University The Japan Travel Bureau Looking Up my Hatsu-Koi Becoming Editor of PREVIEW Magazine Appearing in Japanese Movies The End of PREVIEW Magazine Turned Down by Tuttle Teaming Up with a “White Russian” The KEMBUN Episode Getting My Degree from Jǒchi University Japan Will Never Amount to Anything! Encounters with the CIA Creating TODAY’S JAPAN The Incredible Amphibious Jeep [“Half-Safe”] Story Jumping Jeep in Alaska Valley National Bank Story Meeting Margaret Warren The ORIENTAL AMERICA - IMPORTER Saga The Amazing Sony Story Margaret Arrives with a Typhoon The IMPORTER Magazine Success Story First Business Book Some Wonderful News and the Shocking Aftermath Japan’s Amazing “Water Business”


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Seeing John Glenn Circling the Earth Leaving Salaried Employ- ment The Tokyo Guide Cards

A Visit Home

Reuniting with Jim Walker The Voyage Home Niki Woodside Dies Add to the Half-Safe Jeep Story Demetra Arrives Moving to Honolulu ONCE A FOOL published Meeting John Wilcock Visiting the IMPORTER Phone Call that Changed the World Daughter Dawn in Charge Some Prefer Geisha The Bachelor’s BEAT story The Amazing Larry Flynt Saga The Nude Jackie Kennedy Photos Following Hugh Hefner Face-Reading for Fun & Profit Appearing on What’s My Line? In New York Girl-Watching in the Orient Rest of the Merle Hinrichs Story The Richard Woodside Episode Watching the Moon Landing Fernie’s Rise in the PR World Teaching at Thunderbird The Insider Guides I Like You Gringo—But!

The U.S. Discovers Japan Naming NEW TIMES The Gordon & Roberta Story The Arizona Trading Post Gamble The Apple [Japan] Connection Arizona Authors Association Shoot-Out at Dawn Prentice-Hall Comes Thru Margaret’s Travels The Meiji Memorial Story The National Textbook Connection Japanization of America Episode The Code Word Approach to Understanding Cultures Daughter Dawn’s Wedding The Tokyo and Japan Journal Episode The Mike Ohshima Story The Michi Matsumoto Story The Kata Factor Book Story The Kodansha International Episode Take Down by Shintō Guru The Tanka Master Mutsuo Shukuya Story The Yoshio Karita Story The Japanese Brain Man Story The Subway Guide to Tokyo Demise of Charlie Tuttle Losing Brother L and Becoming a Basket Case The John Banta & Sheraton Miyako Hotel Story


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The Japan Info Network My Amazon “Shorts” Knocking a Rib Cage Askew The Heart Scare that was a False Alarm An Honor that Didn’t Happen Lecturing in Beijing Farewell Trip to Tokyo Margaret’s Heart Surgery The Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me Five Writers in the Family NOT THE END List of My Other Books


PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Cultural authority and author Boyé Lafayette De Mente credits

serendipity for a remarkable career that encompassed a diversity

of things no one could have imagined, given his early back-

ground.

This included playing a pioneer role in the rise of Japan,

Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China as economic super-

powers; in the emergence of Thunderbird School of Global

Management alumnae brother Merle Hinrichs as the largest

trade magazine publisher in Asia, major financial donor to

Thunderbird and a member of the board of directors of the

school; and in the rise of go-go entrepreneur Larry Flynt to

prominence and great wealth as the publisher of HUSTLER

magazine and other publications and a powerful influence on

American culture and civil rights.

Then there were encounters he had with a wide variety of

notables, including Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, one of Ame-

rica’s top World War II Naval leaders, as well as relationships

with Yoshio Karita, former protocol officer for Japan’s Imperial

Family, and other famous people.

Another memorable event in his career: he is in the Guinness

Book of World Records for a 1957 four-month long journey he

made from Japan to Alaska on an amphibious jeep named

HALF-SAFE with the world-circling jeep’s Australian owner

and “captain” Ben Carlin…a feat he later chronicled in a book

entitled ONCE A FOOL! – From Japan to Alaska by Amph-

ibious Jeep.

According to De Mente, at no time in his long career did he

think that what he was doing was remarkable or that it would

have a fundamental influence on the lives of so many people or

that it would contribute to the future of so many nations.

A full list of books written by De Mente is included at the

end of this memoir.

***

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9

INTRODUCTION

I was born the fourth of ten children and first son of Elza

Lafayette Dement and Ruby Ila Bounds-Dement at 7:30 a.m. on

12 November 1928 in a tiny isolated valley known as Mayberry

in the Ozark Hills of southeast Missouri, USA.

“Just in time to start for school!” my mother is said to have

quipped.

Mayberry—which as of this writing has only one family—is

about one-quarter to one-third of a mile wide and some four

miles long. It was named after the first Anglo resident who

arrived there in the early 1800s.

My father Elza was born 2 October 1903 in the French-

established community of Brunot near the Mississippi River in

southeast Missouri. My mother, of English lineage, was born in

the small township of Centerville, Missouri [the county seat],

on Highway 21 several miles west of Mayberry, on 11 January

1907. She was 16 and my father was 20 when they married.

Their first child, Velva, born in 1923, died of a child-hood

ailment shortly before her second birthday and five months after

the birth of their second daughter, Jessie. They were to have

eight more children—spaced about 22 months apart.

On the morning of my birth my mother named me Elza

Lafayette after my father, but from Day One I became known as

Boye, which everyone then pronounced as boy.

I was born at home with no doctor in attendance. My birth

was never officially recorded, and there is no record of my

original first name [Elza] ever having been used by anyone.

My mother, who had only an 8th grade education, was a

closet romantic and far more intelligent and accomplished than

most of her nine surviving children realized during her life. She

was vague about where she came up with the name Boye

(written without the macron over the “e” until the invention of

devices that made it possible), later telling me that it was the

word “boy” with an “e” added to give it a French look because I

was the first son following a string of three daughters and my

father’s ancestry was French.


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The difference in the spelling of the family name that I use

[De Mente] and that of my parents [Dement] did not come

about until just before I started to high school in St. Louis,

Missouri in 1943. That year my older sister Winnie climbed

our family tree and discovered that one of the oldest French

branches spelled the name De Mentier, with De Mente event-

ually becoming an alternate spelling.

After our paternal ancestors arrived in the U.S., ending up in

western Kentucky and southeastern Missouri in the early 1800s,

the spelling evolved into several different versions including

DeMent, Dement and Demint, because these spellings were

what it sounded like when pronounced by Anglo-Americans.

Winnie prevailed upon me to officially adopt the De Mente

version of the spelling, which was easy to do since I had no

birth certificate or any other birth record, and I was impressed

with its exotic appearance and the idea of emphasizing my

French heritage from my father’s side.

Mayberry RFD The frame house where I was born was located between a small

creek and the base of the hill that formed the north side of the

narrow valley. The creek, fed by rainwater and underground

springs, enters the valley from a long hollow that connects with

Mayberry about a mile and a half west of where we lived.

A single-lane dirt road ran along the base of the hill on the

north side of the valley, with our house fronting on the road. A

short distance west of our house there was a rail fence along the

side of the road to keep cattle from wandering into the hills. The

fence, which began a few hundred yards west of our house,

enclosed a tiny farm owned by my parental grandparents.

At the time of my birth there were half a dozen families

living in the valley, including my maternal and paternal grand-

parents. My father’s parents lived about a mile west of us. His

father farmed and alternately operated a lumber mill. [The

heavily forested Ozark Hills area of Missouri’s Reynolds

County became known for its logging and railroad tie industries

following the end of the Civil War and the spread of railroads

throughout the country.]


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My maternal grandmother, Effie [known by everyone in the

family as Mother Evans] and step-grandfather, Tom Evans,

lived half a mile further west at the mouth of the narrow hollow,

mentioned above, that branches off from Mayberry to the north-

west.

My mother’s father, Jesse Elisha Bounds, Mother Evans’

first husband, died at the age of 25 from tuberculosis, a common

disease in those days, following which she married Tom Evans.

The east end of Mayberry valley ends at Black River, about

two miles from my birthplace. The west end of the valley, also

some two miles from my birthplace, rises gradually in elevation,

finally merging into a range of low hills.

Mother Evans’ home was situated on an embankment on the

west side of the creek where it enters Mayberry proper. Each

year she planted a large vegetable garden on the elevated area to

the south and behind her home. Step-granddad Tom Evans

planted cane (for molasses) and corn

in the upper end of the valley, and kept milk cows, hogs and

several horses. There was a natural spring enclosed in a shed on

the opposite side of the creek where they lived. During the

summer months they kept milk and butter in the spring shed. A

chicken house adjoined the spring shed.

There was no electricity in Mayberry and no indoor plumb-

ing. Toilets were outside, some distance from the houses. My

material grandmother’s two-hole shack toilet, about 50 yards

from her house, hung out over an almost vertical embankment

of Mayberry creek that ran in front of her place...and was

“flushed” when the level of the creek rose after heavy rains.

None of the families in Mayberry had water wells, and there

was only one natural spring that I recall—the one near Mother

Evans’ house. According to my older sister Jessie she and

Winnie sometimes carried water from that spring, which was

about a mile from our house.

Everyone else living in Mayberry got the water they used

from the creek that ran through it. Bathing (when it happened)

was from large pans of water—although during the summer

months boys and men would more often wash off in the creek

where it pooled.


12

Apparently it never occurred to anyone living down-stream

from my grandmother’s place to be concerned about fishing in,

bathing in, and using water from the creek that periodically

carried away the waste from her outhouse. To my knowledge

there was no attempt by anyone in May-berry to use excrement

as fertilizer—a traditional practice in China and Japan.

The Town of Redford

Redford, the town nearest Mayberry, had a population of about

150 if you included all of the farming families in the vicinity.

There were two ways to get to Redford from Mayberry. The

shortest route, about seven miles, was on foot or horseback via a

long curving ridge on the south side of the west end of the

valley then down a steep slope that ended about three miles east

of Redford.

For wagons and vehicles going from Mayberry to Redford

there was a graded road up a steep hill from the central portion

of Mayberry valley on the south side—in line with Mother

Evans’ place—over the summit, down into Low Hollow (the

adjoining valley), then west over a winding hill road for some

six miles to Redford—a total distance of about 15 miles.

Redford had one grocery store [owned by Eli Brooks], a

combination drugstore, post office and miscellanies dry goods

[owned by the Sanuff family], a Baptist church and a tiny

school house that was originally built as a meeting place for

some kind of club.

For some reason, we moved from Mayberry to “downtown”

Redford for a short period in 1930. I was only about 22 months

old and have no recollection of that but I know it happened

because in the early 1960s while visiting Redford [from

Phoenix, Arizona] with two of my sisters [Fernie and Becky]

and our mother, Mom pointed to a small house with a front

porch and said: “That’s where we lived when your brother Don

was born!” That auspicious event occurred on 25 August 1930.

I did not have the presence of mind to ask Mom why we had

moved there and why we lived there for only a short time

because by the time my next brother, Doyle, came along on 12


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April 1932 we were back in the house in lower Mayberry where

I were born.

Jessie, my oldest surviving sister, was born in Centerville,

about seven miles northwest of Redford; and Winnie, my

second oldest sister, was born in Ellington, a small town about

six miles southwest of Redford. Mom was apparently taken to

Centerville for Jessie’s birth and to Ellington for Winnie’s birth

so she could be attended by a doctor.

When I, Don, Doyle, Fern, L and Becky were born Mom

was attended by a relative acting as a mid-wife. Sharon Rose,

our youngest sister, was born in a hospital in St. Louis.

Not surprisingly, everything I can remember about my life

relates to events that were unusual in some way—happenings

that for one reason or another were hard-wired into my brain.

The mundane and otherwise routine events have long since

faded into the fog of the past.

HIGHLIGHTS

OF AN UNCOMMON LIFE

Mayberry / 1931

My first clear memory involves a snake and Mom. One Sun-

day afternoon my parents, older sisters Jessie and Winnie,

brother Don and I started up the single-lane dirt road to visit

Mother Evans. The road curved along the base of the hill on the

north side of the narrow valley.

Dad was carrying Don. I was walking a few yards in front of

everyone and saw a snake wiggling its way across the road. I

picked the snake up, turned around and held it up for everyone

to see.

My mother, who for some reason was carrying a stick, began

shouting for me to drop the snake and trying to hit it with the

stick. Her blows landed on my arm and hand, but I dropped the

snake.


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Cutting Winnie’s Tongue!

Sister Winnie had a speech problem. She could not enunciate

words clearly. It turned out that she was tongue-tied. Mom and

Dad finally took her to Ellington to the same doctor who de-

livered her to have the membrane under her tongue cut, freeing

it to move normally and making it possible for her to make up

for lost time.

There were times later when some members of the family

said her tongue should not have been cut because she became

such a big talker!

The Doorway Squirrel Shoot!

One Sunday afternoon I saw a squirrel on the limb of a tree on

the hillside across the one-lane road from our house. I told Dad.

He got his 22-caliber rifle from a closet and, standing in the

doorway, killed the squirrel by “barking” it—hitting the bark of

the limb the squirrel was laying on to keep from messing up its

body with a bullet. Mom fried it for our supper.

Killing a Pig

One day Dad brought home a pig from his father’s farm to

butcher for fresh meat. The pig’s front and back feet were tied

together so it couldn’t stand up. Dad started a fire to heat a large

kettle of water. After the water was boiling he told me to hold

the pig’s head steady so he could shoot it. The pig squirmed

around so much the bullet didn’t kill it.

I couldn’t keep the head of the pig still enough for him to try

another shot. He told me to go get a hammer. He then straddled

the pig’s head and I held its back feet. It kicked its hind feet and

squirmed like crazy. It took several blows of the hammer before

he was able to kill it.

We hung the pig from the limb of a tree, poured scalding hot

water on it, scrapped off all the hair, gutted it, then cut it into

large chunks. Dad took about half of it to his parents. We had

fresh pork for dinner that night. Mom salted the rest of it.


15

Shattering an Elbow

One Sunday morning in 1933 Dad announced that he was going

fishing in Black River and said he would take me with him. He

had made a new pole for a gig that was on top of a cabinet in

the kitchen, and asked me to get it.

I climbed up on a stool and began reaching for the gig but

lost my balance and fell off, landing on my left arm, shattering

it at the elbow. Dad carried me some two miles

to the home of one of his brothers who had a car, and got him to

drive us to Ellington, some 20 miles away, where there was a

doctor.

Dad told me later that I went to sleep shortly after we started

for Ellington, and woke up only when the doctor was encasing

my arm in a slatted metal cage that immobilized it in an L-

shape. My elbow swelled up to the point that my flesh pro-

truded through the square holes in the cast, which I ended up

wearing for about three months. When the cast was finally

taken it off I could hardly move my arm at the elbow. For

around a year after that my father manually exercised my arm

every evening when he got home from work.

Both Dad and Mom also encouraged me to use my left hand

to do things I would normally do with my right hand, resulting

in me becoming fairly ambidextrous. My elbow healed and I

eventually regained full use of it, but my arm was bent down-

ward and to the right several degrees at the elbow when I held it

out palm down. It still works after more than eighty years.*

___________________________________________________

*When I joined the Navy at the age of 17 in St. Louis, I was

herded into a doctor’s office with several other recruits. The

doctor had us strip to our shorts and line up in rows in front of

him and do such things as bend over, and move our arms and

legs about to see if everything worked. My left arm was

crooked at the elbow when held out with the palm down, so I

held it out with my palm turned upward so the doctor wouldn’t

notice the deformity]

___________________________________________________


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An Untimely Death

In late December of 1933 (or in early January 1934) Granddad

Dement was operated on in St. Louis for throat cancer—no

doubt caused by him chewing tobacco. When he was brought

home from the hospital Dad went to visit him and took me

along.

The dark bedroom where Granddad Dement was in had a

kerosene lamp, and I remember it being very dim. I could see

the bandage around his neck. But what embedded the memory

of the visit in my mind was the overpowering smell of ether that

permeated the room. He died on 29 January 1934. He was 61

years old.

Deer Hunting & Rattlesnakes

In the spring of 1934 we lived for a short while in Low Hollow,

the next hollow over (south) from Mayberry, either on or next

to a farm owned by a man named Jim Stevenson. I don’t know

why we moved there but it probably had something to do with

Dad’s work at different sawmills at that time.

There was a trail from Lower Mayberry that led up a steep

hill, along a narrow ridge and then down the south side of the

hill to Low Hollow. Dad’s older brother Dan had an adjoining

farm at the west end of Low Hollow.

I remember the house in Low Hollow but not how long we

lived there or what Dad did while we were there. It had a half-

basement that was used as a storage area. Dad was gone most of

the time but I have one memory of him during that time and

four very strong memories associated with the house.

(1) Mom was very pregnant (with Fernie) when we made

the move to Low Hollow, and I remember how big she was and

us having to stop and wait for her to rest several times as we

climbed the steep hill separating Mayberry and Low Hollow.

(2) During the trip I was running ahead of the family. My

bare right foot landed on a rock, severely bruising my heel—an

injury that was to come back to haunt me in my early 70s.

(3) One Sunday I went deer-hunting with Dad on the west

side of Stevenson’s property, inside the rail fence that marked


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the boundary of his farm. He came out of his barn, saw us, and

began shouting and motioning for his get out of his field.

And (4), one day Jessie went into the cellar of the house to

get something for Mom. Seconds later she ran back out of the

cellar and into the house, screaming like crazy. After Mom

finally got her calmed down she said there was a giant snake in

the cellar. She was petrified by snakes.

I went with Mom to the cellar, and there it was—a huge

rattlesnake coiled up inside a large open-mouthed jug. Mom

told me to go to Uncle Dan’s house and get someone to come

and get rid of the snake.

Before getting to Uncle Dan’s house I saw someone working

in a field. I don’t remember if it was one of his older sons or a

hired hand, but whoever it was returned with me and managed

to get the jug outside of the cellar, dislodge the snake, and kill

it. The snake was around seven or eight feet long and had 14

tail buttons (the things that rattle when rattlesnakes are riled)—

meaning it was 14 years old.

The snake killer and Mom agreed that it was the largest

rattlesnake they had ever seen. We draped it over the fence in

front of our house for all to see and it caused a lot of talk for

weeks afterward.

A short time later we moved back into my birthplace house

in Mayberry. I do not know who owned the house but we

moved in and out of it three times over the next few years.

Running Over Winnie

Following out move back to Mayberry Dad began plowing a

small section of land across the creek a short distance away

from our house. He let me try my hand at plowing, but it was

new ground, the plow kept hitting roots and rocks, jerking me

this way and that, and I couldn’t get the team of horses to turn

properly at the end of a furrow, so after a few furrows he took

over. After he finished plowing he planted something in the

furrows—I don’t remember what but it was probably corn. He

then hitched the team of horses to a 7x9 railroad tie to drag

horizontally across the rows to cover up the seeds.


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As the tie was being dragged across the upturned ridges of

soil he stood on it to give it more weight. Winnie came out of

the house and asked him if she could ride on the tie with him.

He stopped the team to let her get on. Within seconds she fell

off of the tie; forward instead of backward, and the tie passed

over her before Dad could stop the team.

Because the upturned ridges of soil were fairly high and soft

and she fell in between two of them she got only some scratches

and minor bruises.

Moving into a Sawmill Shack

and a Flash Flood

In the early spring of 1934 Dad went to work at a lumber mill

located about three-quarters of a way up Mayberry hollow and

on the south side, near the road that went up and over the hill to

Low Hollow and on to Redford. The mill was about 1.5 miles

from where we lived.

On a Sunday shortly after he started working at the mill some

of the other workers helped him build a shack about a hundred

yards from the mill. We moved into the shack.

I don’t remember why Dad moved us into the shack because

the mill wasn’t that far from where we lived at the time. The

only reason that has occurred to me is that he was responsible

for watching over the mill at night and on Sundays.

One day after a heavy rainfall we kids went outside to play in

the sandy-bottom of a wash about a hundred yards from the

shack. We heard an odd noise that kept getting louder and

louder, and were alarmed enough that we stopped playing and

climbed out of the wash.

Seconds later a wall of water three or four feet high roared

down the wash where we had been playing. I do not remember

other flash floods occurring in the valley, or seeing the water

unusually high in the creek behind the house where I was born.

But there were floods because in the early 1960s one carried

away the bridge over the creek between Mother Evans’ house

and the spring house on the other side of the creek.


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Wringing a Chicken’s Neck

One Sunday afternoon my mother asked me to kill a chicken

for dinner that evening. I had seen others kill chickens by

grasping their heads in one hand and twirling them around until

the head was severed from the body. I opted to do the same. It

took much longer than I expected, and when the body of the

chicken finally went flying, it got up and ran for several yards

before collapsing, with blood spurting from its neck stump.

About this time Dad and two of his brothers went fishing in

Black River. They caught and killed a Red Horse fish that must

have been nearly four feet long. They nailed the fish to a board

and then nailed the board to a tree alongside the nearby road.

A short while after that—apparently in just a few months—

we moved back into our original house in lower Mayberry.

Fern’s Birth & a Hornet Attack

In the late afternoon of 13 August 1934 when it became obvious

that Mom was going to give birth to my sister Fern, Dad took

me and my brother Don to his parents’ home to stay overnight.

Grandmother Dement spread thin pallets on the floor for us to

sleep on.

The next morning after breakfast Don and I went outside to

play. Not far from the house we came across a large hornet’s

nest hanging from a tree limb. We first threw rocks at the nest

but nothing happened. We then got some sticks and began

whacking it. A cloud of hornets stormed out of the nest and be-

gan stinging us on the head, face and neck. We started running

and trying to fight them off, but they kept up their attack. We

finally jumped into nearby Mayberry creek and ducked out

heads under water to get rid of them.

We were in bad shape. When we went back inside Grand-

mother Dement’s house she put some kind of medicine on our

bites [I think it was coal oil] and had us lie down. We stayed

put, moaning and carrying on for the rest of the day. Dad came

to get us in the late afternoon.

When Dad saw our condition he said we would know better

the next time we encountered a hornet’s nest.


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School & Golden Corey

I started to school in September, 1934 when I was six years old,

going on seven. The school, about a mile east of our house in

the direction of Black River, consisted of one room that was

about 14 feet wide and 20 feet long. There were 16 or 17

students in grades from one through eight.

The teacher, a man named Golden Corey, was married to my

mother’s half sister, Faye. He had close-cropped curly golden

red hair, thus his name. During the lunch period he would

entertain the youngest kids by bending over and letting them

take turns getting a firm grip on his hair, following which he

would straighten up, lifting them off the ground.

My Nose in a Circle

The toilet for the Mayberry school hose was across the road and

down an embankment on the edge of the creek that ran through

the small valley. One snowy day someone got up on the ele-

vated area containing the two holes to squat instead of sitting on

one of the holes. Whoever it was missed the hole and soiled the

edge of the place where one would normally sit.

One of the girls came back from the toilet and told the

teacher about the pile of crap next to the hole.

He loudly said: “Alright! I want whoever did this to speak

up now!”

There was dead silence. I must have tried to hide my face

from his searching gaze and must have otherwise looked guilty

as hell. He marched over, took me by the arm, picked up a

bucket on the way out of the room, marched me down to the

creek, and made me carry a bucket of water up to the toilet

where he flushed off the dump.

When we got back to the school house, he drew a circle on

the blackboard and made me stand there with my nose touching

the board in the circle for fifteen minutes. I never forgave him.

Almost Losing Fern

The first summer after Fern’s birth Mom and Dad took all of us

down to Black River for a fish-fry. Dad went down the river a


21

short distance to gig-fish in a shoal where hog suckers could

always be found stationary in the moving water or hiding in

clumps of debris. In the rippling water of the shoal the stripped

fish were almost invisible.

We kids started playing on a sandy beach-area of the river.

Mom waded out into the river to where it was about knee-deep

to cool off.

Fernie crawled into the river and was swept away by the

swift current. The rest of us kids started yelling. Mom chased

after her and caught her some 15 yards away. For some reason,

Fernie used to say that Mom was trying to get rid of her, but at

that time she was far too young to have any conscious memory

of the incident.

Dad Loses a Thumb

Dad worked for a turkey ranch for several weeks during the

summer of 1935. The ranch was some two hours walk away—

each way—so he left early and came home late. Following this

short stint he once again went to work at a lumber mill.

On this job he was working as the operator of the wheel-

mounted carriage that carried the logs forward to the revolving

circular saw. One day someone rode up on a horse behind him

and yelled out to get his attention.

Dad turned around to see who it was but kept pushing the

saw lever forward. When he twisted around it caused his grip

on the lever to shift and his right thumb to stick out. The saw

cut his thumb off.

One of the sawmill workers went down into the sawdust pit

beneath the saw, retrieved his thumb, put it in a match box and

gave it to him. The short stub of thumb that was left caused Dad

intense pain and for several days afterward he walked the floor,

holding onto the stub.

Coon Hunting by the Full Moon

One evening in the fall when the moon was full Dad and two of

his younger brothers [Inman and Arch] took me with them on a

coon-hunting venture. The dogs didn’t find any raccoons but


22

they treed an opossum. Somebody, I don’t remember who or

how, knocked it out of the tree. It “played opossum” while Dad

carried it home by the tail and put it in a box. The next day he

killed it. Mom cut it up and cooked it. We ate it for supper.

Moving Up the Valley and

L’s Arrival

Once again we moved; this time into a frame house in Upper

Mayberry that was on Granddad Evan’s property. Brother L [his

official name was Clayton D. L.] was born in that house on 15

March 1936. Shortly before he was born, Don and I were sent

outside, and for the next two or so hours played in the ash-dump

a short distance from the house. I don’t know why or how our

brother L became known as L

The Shack that Dad Built

And Living on Potatoes

That fall Dad was out of work again and for some reason we

moved once more…in later years it never occurred to me to ask

why we moved so often…but it seems obvious that we moved

to be closer to wherever he was working at the time, since he

had to walk to-and-from work.

With my help (handing him boards and nails), Dad built a 2-

room shack on the side of the hill across the creek and swampy

area from my maternal grandmother’s house [Mother Evans].

He got the ties for the foundation, the 2x4s for framing and

boards for the shack walls and ceiling from the lumber mill a

short distance away where he had previously worked but was

then closed down. The material had been left on the site when it

closed down.

The foundation ties for the shack were placed on fairly large

rocks we dragged into place. Dad built the place in about eight

hours. Mom later papered the walls with pages from a catalog to

cover the cracks between boards and keep the wind out.

After we moved into the shack Dad and Mom went some-

where looking for work and food, leaving us kids alone. Before

leaving, they went over to Grandmother Evans’ house and


23

bought back a sack of potatoes. I have no idea why they got

only potatoes.

While our parents were gone, Jessie sliced and fried the

potatoes for our meals and for us to take to school for lunch. We

were so embarrassed by not having any other food to eat that we

would go off by ourselves during the lunch period so no one

could see what we were eating.

We also ran out of wood for the heating stove so when not in

school we spent much of the time in bed in order to stay warm.

Mom and Dad were gone for a few days—I don’t remember

how many days or where they went or how they got where they

went. They brought some groceries with them when they came

home.

My Jack-Off Half-Uncle

One winter day during class at the Mayberry school the teacher

[Golden Corey] went outside, apparently to go to the toilet.

Immediately after he left my half-uncle Truman Evans, who

was about 14 years old and one of the 8th grade students, began

horsing around, teasing the girls near him by exposing his hard-

on, and finally openly jacking-off.

Teacher Cory returned suddenly and caught him in the act. A

tall, strongly built man, Cory grabbed Truman by the arm,

dragged him outside, cut a switch from a tree, made him remove

his shirt and then whipped him so hard that part of the switch

broke off and stuck in his back.

That was not to be Uncle Truman’s last jacking-off incident

that I was aware of…and comments he made decades later

indicated that his mindset had not changed that much.

Moving Again and Flying off the Truck

In the late spring of 1937 Dad got some temporary work from

the WPA [Works Progress Administration], a government-

sponsored program to provide work for millions of men who

could not find jobs because of the Depression. He and several

other men were hired to build concrete culverts on the county

road leading to and from Redford.


24

Dad borrowed a truck (I think from sawmill owner Wes

Martin who lived about three miles east of Redford), and loaded

our furniture for the 12-or so mile trip to an empty frame house

east of Redford and about half a mile from the Wes Martin

home. The house was at the base of a hill within a hundred

yards from where the first culvert was to be built.

The last piece of furniture put on the truck was a sofa, which

went on the very top because Mom didn’t want anything piled

on top of it. But she did agree that my brother Don and I could

sit on the sofa during the trip, since there was already two adults

and three kids (Doyle, Fernie and L] in the cab of the truck

(older sisters, Jessie and Winnie, were gone somewhere).

Shortly after driving away from the shack we were living in

(the one across from Mother Evan’s house that Dad had built), I

suddenly became aware that I was running behind the truck,

crying and yelling, “Stop! Stop!” and I could see my brother

Don pounding on the top of the truck cab to get our father’s

attention.

It turned out that the truck had hit a huge pot-hole that had

been washed out by a recent rain, and the sudden down-and-up

impact had sent me flying off of the sofa onto the road behind

the truck. Dad stopped the truck and Mom rushed back to me.

She found that I had landed on my back and hit by head on a

small rock that left a v-shaped hole in the crown.

She put something over the hole to help stop the bleed-ing,

wrapped my head in a piece of cloth and then wedged me into

the cab beside her and the younger kids. I went to sleep within

minutes and did not wake up until we reached the vacant house

we were moving into. Don was left alone on the back of the

truck because there was no room for him in the cab.

After waking up, I apparently behaved normally [!] and was

not taken to a doctor—the nearest one being in Ellington, about

12 miles from where we were. I still have the scar in the crown

of my head, so when I wash, comb or scratch my head I recall

the incident.


25

Hanging a Dog

Shortly after we moved into the house east of Redford, Don,

Doyle and I became aware that there was a dog hang-ing around

that we thought was rabid. We managed to catch it with a wire

loop at the end of a long stick.

We then hung the dog from a tree limb on the hillside behind

the house, and proceeded to hit it with rocks while it slowly

strangled to death. Our younger sister Fernie [who was then

approaching the age of three] witnessed this sorry event, and it

was to give her nightmares for years afterward.

Chopping Down a Tree

Shortly after the dog incident, and on the same hillside, Don and

I cut a fairly large tree most of the way down. Then Doyle, the

next youngest brother, and Don climbed up into the tree while I

proceeded to chop it the rest of the way down. When the tree hit

the ground Doyle was shaken loose from his perch among the

branches. Three of his front teeth were knocked loose. He went

home crying. Crestfallen, Don and I followed him. Mom was

not happy with us.*

___________________________________________________

*In 2005 when I and my youngest daughter Demetra visited

Redford for the annual Dement family reunion, I was amazed to

discover that the house we lived when the above events took

place was still standing—boarded up and weathered black, with

vines growing on it but nevertheless intact after more than 65

years. Demetra took pictures of it.

Later one of my second cousins drove us to Mayberry. Near

where Grandmother Evans used to live we spotted a man

outside of a house, feeding some penned-up pigs. I spoke to him

briefly. He said he was the only one living in the valley. When I

told him we were on our way to see the house where I was born

he said the road in that direction was no longer drivable. I

believe he said his name was Coil.

He was right about the road. About half a mile from his

house we had to stop, get out of the vehicle and walk the rest of


26

the way. We found that the house had been torn down, leaving

only the concrete flooring. However, I did find my initials

carved into a tree next to where the house had been. Demetra

took a picture of that as well. The area was desolate and sorry

looking so we stayed for only a few minutes.

___________________________________________________

The first culvert my father helped build after we moved into

the house east of Redford was literally across the road from the

front of the house. The work there lasted for only a few days. I

took Dad’s lunch to him each day so he could sit and eat with

the other men. The WPA job itself lasted for only a few weeks.

Hitting Don with an Ax

One day Mom asked me to chop some firewood for the kitchen

stove from strips—pre-cut from boards with knot holes in them

and therefore not useful as lumber. I was using a double-bladed

ax whose blades came to a sharp point at each corner, swinging

the ax in a high arc over my right shoulder to increase the power

of the swing. Don walked up behind me without me being

aware of it. When I swung the ax high and to the back, he cried

out.

I turned around. He was holding a hand over his left eye. I

took his hand away, and saw a trickle of blood on the outside of

the upper portion of his eyelid. I took hold of the eyelid and

pulled on it. I could see inside his bloodied eye socket.

One of the sharp corners of the double-bladed ax had sliced

through the top of his eyelid. We went into the house and

showed Mom. She became very upset but when she saw that

only the eyelid had been cut and that there was very little

bleeding, she quieted down and put a square of cloth over his

eye, covering it with a strap that went around his head to hold it

in place.

His eyelid was completely healed in about a week, and

there was no apparent damage to his eye.

Sometime after that, Dad went to work at a lumber mill

owned by Wes Martin. Martin had a flat-bed truck I was really

impressed with. You started the engine by pushing a button; not


27

turning a crank in front; something I had done before on a car.

On several occasions when Dad was driving the truck he let me

sit in his lap and steer it.

Moving Again

After Dad went to work for Wes Martin we moved again, this

time into a house owned by Martin that was located only about

a quarter of a mile from where we were living at that time. The

house was at the foot of the narrow slope that led up to a long

ridge that was a shortcut back to Mayberry—a shortcut I had

once taken with Dad on horse-back, sitting behind him. I went

to sleep and fell off of the horse but was not hurt. On a later

occasion I walked the same route with Dad from Mayberry to

Redford, and one time on to Ellington.

The Bologna & Cracker Treat

One day Wes Martin asked Dad to drive a load of railroad ties

to Annapolis on the eastern side of Black River some 20 miles

from Redford. He took me with him. After off-loading the ties

at the railroad depot we went on into the downtown area where

Dad bought several slices of bologna and some soda crackers

for our lunch. It was the first time I had ever tasted bologna and

crackers, and the taste was out of this world. I still regard it as a

special treat!

Dad also bought two bottles of orange soda. I had never

seen much less tasted a soda before, and after one sip I gave it

back to him. I thought it was some kind of alcoholic drink and

refused to drink any more of it. He got a big laugh out of my

reaction.

During that visit to Annapolis I saw the first train and the

first black person I had ever seen.

Freezing for Pine Knots

On a Sunday in the middle of that winter [1937] I went with

Dad in a borrowed wagon to White Mule Hollow to pick up

pine knots for our heating stove. I got so cold I was sure I was


28

going to freeze to death. Dad kept saying, “Move around! Help

me load the wagon! That will keep you warm!”

I tried, but it didn’t help much and when we got back home

and he had stoked up the stove with pine knots I stayed closed

to the stove for a long time, causing my mother to have to call

me several times to sit down for supper.

The Chicken Pox Escapade

That same winter, all of us kids came down with chicken pox.

Mom told all of us to stay in the house and keep warm, but my

brothers and I climbed out through a back window and played

outside for several hours. Our sister Fern watched us climb out

the window and snitched on us, but we were out and gone

before Mom got there. Our chicken pox cases were very light,

while those of our sisters were heavy.

Curling with Wagon Wheel Hub Rings

One of the favorite outdoor activities for Don, Doyle and I at

that time was called curling, using old metal rings that had been

on the hubs of the wooden wheels of wagons. We beat tin cans

flat with a hammer, folded up the two sides to create a two-

sided box-like shape and nailed them to short flat strips of

wood. We would then place one of the metal hub rings upright

inside the flaps of the tin can and run forward, rolling the rings

in front of us, more or less like hockey players drive pucks

forward with sticks.

My Lizard Act

One day I was playing with a school friend named Warner who

lived about a mile away on the main road going into Redford.

We were both rolling one of the large, heavy metal rings or

hoops that went around wooden wagon wheels to hold them

together and give them strength. The discarded rings were

virtually worn out, had sharp edges and were rusty with age.

Warner lost control of the wheel hoop he was playing with

and it fell. The sharp edge of the heavy ring struck the back

portion of the big toe on my bare left foot, cutting a deep gash


29

in it. A few days later the toenail came off. It did not begin to

grow back until I was around 60 years old. By the time I was 75

it had grown back completely, but it had an odd streaked look.

Talk about lizards regrowing severed tails!

My Jack-Off Half-Uncle Again

One day I was in the kitchen standing near Mom while she was

cooking dinner. Someone called out that her half-brother,

Truman, whom Golden Corey had whipped for jacking-off in

class, was coming up the road toward our house. I said some-

thing I had heard men say:

“I wonder what that bastard wants!”

Mom reacted automatically. She slapped me across the face,

hard, causing my nose to bleed. I ran out of the house and

stayed away for over an hour. That night I had to sleep with

Truman who proceeded to jack-off, messing up the bed.

That was the first and only time I remember ever being

physically punished in any way by Mom.

Impaled on a Log

I went with Dad on a log-float down Current River—riding logs

lashed together to a railhead near Popular Bluff. One of the logs

I stepped on was loose and rolled when I put my weight on it. I

fell into the river, and on my way down I snagged my right leg

on a nail that had been driven into the log. Dad grabbed the

back of my shirt and pulled me out of the river. I still have the

scar on my leg.

On many sections of Current River where the stream

narrowed it became a swift-flowing torrent.

Moving into Redford

In the summer of 1938 we moved again, this time into a large

white house behind the Baptist church in the middle of Redford

[the total area of the town was about three uneven blocks in all

directions]. We may have moved to get closer to the Redford

school house in the center of town.


30

The large white house was partly furnished, but we did not

have enough beds for everyone. Mom rigged a bed for me by

laying an unused door between two facing chairs, and covering

it with a thin pallet. Jessie and Winnie slept at the top of one

bed, with Fernie and L at the bottom. Don and Doyle slept on a

floor pallet.

We kids were enrolled in the Redford grade school, a small

two-story building a few dozen yards from Brooks’ Grocery

Store on the west side, that was originally built as some kind of

meeting place. It was only about 150 yards from the large white

house we had moved into.

While playing outside of the schoolhouse one day Don lit a

firecracker and started to put it under a tin can to shoot it up into

the air. It exploded when it was only half under the can, injuring

his hand.

A Wild West show came to town, and we kids got to see the

famous cowboys Tom Mix [or Tim Holt!] and Behoe Graves

(sp?). A circus came to town and I got a job carrying buckets of

water for the animals from nearby Sinking Creek—which ran

along the base of the hill on the south side of the town—in

exchange for tickets to the show.

When winter set in I got a job starting a fire in the town’s

Baptist church heating stove early every Sunday morning before

services began. My pay was five to ten cents, depending on how

many pennies were put in the collection plate. On a few oc-

casions I managed to leave the church after starting the fire,

skipping the service.

Pell Pirtle’s Hole

A Red Wagon & Becky’s Arrival

The stay in the big white house in the middle of Redford was

short—if memory serves me, only a few weeks. Our next move

was about a mile and a half east of Redford into a house owned

by a man named Pell Pirtle on an embankment overlooking

Sinking Creek on the south side. There was a pool of water

below the embankment that was referred to as Pirtle’s Hole, and

that is where my brothers and I learned how to swim.


31

During the first winter after we moved into this house I tried

to emulate a boy my age whose family lived near Black River

and was known to everyone in the area as being so tough he

went barefooted all year. He was one of the Ratliff boys (related

to Mom’s side of the family). After a heavy snowstorm I left

the house barefooted to go rabbit hunting. I got about half a

mile from the house before hot-footing it back home and putting

shoes on.

That Christmas Dad bought a small red wagon, which there-

after we used to haul firewood and to play with. It was the first

gift I member him buying for us children.

A few weeks later, on 25 January 1940, sister Rebecca was

born, and afterward much to her chagrin I would always tell

people that she was born in Pirtle’s Hole, rather than in Red-

ford, something that caused her to cringe and complain.*

___________________________________________________

*When daughter Demetra and I attended a family reunion in

Redford in 2005, we spotted a house with a mailbox that had

the name EVANS on it. Since that was my mother’s maiden

name we stopped and I knocked on the door. When a young boy

came to the door I explained that we seemed to have a family

connection. He pointed to a house that was around the corner of

the lot and said his father was there. He ran toward the house. I

got back into the car and drove around the corner, parking in

front of the house he had pointed to.

As we were parking the car, his father…a big pot-bellied man

wearing only cut-off denim shorts… came out to greet us.

We introduced ourselves and I told him about our living in

the neighborhood when I was a young boy; first in a house

owned by a man named Pell Pirtle and then in a house across

from the picnic grounds.

I was astonished when the man told me that Pell Pirtle was

his grandfather and that his own mother had married into my

mother’s family line. A friendly man, he welcomed us warmly,

and we had a short but marvelous time exchanging memories.

After leaving his yard on the outer edge of Redford [which

consists of about a dozen buildings] we went the short distance

to a natural spring that came out of the hill framing Redford on


32

the south side. Decades earlier some-one had stuck a metal pipe

into the hillside spring, so the water would flow through the

pipe rather than course on down the hillside …and thereafter it

became known as Pipe Spring.

The spring is on the opposite side of Sinking Creek [so-

called because sections of it would disappear underground

during dry summer months] and at the time of our visit the

creek was flowing in that area. We couldn’t get all the way to

the spring without taking off our shoes and wading...so I just

pointed it out to Demetra and recounted the story of an en-

counter I had with it when we lived about a quarter of a mile

away from there in the late 1930s.

During that period I was often called upon to carry water

from the spring for cooking and drinking. On one occasion after

a heavy rain I put my mouth up to the end of the pipe to get a

drink. Several pieces of gravel being washed down the pipe

ended up in my throat, and for a moment or so I thought I was

going to choke to death. I finally swallowed the rocks…..and

never thought to check to see if they were eventually dis-

charged.

__________________________________________________

Our Last Home in the Ozark Hills

Shortly after Becky’s birth we moved into a house [known as

the Gilmer place] about half a mile east of downtown Red-

ford—midway between Pirtle’s Hole and the center of town. It

was across from the bottom grounds of Sinking Creek, which

was the site of Redford’s annual 4th of July picnic. Black

walnut and pawpaw trees were abundant on the grounds, and it

became a favorite place for us kids to play.

On the first July 4th picnic after we moved into the Gilmer

house Dad performed a solo jig on the dance floor [to fiddle

music]—something I had never seen him do before, and never

saw him do again. Different members of the Dement family

provided the music, playing fiddles and guitars.*


33

___________________________________________________

*In the late 1960s when I visited my cousin Ralph Dement in

Lesterville about 40 minutes from Redford, he and his wife

threw a dinner-dance party on my behalf. He and his older sons

all did the same solo jig dance I had seen Dad perform when I

was a young boy. They tried to persuade me to do it, but I didn’t

know how, so they let me off the hook when I volunteered to

join in a square dance. It seemed that all of my cousins who had

grown up in the Redford area knew how to jig-dance. Several of

them also played musical instruments and regularly entertained

at parties.

___________________________________________________

While adults were making home-made ice cream for the 1940

4th of July picnic dinner—using hand-cranked freezer con-

tainers—somebody noted that no one had brought an ice-cream

scoop. One of Wes Martin’s sons who was old enough to drive

volunteered to go Centerville [about eight miles away] in his

father’s truck and get one. He agreed to take a bunch of us kids

with him for the ride.

About a dozen of us climbed onto the truck bed, which had

high sideboards on both sides of the truck bed but none on the

back. On the return trip, three or four of us boys climbed up on

the sideboards on the left side of the truck bed to look out over

the top.

A short while after we left Centerville on the gravel road

leading back to Redford, the Martin boy made a rapid right turn

at an intersection. The sideboards that I several other kids were

on broke off because of our added weight and we went flying

onto the intersection. Incredibly, none of us was hurt because

the sideboards acted like a sled, skidding across the gravel with

us lying on top of it.

About this time I became involved in a “fight” with one of

the Pogue boys who was my age. A group of us kids were play-

ing in the middle of Redford when older boys in the group

began egging the Pogue boy and me to wrestle.

Finally, I grabbed the boy in an attempt to throw him, and in

the following quick tussle we both hit the ground at the same


34

time. I relaxed and he instantly squirmed on top of me. He was

declared the winner.

Sex Education 103 and 104

We had a dog that apparently smelled a female somewhere in

the vicinity that was in heat. It kept humping our legs, causing

the girls to squeal and kick at it. One day the female dog

showed up in our yard. Our dog mounted it and began pumping

away. But when it was done it couldn’t dismount, and the fe-

male dog kept dragging it around the yard.

I finally dumped water on both of the dogs to cool them off,

resulting in the male being able to withdraw.

Soon after this our dog got hot again and started humping

my leg. I masturbated him and discovered that dog peckers have

a ball-like bulge at their base, and when this bulge ends up

inside a female, as it did when he was on the female dog, the

male can’t easily disengage.

Influenced by this interesting experience I later went across

the road into the creek bottom, climbed high up in a tree and

masturbated for the first time. The sensation was extraordinary

but there was no semen. I was apparently too young for that.

Fortunately, human males don’t have peckers like dogs. But

they do have a number of dog-like behavioral traits.

Avoiding Sunday School

Mom insisted that we go to Sunday school at the Baptist church

in the middle of Redford, but one day Don and I inadvertently

came up with a unique way of avoiding that uninteresting chore.

While Mom and Dad were still getting ready for church we

went ahead and came across a small bunch of tame cattle that

had gathered in the Pipe Spring area to drink water from Sink-

ing Creek.

For the next half an hour we played cowboy, riding the cows

and getting dirty and smelly. Trying to turn one of the cows

while standing in front of it I tried to punch it in the nose but hit

one of its horns. When we finally entered the church we stank


35

so badly Mom sent us home. How-ever, that was the first and

last time we were able to use that ploy.

The Death of Uncle Bill

Mom’s uncle, Bill Bounds, visited us one day in 1940, walking

all the way from wherever he lived at that time. He was a jolly

man in his 70s, with a white goatee. I remember the visit be-

cause one morning that winter when it was snowing he went

deer hunting down by Black River, and did not return that

evening. Several people joined in a search but didn’t find him.

The next spring loggers working in the area found his skeleton

and gun. He had walked off of a high embankment and died

from the fall.

A New School House

And My First Movie

The government authorized a WPA project to build a new

school of stone and concrete on a slight rise about half a mile

from the center of Redford on the northeast side of town. At the

end of the first year in the new school my grade teacher gave

each of us four kids in her class a silver dollar, which I

promptly lost. She also took us in her car to Ellington to see the

very first movie any of us had ever seen. It was a silent film. I

can still remember some of the scenes in the movie and recall

the dialogue that appeared at the base of the screen.

Encounter with a Poisonous Snake

One Saturday when Don, Doyle and I were gig-fishing in Sink-

ing Creek near Pirtle’s Hole, walking around in the shallow

creek barefooted [we went barefooted from mid-March until

mid-October], I stepped on a water moccasin snake. It curled

around and bit me on top of my right foot.

We chased the snake for several minutes, trying to kill it but

it got away. When we got home I told Mom about the snake

bite. She began crying and lambasting me for not coming right

home, saying that I could die.


36

The snake had been able to puncture my skin with only two

of its fangs. Mom soaked my foot in kerosene and told me to

stay off of it. Within an hour or so it had swollen up to the point

that I couldn’t get a regular shoe on. Over the next several days

I wore one of my sister’s galoshes when I had to walk around.

My foot turned an ugly brown. The skin came off, and I had

a light fever for several days. But I was back to normal within

about two weeks. It seems that since the bite was under water

and only two fangs broke my skin at an angle, I didn’t get a full

dose of poison.

Water moccasin snakes were very common in Sinking

Creek, so we had been lucky up to that time.

Going into Business

Don and I started a business of digging up mayapple roots and

selling them to Mr. Brooks at his grocery store. He sold them

to an outfit that used them to make some kind of medicine.

[Back east the flowery mayapple plants are known as man-

drakes.]

We used the few cents Brooks paid us for the roots to buy

candy, which we shared with the other kids. On one occasion I

stole a neighbor’s chicken that wandered near our house, and

sold it to Brooks. That was my first and last theft.

Holy Roller Entertainment

A “Holy Roller” traveling preacher came into town and con-

ducted a number of services under a large tent. We kids would

sneak under the tent to watch the people roll around on the dirt

floor and otherwise act like freaked-out zombies.

That was one of the several forms of religious behavior I

witnessed as a child that made me question the value of other

religious practices I’d seen; like dunking people in cold creeks

during winter months.

Thinking back, there must have been some Holy Roller

members in Redford for the preacher to have come there.


37

On the Dole

In 1940 work in the area was still hard to come by and when

found paid very little [$1 a day was a good wage], so Mom and

Dad signed up to receive an allotment of food each week that

was part of a government-sponsored relief program. I forget

what the program was called, but I was the one designated to go

to the delivery truck each week in downtown Redford to pick up

our handouts.

The few items passed out were not enough to sustain us, and

we continued to get vegetables from Mother Evans’ garden and

from the garden of Grandmother Dement. During that period,

both Dad and Mom went to St. Louis a number of times,

looking for work. It seems that on these occasions they were

gone for three or four days each time, during which Jessie was

in charge.

Struck by Lightning

One day Dad and I were returning home from “down-town”

Redford when three of his bothers [Sherman, Inman and Arch]

came along in a four-door sedan car that had running boards on

each side. It had just started lightning and raining.

We were only about 500 yards from our house, but they

stopped and told us to get on the running boards and they would

drive us the rest of the way home. They had been drinking and

were feeling no pain.

Within seconds after the car started moving, it was struck by

lightning. The current traveled through my and Dad’s bodies,

but for some reason we were not hurt…just shaken up by the

weird feeling. When his brothers saw we were not hurt they

laughed uproariously.

Sherman and most of Dad’s younger brothers dabbled in

making and drinking moonshine liquor. Apparently as a result

of drinking the home-made brew, Sherman eventually devel-

oped a conspicuous tick in his left cheek that he had for the rest

of his life. I never once saw Dad take a drink of liquor, during

that period or any time later, apparently because Mom dis-

approved of drinking.


38

Sex Education 105

One winter day after the school lunch break and playing outside

on some swings, I went back into the school and entered the

walk-in cloakroom to hang up my coat. Winnie and several of

her girl friends were in the closet, obviously engaged in some

ribald boy talk.

One of the girls was leaning back against the wall and doing

a very realistic version of a boy jacking off. She stopped the

instant I entered the closet, and the girls rushed out into the

classroom and sat down, giggling and joking.

Some days later when I was playing on the school swings I

caught the side of my trousers on something, tearing the right

leg of the pants apart from my hip down to my foot. The teacher

sent me home to change clothes.

Some of my classmates somehow convinced Lois Allen, the

prettiest girl in my class, to agree to be called my girl friend.

The relationship never went any further than that…but she has

been in my head ever since…and some 40 years later one of my

older and favorite cousins [Ralph] claimed to have been the first

one to “get to her” when they were still teenagers.

My second “fight” occurred during the first year after the

new school opened. The boy who sat behind me was a known

bully and was constantly picking on me—doing such things as

hitting one of my relaxed arms with his fingers closed but his

knuckles protruding to increase the impact and cause excru-

ciating pain.

One day when we were filing into class with him be-hind me

he kept jabbing me in the back. Exasperated, I turned around

and slugged him in the face as hard as I could, knocking him

down. He never bothered me after that.

Logging with Dad

In 1940 the demand for railroad ties picked up, and Dad went

back to work for Wes Martin, whose sawmill was then located

several miles southeast of Redford [the mills moved frequently

as areas were logged out].


39

On Saturdays I teamed with Dad working in the woods near

the mill with a crosscut saw, helping him fell trees, trim the

limbs off and then cut the trunks into railroad-tie-sized logs. He

did virtually all of the pushing and pulling; I just tried to keep

my end of the saw from whipping.

We were cutting logs in an area that consisted of numerous

narrow ravines. On one occasion we cut a log [destined to

become a 6x8 tie] in a ravine that was so steep the mule team

used to drag the logs out to where they could be loaded on a

truck couldn’t get down to it. Dad upended the log, balanced it

on his shoulder and carried it out. He was 5’-8” tall and weigh-

ed about 170 pounds. The log must have weighed close to 300

pounds.

On one occasion, Dad and I cut 47 logs—a one-day record

for any of the log-cutting teams that worked for Martin.

We were able to do that because we were cutting in a grove

of very tall trees and got two logs out of most of them…and

Dad sawed so fast he was able to cut through a fallen tree in

four to five minutes…all the while pulling me forward and

ramming me back as if I was a rag doll. We worked eight to

nine hours a day, rain or shine.

One day when it was raining lightly and so cold that there

were patches of ice in some areas, Dad said he was sure his

pecker had frozen and fallen off.

Working in a Sawdust Pit

That winter Dad began working at the mill as the saw-carriage

operator, and took me with him on Saturdays to work in the

sawdust pit beneath the saw. I used a 2-wheeled cart to haul

sawdust from the pit and dump it onto a huge pile on a slope

about 50 yards away from the mill. When the cart got stuck in

sawdust that had not been beaten down making a firm run-

way—which if often did because I wasn’t big enough or strong

enough to get it out—Dad would jump off of the carriage and

push it out for me.

We were at the mill by or before daybreak, when it was

freezing cold. Dad taught me to dig a pit in the sawdust dump


40

and squat down in it to get warm while the men got the mill

running.

When school was out that spring [1940] Dad got Martin to

hire me to work full time in the sawdust pit at 50 cents a week.

During my first five weeks Martin neglected to pay me. I

complained to Mom. She cajoled Dad into asking Martin to pay

me, and he gave me $2.50.

The Sunday morning after I got paid I was outside in the

yard chopping strips to be used as firewood for the house and

kitchen stoves. Mom came out and asked me if she could have

the money I had been paid. She said she needed it buy food. I

gave it to her. She saw I was hurt, hesitated for a few seconds,

and handed 50 cents back to me. I spent it on candy at Brooks’

Grocery Store and shared the candy with my brothers and

sisters.

Jessie, then 14 years old, entered Centerville High School,

about eight miles from Redford, going to and from in a van

along with six or seven other teenagers. I’m not sure but I think

our half-uncle Truman was one of the other students who shared

the daily van ride to and from Centerville.*

___________________________________________________

*In 2005 when Demetra and I stayed overnight at my cousin

Hope Dement Bowles’s rustic Centerville bed-and-breakfast

place we saw that the high school Jessie had attended was still

standing, but it was boarded up and had not been used for many

years. The county sheriff’s car, parked at a house near cousin

Hope’s place, had spider webs on all of the wheels, indicating it

had not been driven for some time. We got a big laugh out of

that.

___________________________________________________

Dad’s Copper Social Security Card

At noon one day a man on a horse rode up to the sawmill where

Dad and I were working and said he was selling Social Security

cards made out of copper…. because the paper cards issued by


41

the government disintegrated when they got wet from sweat or

rain. He said the cost of a copper card was 25 cents.

Dad took his half-disintegrated paper card out of his wallet,

looked at it and agreed to buy one of the copper cards. The man

proceeded to use a small hand tool to punch Dad’s name and

Social Security number into the copper blank.

During the process Dad repeated his SS number two or three

times, and for some odd reason the number has stuck in my

memory ever since. I remember it to this very day, over 70

years later, more clearly than I remember my own. For some

reason I still think of it often.

Jessie Moves to St. Louis

By this time, Dad’s youngest brother Arch and his wife Eva

lived in St. Louis. In the early summer of 1940 after Jessie, my

oldest sister, had finished her second year at Centerville High

School, Dad made arrangements for her to stay with uncle Arch

and aunt Eva in St. Louis and look for work. Her first job was in

a laundry. Her second job was at Carter’s Carburetor Co., where

she washed metal parts in gasoline…without of rubber gloves.

We Move to St. Louis

In the summer of 1941 Uncle Arch learned that the St. Louis

Box Company was going to hire a few men. He drove down to

Redford, got both Dad and Mom and took them to St. Louis so

Dad could apply for a job at the company.

Early the following morning Dad went to the employment

office of the company and found over a hundred men already

lined up. When the office opened only six men were hired.

When the personnel manager announced that the hiring was

over and thanked the men for coming, Dad quickly made his

way up to the manager, and said to him:

“I really need work! If you hire me and I don’t do twice as

much work as any of the men you just hired today you won’t

have to pay me!” The manager hired him, but he continued to

look for work elsewhere.


42

Mom’s half-sister Faye lived on the second floor of a red-

brick duplex at 1217 Dolman Street, fairly close to the center of

St. Louis. The first floor of the duplex was vacant. Mom and

Dad rented it. It consisted of four rooms plus a laundry room

and toilet—all in a straight line from the street to the service

alley behind it.

The duplex was in a row of other duplexes that were only a

few feet apart. All of them had half-basements with steps in the

front leading up to the first floors. The duplex on the north side

of the place Mom and Dad rented had been torn down and the

lot left vacant. In addition to the front door, there was a door on

the north side of the house adjoining the empty lot, with a small

landing and steps leading down to the ground.

The two front rooms of the duplex they rented were off-set

to the left, with a hallway going from the front door to the third

room in the line.

The first Sunday after Mom and Dad rented the house Mom

got her uncle John Henry Hampton to drive her and Dad back to

Redford to get the rest of us. Uncle John Henry had rented a

small flat-bed trailer to hook up to his car. The trailer was about

six feet wide and 12 feet long, with 4-ft. high sideboards.

All of our goods were loaded onto the trailer, with Mom,

Dad and six of us kids packed into the front and back seats of

the car. Jessie and Winnie were already in St. Louis—Winnie

staying at Uncle John Henry’s house. This move marked the

beginning of a new kind of life for us, including a house that

had electricity, running water and an indoor bath.

The vacant lot on the north side of our duplex was used by

neighborhood boys as a baseball field. Brother Doyle quickly

joined the gang and became an outstanding left-handed batter.

He became known as Duke to his play-mates…which he vastly

preferred to the nickname some of his siblings sometimes called

him Doodle, said to be a take-off on dung-rolling doodle bugs.

Still today most of his friends call him Duke.

Clinton-Peabody School

Don, Doyle and I were enrolled in Clinton-Peabody Ele-

mentary School, only two blocks from our house. I should have


43

gone into the 6th grade but was enrolled in the 7th grade,

apparently because of my age and my school record from

Redford.

Shortly after school started in September I was appointed a

“street-crossing guard” to make sure kids going to and from

school crossed the street safely. I got to wear a combination

broad white belt and shoulder band, made of thick canvas, as

my uniform.

Winnie enrolled in McKinley High School, located on the

south side of Lafayette Park; a large park that began at the

intersection of Dolman Street and Park Avenue, two blocks

from our house. It took her about 20 minutes to walk through

the park to school. [When I followed her to McKinley the next

fall my morning walk through the park was a one-way trip

because I went to work directly from school.]

Pearl Harbor

In the early morning of December 7, 1941 [a Saturday or

Sunday?], I was sitting on the brick walkway just outside of the

landing on the north side of the house, cracking and eating

black walnuts I had brought from the picnic grounds in Redford.

Mom opened a window overlooking the landing and told me

that the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor. I thought Pearl

Harbor was in the Philippines, and was not very excited or

concerned about the news.

When I later went inside Mom told me the Japanese had

attacked the U.S.; explaining that Pearl Harbor was in Hawaii,

which was a U.S. Territory. [It became a state in 1959.]

Becoming a Paperboy & My First Boxing Match

I got a weekend job selling the evening edition of the St. Louis

Post Dispatch newspaper at the Intersection of Chouteau Ave-

nue and LaSalle Street, some four blocks from our house on

Dolman.

On Sunday mornings I also joined a neighbor boy my own

age delivering coal in a two-wheeled cart to homes in the area

that still used it for heating and cooking purposes. Each time we


44

went out from the coal supplier he would add an extra un-

ordered basket of coal to the load, sell it and keep the money.

Brother Don also got a job selling the St. Louis Post-Dis-

patch on a route near our house that included a shoe factory.

Near the shoe factory there was some kind of club house for

young people, where we sometimes went to play. One day

during a practice-reading of a dialogue for a skit I impressed the

director of the program by adding a bit of acting to the dialogue.

The action was spontaneous, and I have no further memories of

being interested in a thespian career.

At the club I was enticed into getting into a boxing match

with a neighborhood boy who was known as a tough bully. Dur-

ing the punching and flailing I let loose an uppercut that ap-

peared to connect with the bottom of his chin, literally raising

him off the floor. The audience cheered.

In actuality, my glove hardly made contact with his chin but

because he had abruptly thrown his head backward and kind of

jumped into the air it looked like I had scored a great blow.

Immediately following that he proceeded to punch me repeat-

edly, with almost every blow landing on my nose.

Visiting Mother Evans

In the summer of 1942 I convinced Mom to let me go visit

Mother Evans, since one of Uncle Dan’s boys was in St. Louis

(delivering lumber) and said he would take me to Mayberry and

arrange for me to ride back to St. Louis on the next delivery a

week later.

Mother Evans was living alone by that time, but continued to

plant and care for a garden and keep a milk cow and several

dozen chickens. After a few days of exploring the area of her

farm I was ready to go home.

In the late afternoon of the day before I was to catch the

lumber truck back to St. Louis I walked from Mayberry to

Uncle Dan’s house in Low Hollow, where he owned a farm.

Before I reached his house it was totally dark. Trees overhung

the narrow road, and noises coming out of the dark tempted me

to run…


45

I stayed all night at Uncle Dan’s, and after breakfast the next

morning walked to the top of a ridge about a mile from his

house, where it had been arranged that I would be picked up

sometime around 10 a.m. by the lumber truck going to St.

Louis.

The truck was delayed until mid-afternoon. While wait-ing, I

picked and ate blueberries growing alongside the ridge road.

When the truck arrived there was another passenger sitting in

the cab of the truck. The driver [not my cousin this time] agreed

that I could ride on top of the load of lumber.

With the heavy load of lumber the truck’s speed was only 15

or 20 mph on level ground, and when we hit rises and hills, it

slowed to a crawl. It was dark by the time we were about two-

thirds of the way to St. Louis, and at a refueling stop the driver

asked me to get into the cab.

It was after midnight when we arrived in St. Louis, via

Broadway. The driver let me out of the truck at the inter-section

of Broadway and Choteau, where I intended to catch a streetcar

that went to Choteau and Dolman, about four blocks from my

house.

When I got out of the truck cab I couldn’t find my wallet.

Finally, I climbed back up on top of the load of lumber, and

there it was. It had fallen out of my back pocket.

At that time of night, streetcars came along only about every

30 minutes or so, and while I was standing at the stop, waiting,

with a small cloth bag over my shoulder, a police patrol car

stopped, The police presumed I was running away from home,

but they drove on when I convinced them I was going home, not

running away.

When I got home I knocked on the landing window on the

north side of the house. Mom got up and let me in.

Hawking Stolen Military Goods

Following graduation from Peabody Elementary School in the

spring of 1943 I got a summer job hawking excess (or stolen!)

military clothing and equipment from a sidewalk stand on

Broadway Avenue (paralleling the Mississippi River in the old


46

section of downtown St. Louis). This job lasted for about two

weeks.

I then worked in a bowling alley for two weeks, setting the

pins in the pin-pit…a job that worried my sister Jessie, who was

aware that the pins were sometimes knocked flying. I quit

when I got hit in the cheek by one of the pints.

After that experience I went to work in the evenings as an

usher in a sleazy theater a block west of Broadway. My first

evening there I learned that the theater was a favorite haunt of

homosexuals and poor couples who used the dark balcony to get

it on…

This short stint was followed by a few weeks working eve-

nings and weekends at an ice-cream parlor in the same area with

one of my friends and classmates, Harvey C.

One of the rules of the manager of the parlor was that em-

ployees could have one free serving of ice-cream or a milkshake

each day. I limited myself to one dip of peppermint ice-cream

per week…and have no idea where that kind of restraint came

from but it was to play a significant role in my life.

Harvey was not one to obey rules, and one day the manager

fired him on the spot. For some weird reason he [Harvey]

slapped me on the face, hard, as he was heading for the door.

The manager grabbed him by the arm and said he was going

to have him arrested, but I told the manager I wasn’t hurt and to

let him go…that it was just his way.

Starting High School

I started at McKinley High School in early September 1943

(about two months before my 15th birthday), signing up for five

subjects rather than the usual four.

Before the end of the spring semester I also registered to go

to Summer School that summer—at Roosevelt High School.

Working at the Lennox Hotel

In the meantime my wayward friend Harvey, who was several

months older than me, had been hired as a busboy at the Rath-


47

skeller Restaurant on the first floor of the high-rise Lennox

Hotel in the business section of St. Louis.

Immediately after we started to high school he insisted that I

go with him to the restaurant, where he convinced the mana-

geress to hire me as well even though I had not yet turned 15.

My weekday hours were from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday

was my day off. My Sunday hours were from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.

On weekdays Harvey and I went to work directly from high

school by streetcar, and got home each night at about 10:30

p.m.

On my very first night when I picked up a large tray of dirty

dishes to carry them to the basement kitchen, the dishes shifted

to one side because the tray was wet, and the whole thing went

crashing to the floor.

I was mortified. But the restaurant manager, a very wise and

professional lady in her forties who was standing near me said

instantly: “It happens to everybody! You go on… I’ll have

somebody else clean it up!” You can image how grateful I have

been to her to this very day.

The kitchen of the Rathskeller was located in the basement,

at the bottom of two levels of steep stairs, making it a hardship

for the middle-aged and older waitresses to carry trays of food

up the stairs. I was picked by one of the older women [named

Bella] to carry trays for her from the kitchen to her station in the

dining room. This was in addition to my busboy duties of clean-

ing up tables and carrying the dirty dishes down to the wash

area of the basement kitchen.

Depending on how busy Bella was each night and how many

tips she got, she gave me from 50 cents to $1 at the close of

each day.

On evening when I was carrying a tray loaded with eight

steak dinners [with the plates stacked on top of each other on

aluminum rings made for that purpose] and was about half way

up the steep stairs leading to the restaurant floor the whole load

shifted to the right because the tray was still wet from having

just been washed.

The shifting load caused the tray to fall to the right and jam

up against the wall of the stairwell. This prevented the contents


48

of the tray from spilling onto the stairs, but steak sauce and

other liquids began streaming onto my neck and shoulder.

Two other busboys standing on the landing at the top of the

stairs immediately rushed to my rescue and managed to right

the tray without any of the dishes falling off. I took the tray

back down to the kitchen where a cook put the steaks on clean

plates, replaced the sauce and side dishes, and I delivered it to

Bella.

The restaurant cashier was a very pretty young woman in her

early twenties. One evening when I was standing at the cashier

desk with Bella the young woman was wearing a loose off-

shoulder blouse. When she bent over I could see her bra-

covered bosoms. Bella [who was about 5’-10” with a voice to

match], said brusquely: “Why don’t you take’em out and show-

em to him!” The girl straightened up, blushing a bright red. I

was also embarrassed.

My first duty after arriving at the restaurant on Sunday

mornings was to make coffee in a huge vertical tank-like

container that held several gallons. One of the interesting things

I remember about this chore is that the recipe included some

salt.

In the early afternoon on most Saturdays [my day off], I

went to the Merry Widow movie theater [on Choteau Avenue]

about five blocks from our house and stayed for some four

hours, watching two feature-length films, one or more news

documentaries about the war in Europe and in the Pacific, and

two or three cartoons.

At the age of 15 I still looked young enough that I passed as

“under 12” and got in at the “children’s rate.”

On Saturdays before going to the Merry Widow theater I

sometimes went to a White Castle hamburger shop on the north-

east side of Choteau Avenue at LaSalle Street intersection

[about four blocks from our house on Dolman], and had from

two to three nickel hamburgers for lunch…a special treat that I

tried to relive decades later.


49

Discovering an Allergy

Busboys at the Lennox Hotel were allowed to eat dinner before

starting to work—ordering anything we wanted from the regular

menu. One evening I ordered a raw shrimp cocktail—something

I had seen the patrons eat and was impressed with its looks.

Within ten minutes after eating it I became seriously nauseous

and was sure I was going to vomit.

I hung in for over an hour but the nausea persisted and I felt

like I was going to vomit at any moment. The manageress saw

I was in bad shape. I had no idea why I was so sick, but when I

told her there was something seriously wrong with me she said I

could go home. I was sick for several hours after getting home

but did not vomit.*

___________________________________________________

*The next time I ate shrimp was in Tokyo, Japan in 1954 at a

Chinese restaurant named China House. I became ill within

minutes and vomited massively. It turned out that I had become

violently allergic to shell fish, and on the occasions thereafter

when I inadvertently ate shrimp stuff-ed in fish balls or

something else, I lost everything within ten to fifteen minutes—

including the most expensive meal I’ve ever had…on a floating

restaurant in Hong Kong’s Aberdeen Bay in 1960, when I was

editor of the Tokyo-based IMPORTER trade magazine and was

in Hong Kong with the publisher, Ray Woodside.

One of our advertisers took Ray and me to the rest-aurant on

his private speed boat. I knew something was wrong midway

through the meal, and immediately began trying to dilute or

“absorb” the shrimp juice in my stomach by drinking fluids and

eating a lot of bread. Within five minutes after we boarded the

boat to go back to our hotel in Kowloon I was hanging over the

back of the boat throwing up. My dinner came up with such

force that it bruised my vocal cords, making it sound like I had

laryngitis when I talked.

___________________________________________________


50

From the first day I went to work at the Lennox Hotel until I

graduated from McKinley High School in the spring of 1946 I

never took a book or a work-assignment home.

I got up at 6 a.m. every morning, had a piece of a nut-

encrusted coffee cake [which I bought each morning at a bakery

shop about 100 yards from the house] and a glass of milk for

breakfast [with Winnie], and was at school by 7 a.m., where I

did my studying and homework in an empty classroom.

Since I ate lunch at school [each dish cost five cents, and I

normally selected three dishes] and ate dinner at the hotel, the

only time I saw other members of my family and ate full meals

at home was on Saturday mornings and evenings, and on Sun-

day evenings.

All during the time I worked at the Lennox Hotel Dad work-

ed six days a week on the swing-shift (4 p.m. to midnight) at

Carter’s Carburetor Company on the west side of St. Louis, so I

saw him only once a week, on Sunday evenings.

My sister Jessie worked at the same place on the day shift for

several months after we moved from Redford to St. Louis, but

finally quit because using gasoline to wash parts was seriously

affecting her hands and arms. She and a girlfriend went to De-

troit, found jobs and stayed there for several months.

Learning More about Life!

After I had been working at the Lennox Hotel for about a year I

was sometimes asked to serve as a room service waiter. One

night I took an order to the penthouse suite where there was a

party going on. The party host turned out to be the owner of the

hotel, who was going at it with my boss, the manager of the

Rathskeller, on a couch. She acknowledged my presence with a

wave of her hand and a big smile. Other similar incidents at the

hotel became an integral part of my early education!

One of the teenage black boys who worked in the kitchen of

the Rathskeller was deaf and partially dumb but could mouth

words well enough that he could communicate fairly well. He

was into boxing, and one Sunday afternoon when we were in

the locker room [I was done working and was getting ready to


51

leave the hotel] one of the black cooks who was also present

started egging him and me on to get us to box.

The black boy was eager to show off his skill, and after a lot

of pressure I finally agreed to put the gloves on. He won!

As one of the leading hotels in St. Louis, the Lennox

attracted its share of celebrity guests, including well-known

movie stars. I believe one of the female stars who stayed at the

Lennox and ate at the Rathskeller while I was on duty was Jean

Tierney. The other one was a small, thin man whose face I

clearly remember [as well as the table where he sat] but whose

name I cannot clearly recall. It may have been Bob Crane, who

was later murdered in a Scottsdale, Arizona motel incident.

The Arizona Connection

Wilma, one of my married cousins—who was one of the many

daughters of Uncle Oscar and Aunt Nell and was close to

Mom’s age—lived in Tempe, Arizona with her husband Paul.

She had been writing to Mom since the mid-1930s, urging her

to move the family to Arizona. Finally, intrigued by her de-

scriptions of Arizona and its weather, Jessie and Winnie went to

Phoenix by themselves in 1944, and soon found work.

I recall that Wilma’s husband, Paul, a thin, gaunt man, al-

ways seemed to be on the verge of dying. But he was still alive

in the 1960s, by which time he and Wilma had retired to Iron-

ton, Missouri, her birthplace.

Soon after arriving in Arizona Jessie met a young man

named Gene Holland from Oklahoma City who was a lieutenant

in the Air Force stationed at Luke Air Force Base west of

Phoenix. They were married a few months later. Winnie went to

work for the Phoenix Pie Company, and about a year later

married the owner, Gayland Simpson. Later they went into real

estate and became quite wealthy.

The New Mexico Adventure

In early 1945 Jessie and Gene visited St. Louis for a few days,

following his transfer to Kirtland Air Force Base outside of

Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had been giving Mom part of my


52

busboy income each week, but on this occasion she asked me

for an additional sum so she and Dad could take Jessie and

Gene out for dinner.

In the second week of August 1945 I decided to take a short

vacation and went to Albuquerque, New Mexico by Greyhound

bus to visit Jessie and Gene. The morning after my arrival—I

was staying at the YMCA—I was attracted to the mountains to

the east of the city. I rode a city bus to the outskirts and then not

realizing how far it was, started walking toward the foothills,

taking what appeared to be a shortcut through open desert

country. It took me over three hours to reach the foothills. I

stopped twice to drink water out of tanks that ranchers kept

filled for their cattle.

In the foothills I rested on a huge rock for about half an hour

before starting back, this time heading toward High-way 66 in a

southerly direction. A short time after I got to the highway

leading back to Albuquerque a guy came along on a motorcycle

and gave me a ride to the YMCA where I was staying. From

there I walked the few blocks to Jessie and Gene’s small

apartment.

They were upset with me, to say the least! I stayed in Albu-

querque for only one more night. Jessie was working some-

where and Gene had duty every day, so I was not able to spend

much time with them and was not interested in exploring any

more of the area.

The End of World War II

I left Albuquerque on a Greyhound bus in the early morning of

14 August 1945 to return to St. Louis and my work. When the

bus reached Oklahoma City, the street we were on was so

crowded the bus had to slow to a crawl, and was forced to stop

several times. The bus driver finally opened the side window

next to his seat yelled out, “What’s going on!”

“The war is over! The Japanese have surrendered!” someone

yelled back. [The formal date of the ending of the war was 15

August 1945, because it was already the 15th in Japan when the

announcement of the surrender was made.]


53

Joining the Missouri State Guard

Immediately after my 17th birthday on November 12, 1945 I

joined the Missouri State Guard, and thereafter went to the

guard armory every Saturday for training. The only military

type activities I was required to participate in were close-order

drills and listening to lectures.

I vividly recall that during one of my last close-order drill

training session on June 19, 1946, the commander of the unit

came out of his office, and motioned for the sergeant drilling us

to stop. The commander then made this announcement:

“Gentlemen! Joe Louis knocked Billy Conn out in the 20th

second [?] of the eighth round!” We all cheered loudly. Joe

Louis was the most famous American boxer of the era, but his

reputation had lost a lot of its aura following his years in the

army and some questionable bouts afterward.

Sailing on the Mississippi

I attended two school events during my time at McKinley High

School—a football game in 1944 and the prom dance in the

spring of 1946 held aboard the Admiral, a classic Mississippi

riverboat, which cruised down the river for several miles and

then returned to its dock a few hundred yards from the original

St. Louis Court House.

I don’t remember dancing during the cruise but I clearly re-

member looking at and being impressed with the large paddle

wheels on the back of the boat. I do recall, however, that I had

tried jitterbugging one time at some kind of dance club that I

went to with my friend Harvey. That was not to be my only visit

to the Admiral.*

___________________________________________________

*In 2005 when daughter Demetra and I attended a family re-

union in Redford we stayed in St. Louis for two nights after the

reunion. While there we visited the Admiral, still tied up in the

same place. However, it no longer sailed up and down the river

and was being used as a kind of museum with some con-

cessions, including a soft drinking vending machine on the


54

deck. We also found a White Castle hamburger shop just off of

Broadway. I ordered two hamburgers in a gesture to relive one

of my early childhood memories. I took a few bites of one of

them and then threw both of them into a trash can because it

tasted so bad.

___________________________________________________

Joining the Navy

Because of the extra credits I had earned by taking five courses

instead of the usual four and going to summer school twice, I

had enough credits to graduate from McKinley High School in

the spring of 1946. The day I passed the final exams I decided

to skip the graduation exercises and join the Navy. I had been in

high school for precisely two years and seven months…and had

never missed a day.

At that time the military draft was still in effect and I would

have been subject to it that fall when I became 18. Since I had

no birth certificate, I had to get a notarized affidavit signed by

my parents and two other witnesses attesting to my age in order

to enlist in the navy.

When I and seven other inductees showed up for our phy-

sical examination at the induction center in a downtown St.

Louis office building the eight of us were told to strip to our

shorts and line up four abreast. The doctor then told us to bend

over, squat, stand up and extend our arms out and rotate them.

My left arm was conspicuously crooked at the elbow when I

extended it with my palm down [because of the childhood

accident], so I kept my palm facing up so the doctor wouldn’t

see that it had been busted in the elbow. He then glanced at our

bare feet. When he came to me he asked if I had trouble walk-

ing…apparently because my arches were unusually low. When I

said no, he let it go.

He then individually examined our mouths, throats and ears.

When it was my turn and he had looked into my ears he told me

get down on the floor and put my head between his legs. He

then squirted a liquid into them to remove the wax build-up.

As soon as we were sworn in we were put to work washing

the windows and sweeping and mopping the floor of the office.


55

We were then sent home and told to report back to the office the

following Monday to pick up our files and orders for our travel

to the Navy training facility in San Diego, California—some-

thing we were all pleased about because going to California was

far more appealing than the Great Lakes center in Michigan.

That weekend Harvey C., myself and one other person,

whose name I have forgotten (!), went on an overnight fishing

and camping trip to the Meramec River a few miles south of St.

Louis.

The only things I remember of the trip is that we did not

catch any fish, that sleeping directly on the ground was very

uncomfortable, and that after we laid down for the night we

could hear the engines of trucks as they ascended a steep grade

some two or three miles away. The roaring of the engines went

on periodically all night, as trucks delivered various goods to

markets in St. Louis.

The Trip to San Diego

I went to the Navy recruiting office on Monday afternoon and

met up with the other recruits who had been sworn in with me.

One of the recruiters, a chief petty officer, accompanied us to

the St. Louis train station, and just before we boarded he gave

all of our records to the nerdyest looking guy in the bunch,

apparently because he looked the most trustworthy.

Much to our surprise, our tickets called for private com-

partments, each of which had two bunk beds. However, when

we reached Kansas City that night we were routed out of the

compartments and escorted to ordinary seats in one of the

coaches…with the explanation that some paying passengers

took precedence over military recruits!

After trying to go to sleep in my seat, I finally curled up on

the floor in between the facing bench seats. There were two

girls, sisters, one about eight and the other about twelve or

thirteen on the seat facing mine. One of the seven recruits in my

group took the vacant seat next to the two girls.

After talking to the oldest girl for several minutes the recruit

put his right hand between her legs and began trying to feel her

up (as the saying goes). The girl kept her legs tightly clinched


56

but the guy wouldn’t stop trying to force her. She began a kind

of moaning cry and the scenario continued for what seemed like

several minutes.

Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I raised up on my elbow

and said, “You’d better stop that!”

The guy glared at me for several seconds, continuing his

efforts, and then abruptly withdrew his hand. “It’s your loss!”

he said to the girl.

After one more night we reached Los Angeles, where we

were scheduled to change to a train going to San Diego. There

was about an hour between trains, so we had time to walk

around and stare at things we had never seen before. What I

remember most vividly were the palm trees around the station.

The stop-over lasted for only about twenty minutes, so we did

not leave the vicinity of the station.

The Boot Camp Experience

Immediately upon arriving at the naval training center we

became a part of dozens of other recruits arriving that day, and

were first shunted into a barber shop where we were all given

“crew cuts.” Then we all filed into a large supply center where

we were issued a duffel bag (the navy equivalent of a suitcase),

a ditty bag (for our dental and shaving equipment), shoes,

underwear, dungarees for everyday wear and white uniforms for

formal wear.

We were then divided into “companies” of about 165 re-

cruits and assigned to our barracks and beds. I ended up with a

top bunk in a long line of bunks. Our company commander was

a chief petty officer named Crowder, who walked with a slight

limp. He had several lower grade petty officers as his assistant

trainers.

We were then told to fall out and fall in…with the trainers

showing us where each line was to begin. As soon as we had

formed lines we were told to switch places in the order of our

height, with the tallest recruit at the head of each line.

Chief Crowder then outlined the training that we would go

through in the next 12 weeks, following which he asked if there

was anyone in the group who had had any military training. I


57

held my hand up, and called out: “Six months in the Missouri

State Guard!” Two or three others had had similar training.

“You are now honorary petty officers third class, and will

assist in the training program!” Crowder said. One of the re-

gular trainers than gave each of us newly “commissioned” petty

officers a wide white canvas web belt to signify our honorary

rank.

The next morning at 4 a.m. two of the trainers suddenly

barged into our barracks with their wooden stanchions in hand

and began pounding on large overhead metal pipes that went

from one end of the barracks to the other.

The noise was incredible and startling. The trainers yelled

out: “Get up! Get shaved! Get showered! Get dressed! Go

outside and wait for the breakfast call!”

The breakfast call did not come until 6 a.m.

The Hard-On Show-Off

It was widely rumored that the food we were being served was

laced with saltpeter—something that was supposed to prevent

males from getting erections so we wouldn’t become raunchy

during our training.

It was either just a rumor or it didn’t work. Several mornings

after our training began a guy who also had a top bunk like me

some four or five bunks away began yelled out “Hey! Look at

this!” just seconds after reveille had sounded. He had a hard-

on, had thrown off his blanket, and was waving it around with

great glee.

What I also remember from this incident is that when he was

not holding his pecker upright it laid down flat against his

stomach, pointing toward his chin. I realized later that this was

because he had worn tight brief shorts all his life, with his

pecker positioned upward instead of to one side or the other. I

promised myself that if I ever had a son I would not allow him

to wear briefs.

There was one black guy in my company. Later, in our

swimming classes we were required to jump with our clothes on

into a pool that was about eight feet deep and do a number of


58

things. In the first such exercise the black guy sank to the

bottom of the pool like a rock and appeared to be stuck there.

Finally, one of the trainers who had a long pole stuck it down to

the guy who grabbed hold of it and was pulled out. He had

never been in deep water before and didn’t know how to swim.

One Sunday when we were all in our barracks a bully began

picking on one of the smaller, weaker guys. Another recruit,

from either North or South Carolina, told him to stop. The bully

was furious at his interference, turned and tried to hit the

Carolinian, a slender guy who did not look at all tough or dan-

gerous.

The Carolinian blocked the punch and knocked the guy half

way across the room with one blow. “I eat people like you for

breakfast!” he said to the fallen man—a comment I will never

forget. The bully didn’t bother anyone after that.

There was one guy in the company who went for about a

week without showering. One morning four of the guys who

bunked closest to him pounced on him, dragged him to the

shower in his shorts, held him under the shower and scrubbed

him down with hard-bristle brushes (that were used to clean the

walls and floor of the shower room). Afterward, he took a

shower every morning.

On one occasion I was posted as a guard on the seaside of

the training center, and went on duty at 4 a.m. Besides being

dark, it was so foggy I could see only six or eight feet. An hour

or so after I took up my post, the security officer making his

rounds suddenly materialized in front of me. I was so flab-

bergasted I forgot to challenge him with the “Who goes there?”

question until he was almost within arm’s length.

He let me go with, “You’d better stay more alert!”

On another occasion on a Sunday when there was no training

it was so foggy all over the training center that it was necessary

to string ropes between the different buildings so that people

going from one to the other could hold onto them to keep from

getting lost.

I had discovered that I could avoid make-work assignments

during our free time by wearing my honorary petty officer belt


59

and walking rapidly to different places [like the gedunk shop for

a milkshake] as if I was officially going somewhere.

On our first weekend pass, following three weeks of training,

my whole company went into downtown San Diego, where

most of us just walked around in our white uniforms and tried

not to look like raw navy recruits. A few of the guys went to

whorehouses in Tijuana across the border in Mexico. Some of

them came back with the clap.

We were taken to a nearby Marine base for our weapons

training. The first time I fired the M-1 rifle I held it tight against

my right cheek. The kickback was so strong my cheek was

swollen for a week.

We were given a battery of tests to determine our I.Qs, and

our subsequent assignments after we finished boot camp. I and

six other guys scored well above average, which got us assigned

to Naval Communications Supplementary Activities (NCSA),

the navy’s intelligence arm, in Washington, D.C. I remember

the name of only one of those guys—a fellow named Floyd

Pollard, from Beaumont, Texas.

Shipping Out & Falling Off a Ladder

Our first assignment out of boot camp was as seamen 3rd class

on the U.S.S. Fillmore, which was then in San Diego Harbor.

The ship had served as a troop-carrier during the Pacific War

and was then used as a target ship (on the outer ring of ships) at

the Bikini Atom Bomb Test in the early summer of 1946. [Our

backgrounds were being checked, so the Navy apparently

thought it might as well get some use out of us.]

The ship was anchored some distance from the dock, and we

were taken to it by a shuttle boat. There we had to climb a

flexible ladder draped over the hull to get abroad. The ship was

bobbing in the waves. My duffle bag was heavy and rolled off

of my shoulder, leaving me and the bag dangling and holding

onto the ladder by one hand. I finally managed to get the bag

back on my shoulder and climb abroad, much to the amusement

of those on deck watching our arrival.

Within an hour after we left the harbor we hit high swells,

and the ship began to buck and wallow. All of the six other new


60

seamen got seasick. I had been ordered to mop the floor in the

mess hall. A cook saw that I was beginning to look queasy. He

gave me some crackers to eat and told me to go outside and

walk around deck. The nausea passed within about fifteen

minutes, and thereafter I was never ever to suffer from this

sickening malady.

A few days after we left San Diego harbor a full-dress in-

spection in white uniforms was announced. I and one of the

other members of my group got ready early and went out on the

fantail to wait for the inspection. While there we sat down on

large low metal posts used to secure the ship with huge ropes

when at dock.

After the inspection it was pointed out to us that our rear-

ends were totally black from oil soot that had coated the tops of

the posts. The captain and his inspection team obviously real-

ized what had happened, and chose not to not say anything to

us.

I should have known better because my first early morning

duty immediately after 6 a.m. reveille was to “clean-sweep-

down fore and aft;” in my case, sweeping and mopping the deck

just below the veranda of the captain’s private quarters.

One morning when I was mopping away I looked up and

saw a women standing on the captain’s poop deck. When she

saw me she turned and quickly went back inside. I never saw

her again while I was on the ship, and no one else ever said any-

thing about there being a woman on board.

The Shooting Fiasco

One day the ship’s gunner’s mate (a chief petty officer)

arranged for us new seaman to practice firing the anti-aircraft

guns on the ship. He had the boatswain’s mate construct a large

kite, attach a very, very long line to it and launch it from the

fantail of the ship.

Floyd Pollard was the first one in line to fire. The gun did

not have a normal trigger and while he was fumbling around for

a trigger he pulled a switch. The gun fired a burst, and the huge


61

kite spiraled into the sea. He had cut the line somewhere be-

tween the ship and the kite. That is why I remember his name.

The gunner’s mate then allowed some of the regular crew

members to shoot at a group of large sea turtles that were

swimming a few hundred yards from the ship. That bothered

me, and still does to this day.

Balboa, Panama & the Life-Changing Letter

One Sunday afternoon when the ship was tied up at a dock in

Balboa, Panama I was sitting on an upturned bucket on the fan-

tail chipping paint when the mailman brought me several

letters—one from my older sister Jessie who was then living in

Phoenix, Arizona with her husband Gene Holland.

In her letter she included a small clipping about the opening

[by a retired Air Force general] of The American Institute for

Foreign Trade (AIFT) in Glendale, Arizona on what had been

an air force training base [known as Thunderbird] for Chinese

pilots during the war.

She had written on a corner of the clipping: “A nut like you

might want to go to this kind of school some day!” She ob-

viously regarded me as a character for some reason. I have no

memory of keeping that thought in my mind, but six years later

I did go to the school and it changed my life in ways that I could

not have imagined .*

___________________________________________________

*After several name changes over the years, AIFT is now the

famous Thunderbird School of Global Management. [The only

memorable speaker who addressed my 1952-1953 class was

Barry Goldwater, who landed in his own plane on the school’s

airport runway. He was running for the Senate and later was a

candidate for the presidency. In the early 1970s I taught at the

school for two semesters.

___________________________________________________

During the several days our ship was docked in Balboa I and

most of the crew went ashore to visit Panama City, where sev-

eral crew members visited prostitutes. A week or so later some


62

of them came down with gonorrhea. From Balboa we proceeded

to sail through the Panama Canal, with its lakes and locks—an

extraordinary experience.

Within minutes of entering the Caribbean Ocean on the east

side of the Panama we encountered huge swells, resulting in the

ship rising and falling to great heights. I was on the fantail

coiling ropes. When the front of the ship dipped and the rear

end rose it exposed the propeller blades to the open air, creating

a whirling sound. The third time the fantail dropped like a huge

elevator out of control my hat flew up some fifty or more feet in

the air and sailed away.

We rounded the western end of Cuba at night, and could see

the lights of Havana.

As we got farther north along the Atlantic seaboard it got

windy and cold. My watch outside the pilot’s wheel house was

4 a.m. to 8 a.m. One morning about six o’clock a steward came

out of the cabin and set a cup of coffee down on the railing

beside me. He said hello, but nothing else.

After a couple of minutes I presumed that the coffee was for

me, and began drinking it. A few minutes later the captain came

out, looking for his coffee. I apologized. He accepted the situ-

ation with good grace, stepped back inside and told his steward

to pour another cup.

Living Next to Lincoln & Jefferson

By the late fall of 1946 I was living in a prefab complex called

Quarters I [Eye], built in 1941 in West Potomac Park to house

navy personnel. The complex fronted on the Washington D.C.

bank of the Potomac River. The Lincoln Memorial was some

400 yards to the north, the west end of the Tidal Basin was

about 50 yards from my back window, and the Jefferson Mem-

orial was some 500 yards away on the southeast side of the

basin.

The Tidal Basin is, of course, famous for many things, one

of which is the fact that it is ringed by Japanese cherry trees that

blossom each spring, attracting hundreds of thousands of

viewers. The cherry trees, 3,020 of them altogether, were


63

presented to the United States as a friend-ship gift by the people

of Japan in 1912.

My new address had to be one of the most extraordinary

locations for housing in Washington, D.C. that one can imagine,

but to this day I am not sure that we sailors who lived there

were aware enough to fully appreciate it!

A Close Encounter with Admiral Nimitz

Immediately after arriving in Washington I and my group began

six weeks of intense training in cryptography, and then were

assigned to Naval Communications Supplementary Activities

[NCSA] headquarters in a former girl’s school on the northeast

side of the city.

Apparently because someone took my last name as being

Hispanic, I was assigned to the Spanish language code-breaking

division, which was headed by a Hispanic-American Ph.D.

A Navy shuttle bus picked us up at Quarters I each weekday

morning at 7:30 a.m. and brought us home each evening.

The NCSA headquarters building was T-shaped, with the top

of the T as well as the bottom consisting of long hallways with

offices on each side. The hallways floors were covered with

linoleum that was waxed and buffed every day.

The first shuttle bus back to Quarters I left the front of the

building (formed by the top of the T), every evening at 5

minutes past 5. My office was at the far end of the bottom of the

T, and I usually missed the first bus if it left on time.

One evening I decided to make sure I got on the first bus and

at 5 I took off running down the long aisle. The “rotunda”

where the leg of the T joined the top was fairly large, and as I

entered this open space I saw a group of high-ranking officers

entering the area from the corridor on the right side.

The man leading the group was five-star Admiral Chester W.

Nimitz, the highest ranking officer in the navy at that time…and

the man who had commanded the U.S.’s naval forces in the

Pacific during World War II.

I tried to stop, but I began sliding on the waxed linoleum

floor as if I was on ice. The closer I got to the admiral and his


64

entourage, the more strained their expressions. The admiral kind

of leaned back as if to avoid any impact.

I finally came to a stop some five or six feet from the group. I

snapped to attention and started to give them a snappy salute.

When I got my right hand half way up I realized I had my hat in

it.

I didn’t say it, but I instantly thought, “What the Hell!” and

instantly dropped my hand and my hat back down to my side…

and just stood there at stiff attention. I can only imagine the

look on my face.

The admiral and his entourage walked on by, staring at me in

disbelief. Nobody said a word, but if the looks I got from some

of the lower ranking officers could have killed, I would have

been history.

There were no repercussions resulting from this incident,

probably because there were no other witnesses who might have

taken some action against me.

The Urge to Write

I had started a journal when I was in my mid-teens [writing

pithy sayings that I thought were both smart and wise] but had

stopped when I joined the navy. I started writing again—this

time commentary about people in the news and public events,

and hanging the sheets of paper on a string used to turn on an

overhead light in the PR office in my wing of the building after

the staff had left at 5.

I was soon identified as the culprit but since the com-ments

were mostly humorous and people liked them, I was just told to

stop.

Another writing experience at that time was also un-usual.

Some social-type organization published the names and ad-

dresses of high-school age girls around the country who wanted

to correspondent with members of the military to boost their

moral. I began writing a girl in Illinois.

However, after about three months she informed me that her

mother had ordered her to stop because our writing had became

too personal. It was this experience that revealed to me how

easy it was to get caught up in and controlled by words.


65

My Embarrassing Failure

As my two-year period of service approached I became eligible

to take the test for Petty Officer 3rd Class for my rating as a

cryptographer. I prepared for the test by virtually memorizing

the manuals.

But when I took the test and the results were posted, I had

failed—the only failure among several others who took the test

with me. I was shocked, as were my superiors and friends. I was

also embarrassed beyond words.

The only explanation I could think of was that I had put

many of the answers in the wrong boxes. The following month I

took the test again and passed.

Out of the Navy

In the early summer of 1948 Dad became seriously ill. Mom

asked me to request a hardship discharge so I could come home

and help support the family. I went through the unit chaplain

who got the request approved in less than a week.

However, by the time my discharge papers had been pro-

cessed and I arrived in St. Louis some 10 days later my father

had made a miraculous recovery (and lived for 33 more years!).

I attempted to re-enlist in the Navy but was refused.

That was one of the most depressing events in my life up to

that time. I loved the Navy and everything about it, and had

fully intended to make it a career.

The Search for a Job

I began looking for work but could not find anything. The com-

petition in St. Louis from other recently discharged servicemen

was awesome. I decided to go to Los Angeles just because it

sounded exotic. Since I had been out of the service for less than

a month I still qualified for military transportation so I hitched a

ride on a military troop transport plane which happened to be

going to Cheyenne, Wyoming. I was the only passenger on the

plane, and on the way the pilots forgot about me and ascended

to 14,000 feet.


66

I was lying across several seats dozing. When I began to feel

strange, I started to get up but passed out from lack of oxygen

and didn’t come to until we started descending.

As I slowly became conscious, I first became aware that my

cheek felt like it was touching ice. And after a minute or so I

realized I was lying on the metal floor of the plane, and mana-

ged to crawl back up on a seat.

I recovered fast enough after the plane landed, and from

Cheyenne took a Greyhound bus the rest of the way to L.A.

In L.A. I checked into the YMCA. One of the directors gave

me an introduction to a friend who had a small metal shop…and

I went to work polishing metal shoe inserts in a machine filled

with ball bearings. I then rented a room from an elderly lady

who lived closed by.

I enlisted in the Navy Reserve and the following week-end

went on a cruise aboard a destroyer escort to Catalina Island.

One night the next week I turned on a gas stove in my room

because the nighttime temperature had begun dropping off, and

opened the window about six inches. The next morning when I

woke up I had the worst headache imaginable. The buildup of

carbon monoxide had nearly done me in.

I went to work but was very sick. By lunchtime I had de-

cided to return to St. Louis. When I told the shop owner that I

had decided to go home at the end of the week he said: “You

can go now!”

The following day I put my navy uniform back on, put my

stuff in my duffle bag, and began hitchhiking. My first ride took

me to the outskirts of LA. My second ride took me to an

isolated intersection [just like in the movies] in the desert

several miles outside of Desert Palms. My third ride was with

two young men my own age who had also just been discharged

from the service, had bought an old car, and were on their way

to Oklahoma City where their families lived.

We took turns sleeping in the back seat of the car and driv-

ing. By the time we reached Oklahoma, one (or more!) of the

rods in the car’s engine had come lose, and the engine was

clattering like someone was beating on it with a hammer. The


67

noise was such that people on the sidewalks stopped and stared

as we passed by.

I stayed that night at the home of one of the boys, and the

next morning boarded a reliable Greyhound bus.

Back in St. Louis I bought a car—a 1939 Chevrolet coupe

that was forest green and the prettiest car I had ever seen. At

that time Dad was working at two jobs—at Kroger’s food

warehouse during the day and at Carter’s Carburetor at night.

He got me a job at Kroger’s dumping potatoes onto a belt where

a line of women picked out the bad ones.

On my second day one of the women asked me what I was

going to do, now that I was out of the service. I said I wanted to

go back to school. The foreman heard me, and when Friday

came he fired me.

Brother Don and I loaded some baggage in my green coupe

and we headed for Phoenix, Arizona to see Winnie and look for

work. We planned to stop off in Oklahoma City to pick up

Jessie and take her with us to Phoenix.

About three hours after leaving St. Louis on Highway 66,

with me driving in a hilly section of southeast Missouri, I dozed

off when we were in a long line of cars heading down a curving

slope on the two-lane highway.

When I abruptly woke up—I don’t know why—we had

drifted into the opposite lane of the highway and were headed

toward a line of cars coming our way.

Someone in the lane where we should have been saw our

predicament and slowed down so we could squeeze back into

the right lane. The shock kept me awake and wide-eyed for the

rest of the day. We stayed over one night with Jessie and Gene

in Oklahoma City and then continued on toward Arizona, with

Jessie going with us so she could also visit Winnie.

From Flagstaff we headed down Oak Creek Canyon toward

Sedona. Midway down the canyon we came across a vertical

pipe alongside the road that connected to a spring higher up on

the canyon wall. It had a short horizontal spout at the end. We

stopped to put water into the car radiator and get a drink.

Don and I started horsing around, trying to push each other

under the pipe. After shoving him I turned quickly to get away


68

and ran into the spout, cutting a gash in my forehead between

my eyes. I still have the scar. On the outskirts of Phoenix, we

stopped somewhere [I don’t remember where], but I do recall

shaving.

After dropping Jessie off at Winnie’s house, Don and I be-

gan looking for work. We went to a place where fruit growers

came each morning to hire workers to pick oranges and grape-

fruit.

We were selected and boarded a truck that took us to a

grapefruit orchard. After working for about four hours in the

unbearable heat, we decided that wasn’t for us. When we saw

that the truck that brought us to the orchard was going back into

town, we climbed aboard.

The foreman who had hired us saw the truck leaving with us

sitting in back. He jumped into his car, caught up with the truck,

stopped it, and told us if we left he wasn’t going to pay us for

the work we had done. We said OK, and stayed on the truck.

Winnie did not have room for us to stay with her, so the

following day we headed back for St. Louis, sleeping in the car

and eating baloney sandwiches on the way.

In New Mexico we picked up two young hitchhikers, who

shared the driving with us and helped pay for gas. One night we

pulled off the highway into a field and went to sleep on the

ground. The next morning when we woke up cattle were graz-

ing all around us. The two hitchhikers stayed with us until we

reached St. Louis.

Shortly returning to St. Louis, I drove Mom and Dad, Fern,

Becky and Rose to Mayberry to visit Mother Evans. On the way

back home it started raining. At the bottom of a long slope the

road turned to the right without being canted. I was driving

rather fast. The car went into a spin, and spun like a merry-go-

around three or four times down the blacktopped road, then

went off of the road and down an embankment, with Mom

screaming all the way.

The car tilted up its side as if it was going to turn over, and

then righted itself. The jarring killed the engine. I restarted it

and, surprisingly, was able to drive back up the embankment

onto the road. When the car was back up on the road I hesitated


69

for a minute. At which point, Dad, a very cool man, said very

quietly: “Would you like for me to drive?” He drove us the rest

of the way home.

Joining the Army Security Agency

A day or so after the car incident when I was on a main street in

downtown St. Louis after having interviewed for a job, I was

approached by an army master sergeant who turned out to be a

recruiter.

When he learned that I had been in the intelligence branch of

the Navy for two years, he told me he could enlist me directly

into the Army Security Agency, the army equivalent of the

branch of the Navy I had been in, at my rank [Petty Officer 3rd

class], and have me back in Washington D.C. in no time.

I signed up but instead of being sent directly to Washington

D.C. as promised I was required to take basic training again,

this time at Ft. Knox in Kentucky. Before leaving I signed my

car over to Dad—to my knowledge the first vehicle he ever

owned.

Meeting Brother Don

While I was at Ft. Knox I learned that Don, who had also joined

the army, was in training a short distance away, and one Sunday

went to see him. When I and a friend arrived there we found

him in his bunk, reading. We talked for a few minutes. That was

the last time I was to see him for more than 15 years. Shortly

after he finished basic training the Korean War started, resulting

in him being shipped to Korea in the fall of 1950. What befell

him there could have been one of the greatest family tragedies

imaginable.*

___________________________________________________

*On 1 December 1950 Don and some 16 surviving members of

his unit were captured by Chinese troops shortly after a large

Chinese army crossed the Yalu River in support of the North

Korean invasion of South Korea.


70

Held in a prison camp for some three years, during which

over half of his fellow prisoners died, Don remained in the

service after the Armistice ended the war in 1953.

We finally met in the summer of 1963 at our parents’ home

in Phoenix when he was on his way to some assignment and I

and my wife were making our first visit home from Japan in

more than four years. I was astounded to see what good shape

he was in, and learned that during his last year in the prisoner-

of-war camp the prisoners had been provided with corn to eat—

while during the two years preceding this they had been given a

thin rice gruel and reduced to eating mice and rats…when those

rodents were caught.

During Don’s post-war military service he became a com-

missioned officer, rose to the rank of major and had a re-

markable career with assignments on Kwajalein Island, in the

Philippines, Vietnam, Paris, the Pentagon, and elsewhere.

Following his retirement from the army at Fort Huachuca in

southern Arizona he became the City Clerk of Tucson, serving

in that capacity for some 20 years—longer than anyone else in

the history of the city.

After retiring from the city job Don and his wife Donna

moved to Phoenix, where he became a paragon of a grand-

father to the children of their three daughters, and a wise ad-

visor to the extended Dement family.

__________________________________________________

I went from Ft. Knox to the ASA’s training unit in Ar-

lington, Virginia on the west side of the Potomac River and

about fifteen minutes from the Lincoln Memorial on the D.C.

side; near where I had lived while in the Navy. What awaited

me was to set the stage for the rest of my life, with profound

results that could not have been imagined

Assignment in Japan

Following several weeks of intense training in using IBM

machines to create matrixes for coding and decoding, I and six

others who had gone through the course with me were assigned

to the ASA’s Asian headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. The IBM


71

equipment that we would need to set up and operate a support

unit for the Agency had already been shipped.

Immediately after being assigned to ASA Japan I got orders

to report to a small military airbase in Petaluma, California

north of San Francisco to catch a military transport plane to

Tokyo, and was given leave to visit my family in St. Louis en

route.

Using a military travel voucher, I went from Washington,

D.C. to St. Louis by train. After two days and three nights in St.

Louis visiting my parents and younger siblings I boarded a

Greyhound bus for Phoenix, Arizona, then a small town, for a

stopover to see sister Winnie.

I walked from the Greyhound bus station in central Phoenix

to Winnie’s house, about 12 blocks away. When I arrived she

was outside in the yard raking up leaves—and was very preg-

nant with her son Gayland, Jr. [known as Dobbie when he was

young].

I stayed only one night at Winnie’s, and that evening she and

her husband Gayland took me to a restaurant that set astride the

county border—where it was dry on one side of the restaurant

(no alcohol) but wet on the other side (alcoholic drinks served.)

My next stop was a small military airfield north of Petaluma

that the ASA used when shipping personnel to destinations in

Asia. [Petaluma was known as the egg capital of the world.]

At the airbase I met up with the six other guys in my group,

one of whom [the ranking master sergeant] had a new Ford

sedan. One afternoon he and I headed for San Francisco in his

car, and shortly after getting onto the highway he stopped to

pick up two girls hitchhiking. He asked me to drive, while he

got into the backseat with the girls. What often happened in the

backseats of cars during those years happened during the drive

into San Francisco.

The only other memorable event at the airbase occurred

when I and another member of our team went for a walk in the

surrounding desert and ran across a herd of jackrabbits. They

appeared to be as tall as small kangaroos and for a boy from the

Ozark Hills they were a sight to see.


72

The Trip to Tokyo

Getting to Japan was an experience. From the airfield north of

Petaluma we boarded a no frills military transport plane for the

eight-hour flight to Hawaii. We landed at Schofield Barracks

Airfield adjoining Wahiawa town in the high-lands northwest of

Honolulu, and stayed there for three nights. On our second

afternoon there I and another member of the group [Ed Wei-

demer] took a shuttle bus into Honolulu, walked up and down

Kalakaua Avenue, went to the Kuhio area of the beach, stared at

the waves, ogled the female sunbathers, watched surfers—and

when walking back down Kalakaua at sunset passed several of

Waikiki’s famous streetwalkers.

From Hawaii we flew to Johnston Island, a tiny sliver of

land between Hawaii and Guam. The highest point on the island

was 14 feet—seven of which was a pile of rocks. The only

native inhabitants of the island was a huge flock of gooney

birds—which were so heavy and ungainly that they had to run

for several yards before they could take off and get into the air,

sometimes stumbling and falling in the process. Our next stop

was Guam, where we stayed for two nights.

I and Weidemer shared a one-room two-bunk sleeping hut

whose side walls stopped some 18 inches from the concrete

base to allow air to flow through. The bunks had unusually long

legs, which we commented on but had no idea why. The hut,

along with several others, was in thick jungle some two hundred

yards away from the main buildings of the facility.

Around midnight I was awakened by Ed shouting and jump-

ing around. He finally found the string attached to a single

overhead light bulb between the two bunks, and turned the light

on.

“There’s a shit-eating rat in my bed!” he yelled.

Sure enough, a second after he got the light turned on a huge

jungle rat jumped off of his bunk and scampered away, bump-

ing its head on the wall as it went out.

We arrived at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport in the late afternoon,

where we were met by a U.S. military truck driver assigned to

pick us up. We piled ourselves and our duffle bags into the back

of the truck, the top and sides of which were covered with


73

canvas. Our destination was what had previously been the First

Tokyo Arsenal in the Oji district on the north side of the city.

Until shortly before we arrived in Japan the Army Security

Agency headquarters had been located in the Sanshin Build-

ing in downtown Tokyo, about 100 yards from General Douglas

MacArthur’s headquarters in the Dai-Ichi Insurance Building

facing the Imperial moat. MacArthur was the Supreme Allied

Commander of the of the military forces occupying Japan fol-

lowing the end of World War II in August 1945.

The Sanshin Building, which we were looking forward to,

was just a block from one of the most famous theaters in Tokyo,

the Takarazuka [renamed the Ernie Pyle Theater during the U.S.

Occupation of Japan], with the famous Imperial Hotel just

across the street from the theater.

The trip through the central part of Tokyo was strange. Some

of the city was still burned and bombed out. During the entire

trip we saw only two Japanese cars, both wood-burning and

steam-driven. Some of the streets we traversed had no side-

walks, and were filled with pedestrians.

We could only see out the back of the truck, and we watch-

ed, fascinated, as the crowd of walkers that had parted to get out

of the way of the speeding vehicle flowed back together behind

it, reminding me of the wake of a ship. Virtually all of the

women we saw were dressed in very old and ragged kimono,

while the men were in ancient workmen’s clothing—some

wearing the short traditional happi work jackets.

What struck me most was the fact that many of the women

appeared to be missing their left hand, and I wondered if their

hands had been cut off for some reason. I found out later that it

was common for women to draw their left hand back into the

voluminous sleeve of their kimono, especially when it was cold.

Fixing up the 1st Tokyo Arsenal

The First Tokyo Arsenal into which the ASA headquarters had

just moved consisted of over a dozen buildings of various sizes,

including living quarters, warehouses, a large garage, and the

large Western-style headquarters of the former Arsenal. This


74

large building was situated on a low hill near the front gate of

the large compound—and was the site chosen by the ASA

commander for his head-quarters.

The arsenal compound had been completely deserted by its

former Japanese occupants when the war ended in August 1945,

and part of it was still a total mess. Our group was assigned to a

large building that had housed offices but had not yet been

cleaned up. We set up bunk beds amidst the debris and then

spent several days hauling trash out of the rooms, sweeping,

scrubbing and painting.

By the time we had finished making one small part of the

building livable, the IBM equipment necessary for our work had

arrived, and was soon set up in one of the buildings adjoining

the headquarters on the low hill.

Our first foray away from the post [the day after our arrival]

was an indoctrination lecture along with a large group of other

recent arrivals in Japan, at the Ernie Pyle Theater in the center

of the city. The lecture was about the relationship between the

Japanese and the Occupation Forces, and how we should con-

duct ourselves.

Encounter with a Sumo

And Meeting my Hatsu-Koi

My first solo visit outside of the former Japanese military ar-

senal was on a Sunday to an ice-skating rink in Ryogoku where

Japan’s famous sumo wrestling stadium was located. The rink

had been taken over by the U.S. Forces and was operated by the

military for Occupation personnel and their families.

The ASA post was about a 10-minute walk from Oji Station

on the Keihin-Tohoku commuter line that went from the nor-

thern outskirts of Tokyo, through Tokyo Central Station, and on

to Sakuragicho Station, the second station after Yokohama

Station. To reach Ryogoku I had to change trains at Akihabara

Station, only 15 minutes from Oji.

While I was standing on the boarding platform in Aki-

habara waiting for a train to Ryogku a sumo wrestler who was

well over six feet tall and weighed perhaps 300 pounds walked

up within a few feet of me and stood glaring down at me in


75

what I took to be a very intimidating manner. I very carefully

moved a few feet away and avoided looking at him.

That was the only occasion during my many years in Japan,

before and after the Occupation by the Allied Powers, that I felt

threatened. However, late one night when I was strolling in a

bar area in Oji not far from the ASA post—in a narrow lane that

was totally deserted except for me—an empty beer bottle came

sailing out of the darkness and landed off to my right. I always

suspected it was thrown by a GI.

At the ice-rink in Ryogoku I went to a concessionaire to rent

skates. I was waited on by a pretty 16-year old girl name Fujie

Yamamoto, who turned out to be a niece of the man who ran the

shop.

On my second trip to the rink a week later, I managed to get

it across to the girl that I wanted to meet her away from the

shop, and suggested the entrance to Ueno Park, which adjoins

Ueno Station on the line that went to my stop in Oji.

She arrived at the appointed time to find me sitting on a park

bench. After several minutes of trying to communicate fol-

lowed by long silences, she said several times, Sanpoh shima-

sho? (sahn-poe she-mah-shoh?).

I understood that shimasho meant “shall we?” but I had no

idea what sanpoh meant. Finally, she managed to say Wahku!

Wahku! It took another minute for me to realize she was trying

to pronounce “walk” She was saying: “Shall we take a walk?”

That was the beginning of my hatsu koi (hot-sue koy), or

“first love” in Japan…and my effort to learn how to speak

Japanese.

However, this relationship was truncated after our second

date because she did not want to go as far as I did. She was the

epitome of sweet innocence and naiveté but she had a very

strong will. I was not to see her again for nearly two years.

A Hamburger & Milk Shake

On another Sunday in the fall of 1949 I took the train to down-

town Tokyo [about 20 minutes away] and got off at Yurakucho

Station, which served the Hibiya and Yura-kucho theater

districts, the Imperial Hotel, General MacArthur’s headquarters


76

and the famous Sukiyabashi and Ginza shopping and enter-

tainment districts. Chuo Dori [Central Avenue or Central Street]

the main north-south Ginza thoroughfare, was the first street in

Japan to have sidewalks and streetlights.

A short distance from Yurakucho Station I crossed Suki-

yabashi (Sukiya Bridge) spanning one of the several canals that

still ran through the city. There was a pizza parlor, named

Nicolas Pizza House, built on the sloping east side of the canal,

setting on stilts.

The owner was an Italian named Nicolas. Shortly after the

Allied Occupation of Japan ended in 1952 he moved the res-

taurant to the Roppongi district, still known for its collection of

restaurants, bars and nightclubs.

I went on some three blocks to the center of the Ginza, the

most famous shopping district in the city for over 200 years,

heading for the main military PX in the city on the northeast

corner of Chuo Dori and Hibiya Avenue.

Early in the Occupation of Japan the U.S. Army had com-

mandeered the huge Mitsukoshi Department Store* on the

northeast corner of the most famous intersection in the city and

turned it into the main military PX (Post Exchange) in Japan,

reserved for the use of Occupations forces and their depen-

dents.*

__________________________________________________

*In 1971 Ken Fujita, a Japanese businessman, got the franchise

for McDonald’s in Japan, and opened the first store in the foyer

of the Ginza’s famous Mitsukoshi Department Store. There

were no seats, only a serving counter with a kitchen behind it,

so patrons had to eat standing up on the sidewalk in front of the

store. As of 2011, the Fujita franchise had 3,800 stores in Japan,

with a stated goal of reaching 10,000.

___________________________________________________

After walking around in the huge multi-level store for a

while I went across the street to the famous but much smaller

Wako Department Store. Its basement had been turned into a

combination ice-cream parlor and cafeteria style restaurant that

was also for the exclusive use of Allied Powers military per-


77

sonnel and their dependents. I had a hamburger and a chocolate

milkshake.

Some five years later after I had left the service and returned

to Tokyo as a civilian I was standing on the corner of the same

intersection when my high school Latin teacher came by with a

group of her friends. I recognized her instantly. We were both

amazed by the chance encounter.

A Mobile Whorehouse Makes the News

The Stars & Stripes military newspaper carried a story about

two enterprising GI’s who were ambulance drivers for the

military hospital and had developed a part-time business that

was indicative of the American spirit..

Afterhours, they put two prostitutes in the ambulance and

cruised around GI hangouts looking for customers. According

to the article business was very good but it was soon closed

down as a result of the story.

Most of the larger buildings and hotels in the Yurakucho and

Hibiya districts of Tokyo had been taken over by the U.S and at

night they attracted swarms of prostitutes.

The Incredible Black Market

The volume of American goods stolen and otherwise obtained

from U.S. bases and GIs that began showing up on the Japanese

market from 1947 on was incredible.

In early 1950 the word came out that a group of American

officers and GI’s who were in charge of delivering goods to

U.S. PX’s around the country by train had a side business go-

ing. They were stocking several coaches on the train with

goods not ordered by the PX’s, and selling them to black

marketers along their routes. The monthly value of goods being

sold was said to be in the millions of dollars, contributing enor-

mously to the creation of Asia’s first mass market.*

__________________________________________________

*In 1958 when my wife Margaret and I first set up house-

keeping in Tokyo we regularly shopped at places that carried


78

black-market American goods, including canned oatmeal,

black-eyed peas, pumpkin, corn, and baked beans. In 1964 my

friend Fred T. Perry and I wrote a book entitled THE JAP-

ANESE AS CONSUMERS – Asia’s First Mass Market [Walker-

Weather-hill, New York]. It was the first description of post-

World War II Japan’s black market-seeded consumer market.]

__________________________________________________

A significant number of individual ASA personnel engaged

in selling goods to the black market, with cigarettes being a

favored item, since all members of the service were issued a

carton a week free-of-charge… something the tobacco industry

had negotiated with the War Department during WWII [as a

patriotic gesture!]. I didn’t smoke, and gave my rations to a

friend, Bob Black, who was later to play a one-time but key role

in my subsequent life.

Several members of the ASA who were involved in the black

market bought homes from their destitute Japanese owners as

investments and in later years sold them at huge profits. Others

bought homes for their Japanese girl friends. I made a $200

donation to the mother of my then girl friend [who worked as a

waitress on the ASA post] so she could buy the house they lived

in—a gesture that later was to have extraordinary consequences

on my life. At that timed you could buy a modest house in some

Tokyo districts for as little as $400. [My girl friend’s father had

been killed in the war.]

Later that year, in a move to curb some of the black-market

activity, the U.S. military Occupation Forces decreed that all

military and Department of the Army civilians in the country

would thereafter use military script as money instead of green-

backs.

Hundreds of thousands of GI’s had paid for things on the

Japanese market with U.S. currency, resulting in hundreds of

millions of dollars in the hands of Japanese. Only foreign

military and civilian personnel could exchange greenbacks for

the new script, so there was an incredible rush by the Japanese

to try to find foreigners who would convert their greenbacks

into script. There was a 15-day period for making the exchange.


79

Many Japanese lost huge amounts of money. During this period

there were dozens of Japanese lining the approach to the ASA

compound, approaching GI’s who came along, asking them to

convert greenbacks for them.

The lady who ran a laundry about three hundred yards from

the gate to the ASA complex accosted me when I was returning

to the site from a trip downtown. I felt sorry for her but refused

since changing currency for the Japanese was a serious offense.

Meeting the Famous Tetsuzo Inumaru

In late 1949 I had occasion to visit the lobby of the famous Im-

perial Hotel, designed by American architect Frank Lloyd

Wright, and opened for business in 1922. The original Imperial

Hotel, built in 1890 by the government for visiting dignitaries,

was strictly Japanese style, and was closed in 1919. The young

Tetsuzo Inumaru, who had trained in hotels in New York and

Paris, became the president and general manager of the new

Imperial.

The day after the Imperial opened in 1922 Tokyo was struck

by a major earthquake that destroyed virtually ever Western

style building in the downtown area of the city…except for the

Imperial Hotel. Wright had designed it to set on huge pillars

pounded into the soft reclaimed land to both stabilize the

foundation and make it possible for the hotel to sway from side-

to-side and bounce up and down without breaking up.

All of the foreign correspondents and many of the foreign

businesspeople in Tokyo at that time moved into the Imperial

Hotel until their own homes and office buildings could be

repaired or rebuilt. Their stories of the survival of the hotel

made it famous worldwide.

When the American Occupation of Japan began in the fall of

1945 the U.S. military took over the hotel as quarters for senior

officers. The day that Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme

Commander of the Allied Forces in Japan, arrived in Tokyo [he

had stayed for a few days in a hotel in Yokohama after arriving

at Atsugi Air Base northwest of that city] he had Tetsuzo

Inumaru accompany him in a chauffeur-driven car around

Tokyo for a view of the bomb-and-fire wrecked city. I under-


80

stand that was the first and last time MacArthur ever toured the

city. He then took up residence in the mansion of the prewar

American ambassador to Japan and limited his travels to going

to and from the residence to his office in the Dai-Ichi Insurance

Building in Hibiya, near the southeast corner of the Imperial

Palace grounds.

The officer I was with on my visit to the hotel introduced me

to Inumaru. In later years I stayed at the Imperial many times

and became well-acquainted with his son, Ichiro, who began

working at the hotel in 1949 and followed his father as president

and general manager.

In the late 1960s I wrote a short history of the Imperial Hotel

at the behest of its advertising agency, headed by Ben Izumida.

The small book was richly bound and used by the hotel as a gift

for VIP guests.

Seeing the American Caesar

In the early spring of 1950 I happened to be in the Yurakucho -

Hibiya district a few minutes before noon, and joined with

several dozen other people, mostly Japanese, on both sides of

the entrance of the Dai-Ichi Insurance Building, where Gen.

Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Allied Commander, had his

headquarters.

Every day precisely at noon, MacArthur would come out the

front door of the building and walk swiftly across the sidewalk

to a waiting car, which took him to his home—the hillside

mansion on the grounds of the American Embassy where

prewar ambassadors lived—for lunch.

People continued to gather on the sidewalk to get a glimpse

of the famous general until he was fired by U.S. President Harry

S. Truman in April 1951 for ignoring the president’s policies

regarding China and North Korea. The president and his ad-

visors were afraid China would join the Korean War in a much

greater force than they eventually did.


81

My First Book / 1950

Immediately after my short-lived would-be romance with Fujie

Yamamoto from the Ryogoku Ice Rink, I began an effort to

study the Japanese language but couldn’t find a suitable text

book. In early 1950 I wrote my own book, entitled JAPANESE

SIMPLIFIED, for which I created my own system of English

language phonetics for every word and expression in the book,

making it possible to pronounce the terms and sentences pro-

perly without previous study or instruction.

The book was very popular among ASA personal on the post

primarily because it made it possible for them to communicate

with their Japanese girl friends.*

___________________________________________________

* Some thirty years later my wife Margaret and I were invited

by one of her friends to the home of a Scottsdale, Arizona

couple for some kind of party. When I was introduced to the

man of the house, he got a surprised look on his face, and said:

“You’re Boyé De Mente?”

I said “Yes...and you can verify that with my wife!”

“Wait just a moment!” he said.

He disappeared into another room, came back within se-

conds, and handed me a copy of JAPANESE SIMPLIFIED,

which had been out of print for at least forty years and I didn’t

even have a file copy of my own. You can imagine the in-

teresting conversation we had after that!*

___________________________________________________

*Many years later I used an improved version of the phonetic

system I had created in a new book entitled SPEAK JAPANESE

TODAY – A Little Language Goes a Long Way! [the latter a tag

line the American Armed Forces Radio had used in a language

program broadcast during the Occupation years], which has

since been one of my best selling books. It has vocabulary and

expressions for a wide range of people, from businesspeople

and travelers to doctors, hotel staff, tourist guides, anime fans,

home-stay hosts, immigration officials to airline pilots.


82

It appears that many of the buyers of the book are devotees

of Japan’s martial arts, particularly judo and karate.

___________________________________________________

The Korean War

Following the end of World War II in August 1945 the U.S.

Army occupied the southern half of the Korean Peninsula and

allowed Russian troops to occupy the northern half—with the

midway separation point being the 38th Parallel.

American politicians screwed around with establishing a

democracy in South Korea—which finally happened [in name

only] on August 15, 1948 with former exile Syng-Man Rhee

[who had fled to Hawaii during the Japanese occupation of

Korea] appointed the first president of the Republic of Korea.

Shortly thereafter the U.S. pulled most of its troops out of South

Korea.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had proceeded to make Kim Il

Sung, a dedicated North Korean Communist who had been

educated in Moscow, the leader of a Communist regime in

North Korea. On September 9, 1948 Kim announced the for-

mation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [a non

sequitur if there ever was one]. He was obsessed with the idea

of capturing the southern half of the peninsula and incorporating

it under his rule.

Over the next year and a half North Korea created a huge

army with the help of the Soviet Union, and began stationing

troops along the 38th parallel that had become the border

between the two Koreas.

By January 1950 North Korea had some 200,000 troops out-

fitted with Russian-made tanks and mobile guns amassed on

their side of the 38th Parallel. It should have been obvious to

everyone that this constituted a clear and present danger to

South Korea.

On 25 June 1950 this huge North Korean army launched a

blitzkrieg attack on South Korean, capturing Seoul and quickly

overrunning the peninsula to within a few miles of Pusan [aka

Busan] at its southern end.


83

Shocked into action the U.S. and its Allies scrambled to

launch a counterattack against the North Korean forces. General

MacArthur, America’s proconsul in Japan, planned and directed

a massive Allied invasion from the sea, at Inchon on the west

side of the Korean peninsula a short distance to the northwest of

Seoul.

The Allies cut the supply lines of the North Korean forces

that were spread throughout the peninsula, and began pushing

them back across the 38th Parallel and on toward the Yalu

River, which marked the border between North Korea and

China.

Earlier, Gen. MacArthur had informed the U.S. Joint Chiefs

of Staff and President Harry S. Truman that the war would be

over by October of that year, so there was no need for U.S.

forces to be outfitted with winter gear for the frigid weather that

literally freezes North Korean during the winter months.

Within days after the Allied counterattack started over half

of the ASA personnel stationed at Oji had been shipped to

South Korea. One of my friends [not a member of my code unit]

was included in this transfer. Three days later he was in Walter

Reed Army Hospital in Washington D.C. He’d been shot in the

butt. I never heard how it happened that he got shot in that

particularly part of his anatomy...or heard from him again, for

that matter.

American war planes flew missions from U.S. airbases in

Japan, making bombing runs on the North Korean forces. After

dropping their bombs and making strafing runs the pilots and

their crews returned to their bases in Japan, and those with

families there went home for dinner that evening.

In November 1950 the Chinese entered the war on North

Korea’s side with an army of some 850,000 so-called volun-

teers, quickly pushing the Allied forces back to the 38th para-

llel, killing and capturing thousands of Allied troops in battles

of epic violence.

Brother Don’s Ordeal

Brother Don, who had enlisted in the army in 1948 and whom I

had last seen when we were both in training in Kentucky that

year, was among the hundreds of thousands of American GI’s


84

shipped to Korea following the outbreak of the war. He and the

16 surviving members of his company were captured by Chin-

ese troops on December 1, shortly after the Chinese crossed the

Yalu River to aid North Korea and began sweeping southward.

Don told me later that he and members of his unit were lucky

to have been captured by Chinese rather than North Koreans

because the latter kept no prisoners, killing them on the spot—a

policy the Chinese changed.

Because American troops had no winter clothing in the frigid

weather, with temperatures as low as 70 degrees below zero,

many of the men froze to death—according to Don, their bodies

becoming as stiff as logs.

The treatment of prisoners of war by their Chinese and North

Korean captors was brutal, to say the least. Over half of the

prisoners in Don’s camp died the first year from wounds,

various ailments and a poor diet [some were reduced to eating

vermin during the early years of their captivity], but my brother

survived, and was finally released after an Armistice was signed

in 1953. He said later that during the negotiations for the

armistice he and the other prisoners received an allotment of

corn that was sufficient for them to regain the weight they had

lost. They were also allowed to work out on parallel bars they

constructed in the prison yard.

I was aboard the Japanese passenger ship Hikawa Maru on

my way back to Tokyo in the summer of 1953 [after graduating

from The American Institute for Foreign Trade, now the famous

Thunderbird School of Global Management], when I received a

cable notifying me that Don had been released and was on his

way back to the U.S.

Our parents had not learned that he was still alive for many

months after he had been reported missing, finally learning that

he was a prisoner of war from a shortwave ham radio operator

in Australia, who forwarded the information on to Arizona

Senator Barry Goldwater [also an avid radio ham operator] who

called my parents and gave them the news.*

___________________________________________________

*Some years after my wife and I moved from Tokyo back to

Arizona in 1963 we bought a home not far from the mountain-


85

top Paradise Valley residence of Senator Goldwater, but he was

seldom there and I never had the opportunity to thank him.

Mom, in particularly, always spoke highly of Goldwater, even

though she didn’t like all of his political views.

___________________________________________________

“Truman’s Year!”

My 3-year enlistment in the ASA was scheduled to end in the

summer of 1951, but soon after the Korean War began in June

of 1950 the U.S. government extended all military enlistments

by one year. That was referred to as “Truman’s Year.”

Starting a Newspaper

In the early summer of 1951 I completed a mail-order course in

journalism, and on my own time started a weekly newspaper

called the ASA Star. Thereafter, I wrote, printed and distributed

the 12-page 11x14-sized publication during my free time. It was

an immediate hit.

I also began sending feature stories on Japanese culture to an

English language magazine called PREVIEW—started some

three years earlier by an ex-G.I named Robert Booth—and then

the second largest circulated English language magazine in

Japan, topped only by Reader’s Digest.

A few weeks later my supervisor where I worked apparently

complained to the second in command at the ASA outpost that I

was too involved in my newspaper and was more interested in

that than in my work. The major called me in and asked me if I

would like to be a newspaperman full time. I said yes and was

reassigned as publisher and editor of the weekly.

Shortly thereafter I signed up for a series of mail-order col-

lege courses offered by the military, and in short order com-

pleted enough courses for two years of college credit.

This credit was to play a major role in my life after I was

transferred back to the U.S. in 1952, discharged from the ser-

vice, and went to Phoenix, Arizona where my parents then

lived.


86

A Visit from my Hatsu-Koi

In the summer of 1951 I got a telephone call from the Guard

Post at the entrance to the ASA compound which was manned

by uniformed Japanese employees, saying that I had a visitor at

the gate. I asked the guard who called me who the visitor was

but he didn’t know. He said it was a girl.

I immediately left my office, less than a hundred yards away,

and walked to the gate. The visitor was Fujie Yamamoto, my

hatsu-koi from the ice-rink. I was surprised to say the least,

because I had not any contact with her since our second meeting

in the fall of 1949—following which, I was to learn much later,

her uncle had told her to stay away from me. The guards let her

come through the gate and walk around behind the guard house

to talk to me.

I later surmised that she must have decided to renew the

relationship that had ended abruptly because she was older and

no longer concerned about her uncle’s opposition. She im-

mediately noticed that I had been promoted and congratulated

me.

By this time I could speak a fair amount of Japanese and

was able to communicate with her. But I was then keeping com-

pany with a girl who worked on the post, which made the

meeting awkward for me, and within a couple of minutes I told

her I had a girl friend. She began crying. She was still crying

when she went back through the gate a moment later, earning

me some hard stares from the Japanese guards.

Losing My Security Clearance

In early 1952 a member of my former code-breaking unit began

asking me to loan him money, offering to return $25 for a $15

loan. I didn’t think much about it and gave him $15. A few days

later he handed me $25.

A week later he came back with the same proposition. This

time I lectured him on his spending habits, telling him he

needed to be more careful with his money… But I gave him

another $15.


87

The third week he again asked me for a loan, and I was naïve

enough to give it to him without becoming suspicious. He had

been with me and the six other members of the code-breaking

unit from the beginning, I thought of him as a good friend, and

liked him a lot because he had an wonderful sense of humor and

kept us all laughing at his amazing portfolio of jokes.

A few days later I was called in by the major who was

second in command at the post and told that loaning money at

onerous rates was unacceptable and warned me to stop it

immediately or risk losing my security clearance.

He then added: “You are too good of a man to let something

like this ruin your career!”

I was shocked speechless for a few seconds, but finally had

the presence of mind to thank the major for warning me and to

promise him I would never do it again.

A short time after this when I was making my regular

weekly rounds delivering the ASA Star, I walked into an office I

thought was empty, and found myself confronting an officer

interviewing my girlfriend who worked on the post as a wait-

ress. I was as surprised as they were. I apologized and quickly

walked out.

I knew something was going on, and was curious to say the

least but was not prepared for what was to happen shortly

thereafter.

A few days later I was notified that my security clearance

had been pulled because one of the close friends of my girl-

friend’s mother had been identified as an active Communist. I

was stunned at this incredible turn of events.

I was given two days to vacate the ASA facility and report to

Camp Bender, about an hour’s train ride north of Tokyo. The

second day I was informed that a jeep driver had been assigned

to take me to Tokyo Station to catch a train.

That morning while I was in my room packing, my girl-

friend and one of her co-workers suddenly entered the room—a

place that was off-limits to them. She had somehow found out

about me being transferred. She was beside herself with grief,

and kept asking why, why. There was nothing I could do or say,

and the situation was such that I finally asked them to leave.


88

Later that morning when the jeep that was taking me to

Tokyo Central Train Station was backing out of the park-ing

area, my girl friend suddenly appeared at its side, clinging to it

as it began moving away, calling out my name and crying

uncontrollably.

Again there was nothing I could do or say. I was still in a

state of shock, and just stared at her until she finally let go of

the side of the jeep as it picked up speed.

When my train arrived at Utsunomiya, where Camp Bender

was located, I was picked up at the station by another jeep

driver and taken to the camp, where I presented myself to the

second in command, a major.

He asked me why I was transferred out of the intelligence

agency to his camp, a huge supply depot for military goods

destined for Korea. I told him everything I knew. Then he asked

me what my job had been at the ASA post. When I told him I

was editor of the post newspaper, he pointed to an empty desk

in his office and said:

“You can use that desk and publish a newspaper for us!”

He then told a sergeant in his office to take me down the

hallway only a few doors from his office, where I was to be

billeted.

An Auspicious Meeting

And the Bender Bulletin

The billet turned out to be a large dorm room that had two

occupants: Jim Walker and Sam Boggs, both of whom were

former soldiers who had taken jobs as Department of the Army

civilian employees, and were to become lifelong friends.

The following week the Bender Bulletin made its debut and

was an instant hit with the military and civilian personal on the

base.

A month later I was asked to promote a lottery in the paper. I

drew the winning ticket, but gave it back to avoid any hint of

impropriety but there was a lot of laughter and a variety of

good-natured comments from the assembled group.


89

Leaving Japan & the Service

After less than three months at Camp Bender, I was shipped to a

staging center in Tokyo then airlifted to Colorado Springs,

Colorado where I was discharged from the service. From there

I went by Greyhound bus to Phoenix, Arizona, where my

parents had moved in the meantime.

Within days after arriving in Phoenix I went to work as an

IBM operator on the swing shift [4 p.m. to midnight] for

Arizona’s Salt River Power Project that supplied water to com-

munities in the central part of the state.

I took the evening shift because I intended to enroll at the

American Institute for Foreign Trade (AIFT) in nearby Glen-

dale, Arizona—the new school my sister had mentioned to me

in her letter in 1946 when I was aboard the USS Fillmore in

Balboa, Panama.

My Year at Thunderbird

On the basis of my two years college credit [obtained while I

was in the ASA] I was accepted by AIFT in their Far Eastern

Area Studies program, taught by Prof. Emily Brown, a former

UPI correspondent in Asia. At that time all courses at the school

were two-semesters long over a nine-month period.

After enrolling at AIFT I bought a new tract house on the

west side of Phoenix using the G.I. Bill that provided home

loans for ex-servicemen. Shortly thereafter I signed it over to

my parents—the first home they had ever owned.

Attending AIFT was an extraordinary experience. I was one

of the three youngest students in my class—the majority being

WWII veterans in their late 20s and 30s, with a number in their

40s and 50s. Altogether there were about 165 in my class,

including six women. Some of the older students were married

and lived on campus with their wives.

There were some really far-out characters in the group, a

number of whom were to play various roles in my life over the

next decades.

One of my dorm mates, Gilbert N. Drake, was a Boston

patrician who had spent three years in Japan in the military and


90

became a life-long friend, dying at the age of 81 in 2009. Gil

remembered only one full sentence in Japanese from his Japan

experience: Anato to issho ni netai desu! [I want to sleep with

you!]

He and I and a couple of other classmates followed a prece-

dent set by earlier AIFTers—making weekend runs to Nogales,

Mexico to party with the bar girls on Canal Street.

One Sunday afternoon when we returned to the campus a

pair of my shorts had been tacked to the school’s public bulletin

board, labeled with my name and the question: “Guess where

these were found!”

I had no memory of losing the shorts and never discovered

who pinned them on the board. On another occasion when we

returned from Nogales we found that all of the furniture of one

of our dorms had been removed and placed on top of the

building.

The Zōri [Zohh-ree] Story

Immediately after starting classes at Thunderbird I began to

make use of the two swimming pools in the middle of the cam-

pus quadrangle, about 25 yards from my dorm. When I dis-

covered how hot the concrete borders around the pools got in

the Arizona sun I began to wear the zōri [thronged “slippers”

now often called flip-flops] that I had brought with me from

Japan. At that time they were made out of cuttings from used

automobile tires.

My classmates wanted to know where I got them. I quickly

dashed off a letter to my Camp Bender friend Jim Walker

asking him to ship me two dozen of the thronged sandals. I sold

all of them except for two samples at $4.00 a pair the first

weekend after they arrived.

The following weekend I canvassed a number of foot-wear

stores in Phoenix and showed them the zōri. They all said they

would stock and sell them. I learned later that at that time there

was one other ex-Japan-based GI selling zōri in Philadelphia.

I had visions of returning to Japan and going into business as

an exporter. But that was not to be for reasons that both then

and now seem to be at odds with the image of the Japanese.


91

Going Back to Japan

By the middle of the last semester at AIFT [spring 1953] I had

not yet been offered a job by the recruiters [mostly bankers]

who came to the school. I obviously was not banker material.

However, I had already resolved to return to Japan with or

without a job, and had applied for admission to Jōchi Daigaku

[Sophia University] in Tokyo as a student in the International

Department, which offered evening classes from 6 to 9 p.m.

Immediately after graduation the AIFT campus emptied out,

leaving only a few who, like me, were waiting to de-part. The

first Sunday after graduation I was hanging around one of the

two pools in the center of the quadrangle, and got the urge to go

to the toilet.

Rather than go to my own dorm that was a short distance

away I stepped into a room adjoining the pool that I thought

was empty—and came face-to-face with one of the older female

students [in her earlier 30s] who was stark naked. She had just

stepped out of the shower.

Instead of screaming or running back into the shower room,

she smiled, languidly covered her breasts with her cupped

hands, and said very quietly: “Eek.”

It took all of my will power for me to rise to the occasion

and demonstrate a similar level of savoir fare.

More Serendipity Kicks In

My admission papers to Sophia and my student visa to Japan

arrived shortly after this incident. I made reservations on a Jap-

anese passenger ship [the Hikawa Maru] sailing for Yokohama

from Seattle, Washington, and bummed a ride with two other

AIFT graduates who were driving to Seattle.

Aboard the Hikawa Maru I met an employee of the Japan

Travel Bureau [JTB], Tsutomu Sugiura (“Tommy”), who was

escorting a number of Fulbright Scholars on their way to Japan

to teach for a year. When I told him I had enrolled for night

classes at Jōchi because I would need to work, he said he would

introduce me to his boss in JTB’s Overseas Travel Department,

located in the Marunouchi Building in front of Tokyo Station.


92

We had been at sea for just a few days when I received a

cable informing me that my brother Don had been released from

the prisoner-of-war camp on the Chinese side of the Yalu River.

Upon arrival in Tokyo I went to the YMCA and within a

minute after I had booked a room I met a distinguished elderly

foreign man in the lobby who identified himself as the owner of

a Vicks salve company on the shores of Lake Biwa near

Kyoto—a place he described as “the center of the universe.”

When he leaned that I had just arrived in Tokyo to enroll in

Sophia and had just booked myself into the YMCA he im-

mediately called a Japanese friend who had been an executive

with Japan Airlines, had cancer, had been off of work for over a

year, and whose wife was looking for a boarder to help with the

family finances.

I quickly de-booked myself at the YMCA and within an hour

was in the large two-story European style home of Mr. and Mrs.

Maruoka, a three minute walk from Iidabashi Station on the

Yamanote commuter train line…just three stops from Yotsuya

Station where Jōchi University was located.

The Maruoka’s and their teenage son, Tokuo [nicknamed

Paul] greeted me warmly, and I became a member of the family.

Paul helped me get settled in a vacant first floor room that had

to be cleaned up and thereafter made a point of talking to me at

every opportunity to practice his English.

Paul went on to graduate from McAllister College in the

U.S., become a banker in Chicago rising to the vice president

level, VP of a major consulting firm in New York, and then

head of the Bank of Hawaii’s operation in Japan, and we have

now been good friends for some 60 years.

After getting settled in at the Maruoka house and registering

at Sophia, I presented myself at JTB’s Overseas Travel

Department and was duly hired as the first full-time postwar

foreign employee of JTB.

My adjoining desk mate was a Japanese my own age, a

graduate of Tokyo University named Akira (Charlie) Inouye

[nicknamed “Hot-Kiss Charlie because of his success with the

ladies], who was to become a lifelong friend and eventually a

multi-millionaire businessman.*


93

___________________________________________________ *In 2005, I had dinner with Tommy Sugiura, who had risen to

become president of JTB International before retiring, and three

other old JTB friends: Hot-kiss Charlie Inouye, M. Itoh and Y.

Yoshida, at the Sheraton Miyako Hotel in Tokyo where I was

staying.

Over the decades I had had an extraordinary relation-ship

with Charlie, helping him leave JTB and become sales manager

of Tokyo’s Hilton Hotel [following which my wife and I

attended his wedding], and then Managing Director of Reader’s

Digest [Japan].

He eventually became president of Blue Chip Japan and a

multi-millionaire. After his retirement he bought a lux-urious

apartment within a short walk of the Sheraton Miyako Hotel.

For the next five years we often met at the Miyako when I was

in Tokyo.

___________________________________________________

My working hours at JTB were 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. five days a

week. My assigned duty was to write and edit English language

copy for the department and to take care of the odd foreigner

who wandered into the office. I also volunteered to tutor rank-

ing managers in English at the nearby Head Office once a week.

End of the Zōri Story

Once settled in at Jōchi and JTB I went to the Asakusa district

of Tokyo where there were half a dozen small zōri shops that

did their own manufacturing—the largest with six or seven

employees. I approached three of them and asked them to quote

me wholesales prices because I wanted to export zōri to the U.S.

All of them refused, saying that selling the sandals at discounts

was too much trouble.

Six years later another ex-GI named Bob Dunham, who had

a one-man one-girl office in the basement of the old Fukoku

building in downtown Tokyo, was exporting some 200,000 zōri

per year.


94

Five years later Mitsubishi Shoji and several other large

trading companies had entered the zōri export business—by

which time the sandals were made from sponge rubber and sold

in the U.S. in the millions of pairs for as little as 69 cents a pair.

Variations of the zōri have since gone both high-tech and high

fashion and sell for big bucks.

The Jōchi University Experience

At Jōchi University my primary subjects were economics and

the Japanese language. Among my classmates were Sandra

[Sandy] Martine, Lou Segaloff, Len Walsh, Ray Moore and

Peter Gibbons—the first two of whom were to play significant

roles in my life in the following decades.

Both Sandy [who had been in Tokyo with her American

family since childhood] and I already spoke basic Japanese [she

far better than me] so during the first semester we mostly read

Japanese language comics while the professor was lecturing.

We had two Japanese language classes per week, each for

one hour…which is not nearly enough to actually learn any

language.

One Friday after classes, Segaloff, Walsh, Moore and I went

to a bar in Shinjuku. After we had been drinking and chatting

with the bar hostesses for about two hours we decided to go

climb Mt. Fuji, and went to Shinjuku Station, about three blocks

away. The last train had just departed for Fujiyoshida, a

gateway town at the base of the north [Tokyo] side of the

mountain. We went back to the bar and stayed there for the rest

of the night, returning to the station early in the morning and

catching the first train out.

At Fujiyoshida we boarded a bus that took us to Station 5 on

the waist of Mt. Fuji, and began our climb from there. At first

the incline of the trail was fairly modest, but it got steeper and

rougher as we went up. From Station 5 there are seven more

stations, each with a number of sub-stations in between. It took

us about eight hours to reach the top, each one of us about 20

minutes apart. Moore, the heaviest drinker and the skinniest,

reached the top first; Walsh was second; I was third, and

Segaloff came in last. That night we slept in a hut in the shallow


95

bowel at the top of the mountain. It was so cold I ended up with

around ten heavy futon [thick, padded quilts] on top of me.

After a bowl of hot noodles we started down, but not on the

trail we had climbed up. We descended the mountain on an

adjoining smooth portion that consisted primarily of volcano

ash and small rocks, which resulted in us slipping and sliding

down with great speed. It took us less than two hours to reach

Station 5. The train from Fujiyoshida back to Tokyo was

packed so we had to stand up in the aisle. I finally passed out

and stayed slumped down on the floor for over an hour.

At the end of the first year at Sophia classmates Len Walsh

and Ray Moore transferred to International Christian University

[ICU] in Mitaka just west of Tokyo because the first year there

was devoted totally to learning Japanese in a very intensive

course that required several additional hours of home study.

When Len and Ray left Sophia my Japanese was much better

than theirs. By the time they finished the two-semester course at

ICU they were fully fluent in the language while I was still on a

basic level. As a result of their fluency in Japanese, both Len

and Ray went on to have successful careers—Len in intel-

ligence work and Ray as a professor at Amherst University.

Looking Up My Hatsu-Koi

Several months after going to work at JTB I gave in to the

impulse to see if my would-be hatsu-koi Fujie Yamamoto was

still working at the ice-rink in Ryogoku. I went to the rink on a

Sunday and found that she was still there. The meeting was

short because her uncle was there and his glowering presence

made her uncomfortable.

I did tell her I had left the service and was in Japan as a

civilian, going to Jōchi Daigaku at night and working in the

Marunouchi Building office of the Japan Travel Bureau during

the day.

A few days after my short visit to the ice-rink Fujie tele-

phoned me. This time I was intimidated by the presence of my

co-workers listening to the conversation, and didn’t say much.

After that she called me several times, but I did not see her. I


96

learned that her uncle and her parents were still pressuring her

to stay away from me. The calls from her finally stopped.

In the spring of 1954 Tommy Sugiura, my JTB bene-factor,

told me he was going to escort one of the Fulbright families

who had been on the Hikawa Maru with us to Yokohama for

their return to the U.S., and asked me to accompany him in a

chauffeur-driven limousine. The family had two daughters; by

that time four and six years old. During the drive to Yokohama

the two young girls chatted away in Japanese to the driver,

Tommy and me. The youngest one was especially fluent. Their

parents had a Japanese vocabulary of five or six words.

Over the years I was reminded of this incident because

educators in the U.S. refused to understand and accept the idea

that the best time for people to become fluent in more than one

language is when they are infants and very young kids.

Becoming Editor of PREVIEW Magazine

A little over a year after I began at Sophia and started working

at JTB one of my old ASA friends, Bob Black, who had taken

his discharge in Japan, introduced me to Robert Booth, the

publisher of PREVIEW Magazine that I had submitted articles

to when I was still with the Agency. Booth had arrived in

Tokyo several years earlier as a member of the Occupation

Forces, taken his discharge there and gone into the publishing

business.

Booth said he was in need of a new editor for the magazine

and offered me the job. I resigned from JTB and went to work

for him. My Sophia University classmate Sandy Martine was

already a contributor to the magazine.

Booth was a famous character in Tokyo at that time.

Absolutely fluent in Japanese, he had appeared in several Japan-

ese films, performed in rakugo [rah-koo-go] comic skits on

stage at the Nichigeki Theater, and on the side was co-publisher

of the book I Was Defeated, the story of Yoshio Kodama, one

of the most notorious nationalists in the country who had been

charged as a war criminal, put in Sugamo Prison by the U.S.

Occupation forces after the end of World War II, and finally

released in 1948.


97

Another reason for Booth’s unusual notoriety was that he

had bought a Rolls Royce that had been owned by the Imperial

Household in the 1930s and used by Emperor Hirohito. The

Imperial Household sold the car to a private owner during the

war years.

The new owner converted it to a kind of pick-up truck with a

flatbed taking up about half of the length of the vehicle. After

Booth bought it from him we used it to tool around Tokyo,

creating quite a stir.

However, my time at PREVIEW Magazine was to be short-

lived. Shortly after going to work there I learned that the maga-

zine was near bankruptcy because with the end of the U.S.-led

Occupation of Japan in 1952 the number of foreigners in the

country had diminished dramatically, causing the circulation of

the magazine to drop below 3,000 copies a month. But I hung in

and edited the next four issues.

Appearing in Japanese Movies

During that period Booth got me parts in two Japanese films,

one of which was a famous series called Sugata Sanshiro, in

which I got to dance with the leading lady, Takachiho Hizuru,

and fight the leading actor. I lost the fight.

Not long after I went to work for Booth I came down with a

severe case of hemorrhoids and was told that I needed an oper-

ation as early as possible. I introduced my classmate Peter Gib-

bons to Booth as a stand-in for me while I was in the hospital.

The operation, at a Catholic-run foreign clinic in west To-

kyo, was routine—at least for the doctors. On the third day I

found out from a Japanese patient who shared my room that he

was being charged far less than me for the same procedure. I

started to get up and get dressed, intending to check myself out.

But I passed out on the floor.

On the fifth day I manage to leave the hospital, and there-

after disputed the bill, finally managing to get it reduced by

half. After staying home for an additional five days I went back

to work.


98

However, my erstwhile friend Peter Gibbons treated me like

a newcomer seeking employment, saying that he had taken over

as the editor. This odd impasse was not to last very long.

Shortly after I returned to work at PREVIEW I got a call

from Fujie Yamamoto’s uncle who said he wanted to talk to me.

I agreed to meet him in a nearby coffee shop. It turned out

that Fujie had been insisting that I was an honorable man and

that she wanted to marry me. Her uncle asked me if I wanted to

marry her, and I said no…I just wanted to be her friend. He

apparently told her, and that appeared to end the matter.

At that time, there were dozens of large cabarets and

nightclubs in Tokyo. Booth had been instrumental in start-ing

one of the cabarets on the Ginza not far from our office, named

Mississippi after his home state. He sometimes treated us at the

cabaret, and I ended up getting acquainted with one of the

hostesses, Kimiko, who spoke good English and fancied herself

a singer. She soon became my steadiest girlfriend. There were

two other girls I had taught at a special English language studio

that I spent some time with. One of my students at the studio

was a high-born lady in her 60s who was married to a former

count or duke, and did her best to seduce me by taking me out

after class to exclusive inns, ostensibly for dinner, that were

primarily patronized by people having illicit affairs.

I also found out that Booth and my new girl friend Kimiko

had had an affair. He was married to a Japanese girl but also

had another girlfriend on the side.

End of PREVIEW Magazine

Soon after this, Booth, who had not paid his printer for several

months and couldn’t pay the salaries of his staff, suddenly dis-

appeared. For several days after his disappearance no one at the

office knew where he was.

It than came out in The Japan Times that he had been

arrested and was in jail. I went to the Toranomon Police Station

in an attempt to see him, but was not let in. That night my

landlady told me that the police had been there asking questions

about me, but I was never contacted directly by the police.


99

Our office was located in the Yuasa Denchi (Yuasa Battery)

Building at 8-chome on the Ginza. Booth had not paid the rent

for several months, and with him out of the picture the angry

owner of the building barred the office, making it impossible for

us to get in and retrieve our personal things.*

___________________________________________________

*It was to be some 20 years before I heard anything else about

what had happened to Booth. I finally learned from Sandy

Martine [by then married to Seichiro Mori of the Mori Silver

Company) who knew Booth’s Japanese wife, that he had some-

how been released from jail, left Japan unofficially on a

freighter going to New Zealand, and eventually ended up in the

U.S. working for a major magazine publishing conglomerate in

Iowa. By the time I finally heard from him directly [as a result

of him contacting me about my books on Japan] he was living

in New Orleans.

___________________________________________________

Booth had a managed to pay me only a token amount after

my first month with the magazine. Without income for the next

several months I was reduced to borrowing money from Tom

Hitchcock, a Thunderbird classmate who was stationed in

Tokyo as an executive of a New York bank, in order to pay my

rent and eat. It was three months before I was able to pay him

back. He went on to become a vice president of the bank.

Turned Down by Tuttle Publishing Company

After PREVIEW magazine closed down in 1954 I first went to

the Tuttle Publishing Company, the leading Eng-lish language

book publisher in Tokyo at that time, and applied for a job. The

editor, Meredith “Tex” Weatherby, was friendly enough but

[fortunately] didn’t hire me.

Tuttle Publishing, founded in Tokyo in 1948 by Charles E.

Tuttle, a former officer in the Occupation Forces and a member

of the Tuttle publishing family in Rutland, Vermont, had be-

come the largest publisher of English languages books in

Japan…in Asia for that matter. In addition to publishing new


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books on Japan, Tuttle picked upon some of the classics like

The Book of Tea and the titles of Lafcadio Hearn whose

copyrights had expired. These and similar titles became a

backlist gold mine for the new company.

Teaming Up with a “White Russian”

During my short tenure at PREVIEW Magazine I had become

acquainted with one of the advertising salesmen, George Po-

krovsky, the son of a White [non-Communist] Russian family

who had fled Russian during the Communist Revolution in the

early 1920s, making their way across Russia to Mukden, and

finally to Japan in the late 1920s. The refugee father had been

an orchestra conductor in Moscow. George, born and raised in

Yokohama, was my age.

With PREVIEW closed down George decided to start his own

monthly magazine called Far East REPORTER. I agreed to

become the editor.

Our office was in the unused, unfinished basement of the

Konwa Building on the border of the Ginza shopping district

and Tsukiji, just east of the famous Kabuki-Za Theater.

But this didn’t work out for me because the magazine didn’t

generate enough income to pay salaries. I left after one month.

George persevered, however, eventually changing the name

of the magazine to The Far East TRAVELER and riding the

wave of Japan’s economic rise to become the most successful

travel publication in Japan at that time, making him wealthy. He

had came up with an outstanding way to get exposure and

readership for the magazine by getting it distributed free-of-

charge in hotel rooms in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong,

a type of distribution that appealed greatly to airlines serving

Asia, to the huge Duty Free Shoppers organization, and to other

advertisings wanting to reach affluent travelers.

Some years later I became a contributing editor and advisor

to the Far East TRAVELER, and then after another time-gap of

several years, I became a columnist for the magazine after it

survived the crash of 1991-2001 by morphing into a monthly

publication called TRAVEL PLAN, a relationship that con-


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tinues as of this writing [2012] under the editorship of George’s

son, Mike.

The KEMBUN Episode

After leaving Far East REPORTER I teamed up with Lou Sega-

loff, my former Sophia classmates. who had managed to get a 3-

month subsidy from the American Embassy to publish a weekly

English language newspaper named KEMBUN [which literally

means “See / Hear”] aimed at Marxist-leaning Japanese uni-

versity students.

Our office was located on the second floor of the Victoria

Coffee Shop on Hibiya Street in Yurakucho, adjoining the

elevated railway tracks—a space now occupied by the South

Tower of the twin Yurakucho Denki Building complex and

adjoined on the west side by the Japan branch of Hong Kong’s

famed Peninsula Hotel.

The Peninsula Hotel is on the site previously occupied by the

Nikkatsu Hotel, the first modern hotel built in Tokyo after

WWII. I watched the process from the excavation of the lot for

the basement floors and was a frequent visitor after it was

completed because it contained a number of trading company

offices and was popular with visiting importers.

Getting my Degree from Jōchi

I finished my studies at Jōchi University in the spring of 1954,

and turned in my graduation thesis on the history of the political

relationship between Japan and Russia. The thesis was some

280 pages long. My professor—if memory serves, a guy named

Chalmers Johnson who was later to become famous as a CIA

consultant, author and advisor to presidents—hefted the thick

manuscript in his hands, flipped the pages, handed it back to me

and said: “Cut it down to about 75 or 80 pages and bring it in

again.”

Some weeks later, on a hot summer weekend day, I was

sitting on the tatami-mat floor of my one-room apartment,

working on the thesis manuscript. I could hear crickets chirping

outside. I slid into a kind of reverie and clearly saw myself as a


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wandering priest making my way along a path through the

head-high grass that covered the plains west of Tokyo during

the 8th and 9th centuries. When I came out of the reverie I felt

like it had been totally real, and it was to remain fixed in my

brain thereafter.

Because of the set-back with my thesis I did not receive my

diploma from Jōchi until the spring of 1955. When the Dean of

the University handed me the document he said: “De Mente! I

never thought you would make it!” He had never been im-

pressed with my off-campus activities!

Japan Will Never Amount to Anything!

I also had begun to have doubts about the wisdom of hanging

on in Tokyo, and one day when I was at the Foreign Cor-

respondent’s Club I ran into the famous British foreign cor-

respondent Hessel Tiltman, and asked him if it was a good

career choice for me to remain in Japan. His reply: “No! Go

Home! Japan will never amount to anything.”

Encounters with the CIA

While working at KEMBUN I was approached by an American

civilian who had access to U.S. military installations in Tokyo

and invited me to one of them for lunch. It turned out he was a

member of the CIA. He offered me an assignment—asking me

to write a confidential report on the character, political views

and activities of my foreign friends, namely Lou Segaloff, Len

Walsh and Ray Moore, my Sophia classmates.

I duly wrote out a completely neutral portrayal of the three,

and turned it in. The agent paid me ten thousand yen [at that

time the equivalent of a few hundred dollars in purchasing

power]. He then gave me a second assignment: digging up

confidential information on the activities of a fairly well known

Japanese businessman who had some mysterious connections

with several organizations, including the American Embassy.

I called the fellow up, told him I was a journalist, and said

that I wanted to interview him. He readily agreed. I spent an

hour in his office asking him all about his activities—which as

related to me were not incriminating in any way. I wrote up the


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interview and gave it to the CIA agent. He paid me another ten

thousand yen and I never heard from him again.

That, however, was not that last time that I came under the

CIA radar in Tokyo. The agency had agents following all of the

staff of the Russian Embassy whenever they left their building

[always in a group].

One evening when Lou Segaloff and I were on the Ginza in

one of the bar and cabaret-filled backstreets an official car from

the Russian Embassy, with what appeared to be two high-

ranking officials in it, stalled-out right in front of us and was

blocking traffic. Lou and I and several Japanese revelers pushed

the car until the driver got it restarted and drove away.

On another weekend occasion, Lou, myself and two other

friends went to the beach in Kamakura. We laid our towels next

to other towels already spread out on the beach, and went into

the water.

After frolicking for an hour or so we came out to rest and

sunbathe for a while. The owners of the towels next to us had

returned by this time. They turned out to be members of the

Russian Embassy.

On still another occasion I went to a hospital in Shinbashi to

see if I could get a tattoo removed [the doctor literally carved it

out with a knife]. The doctor told me that he had treated several

members of the Russian Embassy who had come to him for

other reasons.

And finally, one day when I was in the waiting room of the

office of Dr. Theodore King [an ethnic Chinese who was fluent

in several languages] to get a radiation treatment for a severe

jock rash that wouldn’t go away, the telephone rang. The

receptionist answered the phone, listened for a few seconds and

then held it up and said: “De Mente san, it’s for you.”

I got up and started for her desk. Another man got up and got

to the phone first. He listed intently for a few seconds and was

obviously confused. He said something in Russian, looked even

more surprised, and then handed the phone to me.

It was Lou Segaloff my friend and coworker. When I was

called into Dr. King’s office I asked him who the man was. I

learned that Dr. King had spent years in eastern Russia, spoke


104

Russian fluently, and that the man, whose name was also De

Mente, was from the Russian Embassy.

Dr. King became our family doctor after Margaret War-ren

and I were married in Tokyo in 1958, and delivered our first

child—a story within itself. I wish I had learned more about his

extraordinary background. His son is still in practice in Tokyo,

not far from where Margaret and I lived.

Creating TODAY’S JAPAN

When the KEMBUN subsidy from the American Embassy that

Segaloff had somehow finagled ran out I went to work for a

small company called Cross-Continent owned by an American

from Philadelphia named Marvin Meyer. One of his enterprises

was TODAY’S TOKYO, a weekly entertainment and shopping

tabloid-sized newspaper.

Meyer’s chief interpreter and assistant was a Japanese man

my age named Haruo (Harry) Shinoda…who was to become a

lifelong personal and family friend.

Shortly after joining Meyer’s company we inaugurated a

monthly magazine called TODAY’S JAPAN – The Magazine of

Modern Japan. As the editor, I had the great fortune to meet an

interview a number of well-known individuals, including the

master potter Shoji Hamada and Zen master Daisetsu Suzuki,

and to work with the great artist Taro Okamoto, authors R. H.

Blyth, Glenn Shaw, Junichi Tanizaki, Donald Richie, and

others. Richie had written one story for me when I was editor of

the ill-fated PREVIEW Magazine…a penetrating essay on To-

kyo’s famous coffee-shop culture.

To supplement the salary I received from Cross-Continent I

went to work for The Japan Times, Japan’s leading English

language daily newspaper, on the swing shift – from 4 p.m. to

midnight. Since I had a way with catchy phrases, I soon became

the head-line writer. Editors around the square of desks would

toss their completed stories to me and I would write the head-

lines.


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The “Half-Safe” Amphibious Jeep Saga

In the late fall of 1956 there was a story in The Japan Times

about an Australian named Ben Carlin who had arrived in Japan

on an amphibious jeep dubbed “HALF-SAFE” [after a “don’t

be half-safe” deodorant commercial], on the final leg of a

journey around the world on the jeep…a trip that had begun in

New York in 1948 with his American wife Elinore.

The story said that Carlin was looking for a “mate” to join

him on the rest of the trip from Tokyo to the U.S. via the North

Pacific, the Bering Sea, the Shelikoff Strait and on up to

Anchorage, Alaska…and from there on to the east coast of the

U.S.

The story added that Carlin’s American wife Elinore who had

accompanied him across the Atlantic and then on as far as India

had left both the jeep and him in India, following which he had

recruited another young Australian man to join him because at

sea the jeep could not be operated safely or efficiently by one

person.

By the time they reached the southern shores of Japan this

new mate had also had enough of the jeep and Carlin, and had

returned to Australia.

I was intrigued. I called Carlin, who was living in a rented

room in the Shinagawa area of Tokyo, and set up a time to visit

him. One of my Japanese friends who also worked for Cross-

Continent drove me to the meeting.

In short, I agreed to join Carlin on the last and longest sea-

going portion of the trip…which was to start in the spring of

1957 by which time the weather in the North Pacific, and along

the Kurile Islands, the Bering Sea and the Aleutian chain would

be more amenable.

That winter I came down with what turned out to be pneu-

monia. I didn’t go to a doctor or hospital and was laid up for

three weeks, It was not until I was in my 70s that I learned it

had scarred the bottom half of my left lung, making it useless.

As the day for the departure of Half-Safe approached there

were some ominous incidents involving Carlin that were to

come back to haunt me during the forthcoming voyage. After

one of these incidents, which occurred just days before we were


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scheduled to leave Tokyo, my then Japanese girlfriend, Kimiko,

said to me: “You’re not near-ly as smart as I thought you were!”

But I was committed to making the journey, and we sub-

sequently left Tokyo on May 3 1957, arriving in Anchorage,

Alaska on September 3, exactly four months later.

Our departure from Tokyo from the front of the Mainichi

Newspaper building was covered by a large group of reporters,

one of whom noticed my girlfriend Kimiko at my side. He

asked her if she was Mrs. De Mente. She said yes. I quickly

informed the reporter that she was my girlfriend, not my wife.

Carlin smiled and invited Kimiko to ride in the jeep with us to

our first stop—a restaurant on the outskirts of Tokyo. That was

not to be the end of that story.

Our first landfall after leaving the port city of Wakkanai in

northeaster Hokkaido was the island of Shemya in the Alaskan

Aleutian chain, after 28 days at sea. Our arrival and 10-day stay

on Shemya was an adventure in itself but suffice to say at the

moment one of the people I met on the island was a fellow

named John Rohrbough, who had just been assigned to the

island by Northwest Airlines as a Flight Controller to guide

planes in for landings, and was undergoing training.

I was in the control shack where he worked when he was

called on to talk his first plane in. There was a heavy fog with a

ceiling of no more than 300 feet, and John was nervous. Just

seconds before the descending plane broke through the fog, he

said something to the effect of “Taken over and land!”

However, at that time the pilot still could not see the runway

and he knew there was low hill at the far end. Rather than

continue descending blind in the fog he gunned the engines and

headed back up. The plane passed almost directly over the top

of the control shack with a shattering roar. There was dead

silence in the control shack, but the plane made it back up into

the air.

That was not my last encounter with John Rohrbough. Some

time after I returned to Tokyo in 1958 he showed up in Japan as

an employee of a CIA front-company, along with a new wife,

Mary-Alice, who had been a stewardess on Alaska Airlines and

had also met him on Shemya. Following my marriage to


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Margaret Warren in September 1958 we all became good family

friends, and this past Friday [20 May 2012] Margaret and I had

lunch with Mary-Alice and her second husband, who were

visiting Phoenix from their home in Port Angeles, Washington.

She and John had divorced years ago. He moved to Perth,

Australia, became a citizen, and died there.

To keep this reference to the very long and incredible jeep

story short, after my portion of the journey was over I too had

had far too much of Carlin and jumped jeep in Anchorage,

Alaska. I left him and the jeep three days after we arrived in

Anchorage and flew to Phoenix, where my parents still lived.

The trip made the Guinness Book of World Records, Life

Magazine and dozens of other publications around the world.

My book about the experience, ONCE A FOOL–From Japan to

Alaska by Amphibious Jeep, is available from Amazon.com.

Meeting Margaret Warren

And Returning to Japan

During my first week at home following my arrival in Phoenix

from Anchorage an employment agency got me a job as editor

of the weekly Glendale News in Glendale, a small satellite city

northeast of Phoenix [and the location of The American

Institute for Foreign Trade that I had graduated from in 1953].

After three weeks at this job, which did not pay well, the

same employment agency sent me to The Valley National Bank,

headed by banking pioneers Walter Bimson and his brother

Carl, who were looking for an assistant for their flamboyant

public relations director, Charlie Pine.

I was interviewed by Carl Bimson, second in command at

the bank, who asked me why I was not married at the age of 28.

I told him I had spent the last eight years in Japan, where there

were few choices other than Japanese, and that I was looking

forward to finding someone in Phoenix. He approved my em-

ployment.

My office, next to Charlie Pine’s, was in the Security Build-

ing across the street from the bank headquarters. One day when

I was standing in the doorway of Charlie’s office, waiting for

him to get off the phone with Bimson, the president, he leaned


108

so far back in his chair that it fell over, sending him sprawling.

Without losing a syllable he said to Bimson, “I just fell out of

my chair!” and continued as if nothing had happened.

In the early spring of 1958 I was invited by a woman em-

ployee of the bank to attend a Young Republicans rally for a

Phoenix politician, Paul Fannin, who was running for governor.

At the rally, held in a banquet room at The Islands restaurant on

North 7th Street in Phoenix, I was introduced to 22-year old

Margaret Warren, who was also an employee of the bank and

worked in a first-floor office in the Security Building.

After the rally began to wind down I ask Margaret if she

would like to rendezvous with me at the Carnation Restaurant,

at the intersection of Central Avenue and Indian School Road

for a snack. She agreed. After we ate and talked we made a date

to go to a movie that weekend. We went to the Palms Theater

on Central Avenue and saw “Bridge over the River Kwai.”

That date was followed by several others, during which I

introduced Margaret to my parents and my sister Winnie who

owed a vacation home in Oak Creek Canyon above Sedona,

Arizona and whose hospitality we enjoyed a number of times.

The ORIENTAL AMERICA /

IMPORTER Magazine Saga

Some two months after meeting Margaret I received a phone

call from Emily Brown, my old professor at the American

Institute for Foreign Trade [AIFT], who asked me if I would

like to go back to Tokyo as editor of a new monthly trade

magazine called Oriental America that had been started by

AIFT-grad Ray Woodside and his Japanese wife Niki some 18

months earlier.

I naturally said yes, and then reluctantly informed Charlie

Pine that I had decided to go back to Japan where I had already

invested eight years of my life and was hooked on the unique

Japanese culture.

On my next meeting with Margaret when she was driving us

somewhere, I turned to her and asked: “How would you like to

live in Tokyo for a few years?”


109

She was fast on the uptake. “Is that a proposal?” she asked.

When I said yes, her face lit up in a remarkable smile and

she squeezed my hand. I still remember today how good her

response made me feel.

I then told her I would be leaving for Tokyo as soon as I

could get a work visa; and that after I got settled in my new job

and found a suitable apartment I would send for her and we

would be married there. I was back in Tokyo with-in the month.

Ray Woodside and his Japanese wife Niki [oldest daughter

of a prominent Honda family in Nagoya] had started Oriental

America in 1956 with the idea of featuring traditional Japanese

products, thus the name of the magazine. The office of the new

magazine was the two front rooms of the house Ray and his

wife lived in near Sendagaya Station on the Chuo commuter

train line on the west side of Tokyo.

The Amazing Sony Story

One of the first advertisers in Oriental America in 1956 was a

small company with an unusual product and odd name. In the

late 1940s two remarkable individuals, an engineer named

Masaru Ibuka and an ambitious young man named Akio Morita

had founded a small company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo

K.K. [Tokyo Communications Industrial Co., Ltd.], bought the

rights to a new transistor device invented by an American and

began the development of a small radio that used transistors

instead of vacuum tubes.

Ibuka was 38, Morita was 25. Morita’s family, which had

been in the sake brewing business for 14 generations, put up the

seed money for the new company.

During the development period both Ibuka and Morita slept

on cots in the factory [in the Shinagawa district of Tokyo] for

months at a time, with their wives bringing them food. Soon

after they had a working version of the radio they chose the

made-up word Sony as its brand name. It was later explained

that they had chosen “Sony” because it sounded a bit like

“sunny.”

Their first efforts to export the new radio were not suc-

cessful, so one of the steps they took in 1953 was to change the


110

name of the company to Sony because foreigners could neither

pronounce nor remember the name Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K.

In 1956, still struggling to market the radio abroad, Sony

placed an ad in one of the first issues of Oriental America. The

company took a one-sixth of a page ad in the magazine [the

smallest ad offered] on a three-month con-tract [the shortest

contract], promoting the tiny hand-held radio.

The advertisement resulted in General Distributors in

Canada and Delmonico in New York becoming Sony’s first

major foreign importer-distributors—and the rest, as the saying

goes, is history. But what really put Sony on the world map was

the fact that Morita, who turned out to be a master promoter,

moved to New York in 1963, set up Sony USA and brought the

importing and distributing of the radio in-house.

Birth of The IMPORTER

By January of 1958 Ray had realized that the primary focus of

Oriental America should be serving the American retail chains

and importers who had begun coming to Japan looking for

Japanese companies to knock-off a broad range of consumer

products at prices far below what was then prevailing in the

U.S.

Thousands of new Japanese companies had begun manu-

facturing a wide range of department store and novelty store

merchandise, with their sales depending on foreign buyers who

came to Japan or were stationed there. By 1957 Sears had 65

buyers permanently stationed in Tokyo alone.

When I arrived in Tokyo in the spring of 1958 the office of

Oriental America was still the two front two rooms of Ray and

Niki’s home. That was awkward to say the least [not to

mention that they had two young sons who could not be kept

out of the office space], but my work went well. I was able to

provide a professional touch to the content of the first issue of

the magazine I edited.

Ray had already bought a vacant lot a short distance away,

near Harajuku Station, and had started construction on a new


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two-story office building...a five-minute walk from the Hara-

juku apartment I had rented.

We moved into the new office building in August, with one

of the greatest advantages being able to greet visiting buyers

and executives from the U.S. in an attractive office…that was,

however, done up in traditional Japanese style [under Niki’s

direction], which meant that both employees and visitors were

required to remove their shoes in the entrance foyer.

Shortly after we moved into the new office building we

changed the name of the magazine from ORIENTAL AMERICA

to The IMPORTER – Asian Products for Western Markets. The

subscription list of American and European importers and

would-be importers ballooned from the first issue of the newly

named magazine. [The only newsstand sales of the magazine

had been in leading hotels in Tokyo and Osaka, and we stopped

this form of distribution.]

The number of visiting importers who wanted to meet the

people who published The IMPORTER also spiraled upward

after the name change.

Ray’s wife, Niki, who tooled around Tokyo in a large

chauffeur-driven car they had brought with them from the U.S.,

had proven to be a master salesperson. We also had Japanese

sales reps in Nagoya and in the Osaka-Kobe area. With the new

format and ad sales climbing rapidly, we began taking steps to

open sales offices in Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

In addition to covering trade shows, visiting Japanese man-

ufacturers searching for new products and interviewing foreign

buyers, I began a series of articles de-signed to explain the

mind-set and behavior of the Japanese to our importer sub-

scribers—a course that was to fundamentally change my life.

Shortly after moving into the new office building Ray and I

joined the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan as associate

members. This led to a variety of experiences, including hearing

many visiting notables speak at the club, including Yuri

Gagarin, the Russian astronaut who be-came the first human

being to go into space, and Robert Kennedy, who was then

running for the presidency of the U.S. I also met and talked


112

briefly to Valentina Tereshkova, the Russian astronaut who

became the first female in space.

I was both surprised and shocked by the reaction of virtually

all of the American correspondents to the Russian astronauts.

Their questions were juvenile and disparaging. The only

exception to this display of childish envy was Mack Chrysler,

Asian correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. In those

encounters as well as other interview situations his questions

were professional and resulted in interesting responses.

The Ongoing Sony Story

In addition to Oriental America’s success story with Sony the

newly named IMPORTER magazine was to become directly

responsible for thousands of other Japanese manufacturers and

trading companies establishing their first contacts with Ame-

rican and European importers—and was to play an incredible

role in the rise of Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea as

economic powerhouses.

But the story of the tiny transistor radio maker, which had

changed its name to Sony, and The IMPORTER was not over.

Within days after we moved into the new office building

Sony sent a full page ad to our advertising department that was

designed to celebrate the fifth anniversary of their name change

from Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. to Sony.

There were several conspicuous mistakes in the copy of the

advertisement. Our office manager [Kozuka San] telephoned

the company and asked for permission to correct the mistakes.

The export manager, who doubled as the advertising manager

and spoke no English, refused his request.

Ray then told Kozuka and me to go to Sony and make the

case directly. We went to Sony’s small headquarters building in

the Shinagawa district of Tokyo to ask that we be allowed to

correct the language in order to avoid embarrassing both Sony

and the magazine. Both Ray and I believed that my going with

Kozuka and showing my foreign face would make a difference.

It did not. The export manager not only refused our request, he

got angry about it.


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Ray refused to run the full-page ad. Sony blacklisted The

IMPORTER, and to my knowledge never again advertised in the

magazine. Later there was to be another chapter in my run-in

with Sony.

[At this writing, foreign competition and the passing of the

original Sony pioneers have apparently sapped both the vision

and the strength that marked its early years.]

Margaret Arrives with a Typhoon

Margaret Warren, my soon-to-be-wife, arrived in Yokohama in

September 1958 on a Japanese freighter just ahead of a typhoon.

The wind was already so strong that the ship anchored out in the

bay and the dozen or so passengers on board were offloaded

onto a shuttle boat that brought them to the dock.

My boss Ray drove me to Yokohama to pick her up. By the

time we got to our apartment on a narrow sidewalk-less lane in

Harajuku [a 5-minute walk from our office] it was raining hard.

When Margaret exited from the car she stepped into an 18-inch

deep drainage ditch that was already filled with water. That was

her introduction to five extraordinary years of life in Japan.

Three days after she arrived I left for Hong Kong on a 5-day

trip with Ray to set up an office there. Before leaving, I took

Margaret to two shopping streets within short walks of the

apartment and taught her how to order a few things like meat

and eggs in Japanese. The lesson she learned best was how to

say 200 grams in Japanese. For the next few months, she

ordered almost everything in ni-hyaku guramu [nee-h’yah-kuu

guu-rah-muu].

We were married on 29 September 1958. A short time later

we got a telephone call from the Japanese Immigration Office in

Yokohama, where Margaret had landed. On the disembarkation

form she had filled out she had put “To get married” as the

reason for her coming to Japan. That was not an acceptable

reason for being admitted into the country and some clerk had

finally discovered it when reviewing the document.

When the caller asked for Margaret Warren I told him there

was no Margaret Warren…that she was my wife, Margaret De

Mente. The caller didn’t know how to respond to that and hung


114

up. A few minutes later he called back and asked if we would

come to the Immigration Office in Yokohama and re-register

her as Mrs. Margaret De Mente. We did so the following day.

A month or so after this event Margaret got a job as secretary

at the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan…a job that

lasted for only a few weeks because her typing ability and short-

hand speed did not compare with that of the lady she replaced:

Kim Kawahara, a tournament quality high-speed typist whose

abilities had spoiled the director of the Chamber.

Margaret was sorely disappointed, but I was pleased that she

could stay home and avoid the traffic and pollution that kept

Tokyo smothered in a blanket of thick smog. [Children in

Tokyo at that time had never seen the stars in a night-time sky.]

As an added bonus, Kim, a Canadian from Montreal, and her

husband Frank Kawahara, an American from St. Louis, quickly

became our best friends — a relationship that was to deepen,

expand and endure after we all moved back to the U.S.

Frank died in 2011. Kim and their remarkable children and

grand children are flourishing.

The IMPORTER Magazine Success Story

By the end of my first year with The IMPORTER we had open-

ed offices in Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and thereafter I

covered these areas on the editorial side. South Korea still

looked like a basket case at that time, and even though I found

Koreans to be an incredible people, in the next few years I was

still astonished at how quickly they modernized the country and

become an export power-house.

This came about because for the first time in the history of

the country ordinary Koreans were free to better themselves,

and prompted by a compelling concept subsumed in the word

han (hahn), which refers to unfulfilled desires and longings,

they were motivated to study and work with a kind of frenzy…a

trait that continues today—to the point that in 2011 the gov-

ernment issued orders requiring independent afterhours cram

schools to close by 11 p.m. so students could go home, get

some sleep and rest for school the following morning.


115

The first manager of our Hong Kong office was an Eng-

lishman who had been born and raised in China, had a Chinese

wife, and was totally fluent in Chinese. But he was totally inept

as a salesman. We then hired James Sweeney, a new AIFT

graduate, to run the office, which at that time was located on the

mezzanine floor of the famous Peninsula Hotel.

All of our Asian branch sales offices thrived because of the

insatiable desire of new small manufacturers and exporters in

these countries to make contact with American and European

importers looking for cheap foreign-made products. The drive

of newly freed Koreans, Taiwanese and Hong Kongese to better

their lives by repeating the pattern set by the Japanese was

incredible.

My First Business Book

In the early spring of 1959, with Ray’s approval, I strung to-

gether all of the magazine articles I had done on the Japanese

way of thinking and doing things, wrote several more, added an

introduction, entitled it STRANGE BED-FELLOWS – Japanese

Manners & Ethics in Business, and sent the manuscript off to

McGraw-Hill in New York. The word came back that there

would not be enough interest in such a book to warrant its pub-

lication. I got the same response from Prentice-Hall.

I then went to the Charles E. Tuttle Publishing Company in

Tokyo, the leading publisher of English language books in

Japan at that time, and talked to Tex Weatherby, the editor-in-

chief, about publishing the book.

Weatherby quickly glanced through the introduction and the

chapter headings on the contents pages, liked what he saw and

said he was interested. He then tapped the subtitle, Japanese

Manners & Ethics in Business, and said: “This is your title; not

Strange Bedfellows!”

He asked me what royalty percentage I wanted and when I

said fifteen percent he replied: “I’ll have to think about that.

Give me a couple of days to talk to our marketing people. Call

me later in the week.”

I reported this to Ray. He thought for a while and said that if I

agreed, East Asia Publishing Company, his company, would


116

publish the book, pay me a twenty per-cent royalty and promote

it through The IMPORTER.

I accepted his very generous offer then called Weatherby,

explained the arrangement and ask him if Tuttle would dis-

tribute the book in Japan. He agreed. He also agreed to let East

Asia Publishing Company retain the right to supply the book-

shop in the Imperial Hotel directly… something I really wanted

because that was where most of the importers stayed when they

came to Tokyo.

Ray did some minor editing on the manuscript and sent it to

Dai-Nippon, our printer, which scheduled the printing and

binding of 5,000 copies for the first week in November. We

then created a full-page advertisement for the November 1959

edition of the magazine.

The mail-order response to the ad in the magazine was

extraordinary, several times surpassing orders for two hundred

copies a day. Some companies ordered up to a hundred copies

at a time to give to their clients. Local foreign companies with

American and European clients also ordered the book in large

batches. Sales continued strong in early 1960, resulting in a

second printing in February.

But it was sales at the small bookshop in the lobby of the

Imperial Hotel that both surprised and pleased me. The shop,

owned by an American lady whose husband had been a big

wheel in the American Occupation of Japan [1945-1952], and

managed by a Japanese lady named Kagami, went through from

ten to twenty copies a day. For the next year my wife and I lived

entirely off of the royalty proceeds I received from sales just at

the Imperial Hotel bookshop!

As the first of its kind, the book created quite a stir. Early in

1960 Japan’s UPI bureau chief Bob Klaverkamp was in the

Imperial Hotel book shop talking to Mrs. Kagami. She told him

that the last copy of the book she had in stock that day had just

been stolen. Bob did a short piece on the theft and put it on

UPI’s wire service. I’ve forgotten the headline but it was some-

thing like “Book on Japanese Ethics Stolen from Bookshop.”

The story caused an immediate surge in mail-orders for the

book. It also resulted in a company in Yokohama ordering


117

1,000 copies of the book for a forthcoming series of lectures

scheduled in Japan by the famous American Evangelist Billy

Graham. I personally delivered the 1,000 copies of the book to

Graham’s agent in Yokohama.

I never found out how Graham fared. Generally speak-ing

the only Asian converts to Christianity were children who

didn’t know any better and oppressed women who appreciated

the social elements of the religion, not its theology. The next

time I saw Bob at the Foreign Corre-spondent’s Club of Japan

I bought him a beer!

Some Wonderful News

And a Shocking Aftermath

In early 1961 Margaret began to experience serious cramps in

her lower abdomen, and one weekend when we were visiting

Frank and Kim Kawahara we mentioned this to them. Frank’s

mother, who lived with them, insisted that Margaret should see

a doctor and volunteered to take her to a small clinic within a

short walk of their home.

When they returned from the clinic about an hour later both

Margaret and Obā-chan [Grandmother] Kawahara were all

smiles. Smiling hugely, Margaret said: “I’m pregnant!”

Since Obā-chan had done the talking to the Japanese doctor

she was the first to learn that we were going to have a baby.

In December the night before the baby was due Margaret and

I went to Chaco’s Steak House in Roppongi, a famous enter-

tainment district, and from there directly to the Seibō Byōin

Hospital in Meijiro—checking her in early just to be safe. She

was to be tended by Dr. Theodore King, whom I had known for

years…a multi-lingual Chinese doctor who had lived in Tokyo

since before the Japan-U.S. war.

Early the following night Margaret gave birth to a baby girl

and everything appeared to be normal, so I went home.

At around 2 a.m. Dr. King called me and said there had been

a problem. He said that Margaret was in a coma and was suf-

fering severe convulsions [eclampsia!]. When he added that

they expected to get it under control and that there was nothing


118

I could do if I came to the hospital. I thanked him and hung up

the phone.

I stayed in bed for another minute, hesitating, then got up,

dressed quickly and caught a cruising taxi as soon as I got to the

main street about a block from our apartment.

When I arrived at the hospital and went directly to Mar-

garet’s room she was still in a light coma and was thrashing

around in her bed, trying to sit up and reach a small stand at her

bedside. There were three nurses around her, trying to keep her

down.

She was gasping for breath through her mouth, which had

some kind of apparatus in it, and I realized instantly what she

was trying to do.

Since becoming pregnant she had gradually developed some

kind of allergy that made both of her nostrils close up, making it

impossible for her to breathe through her nose, and had to use

nose drops every hour or so to keep her nostrils open. She was

trying to reach the nose drops in the stand.

“She can’t breathe!” I said brusquely. “She’s trying to reach

nose drops in that stand!” A nurse quickly opened the top

drawer of the stand, grabbed the medicine and put several drops

into Margaret’s nostrils. Within seconds she was breathing

through her nose and had stopped struggling. Moments later she

appeared to be sleeping.

I told the nurses to put drops in her nose every hour or so,

and more often if she started to breathe through her mouth.

I stayed with her for about an hour, watching her. The nurses

then told me that she would probably sleep for several hours

and be ok when she woke up from the light coma, adding that it

would be alright for me to go home and come back around 10

a.m. They said they would call me if there was any change.

When I asked one of the nurses about the baby she said she

was a beautiful girl, and escorted me down a hallway so I could

look through a window into the nursery. The nurse then added

that when the baby was first born her head was tilted to one

side, but that another nurse had massaged her neck for about

half an hour, resulting in the tendons and muscles lengthening

to the point that her head stayed upright.


119

I went home and returned to the hospital at around 10 a.m.

Margaret was awake, and smiled feebly when I came in. A short

while later a nurse brought baby Dawn Ruby in for nursing. We

had chosen Ruby as her middle name because Ruby was the

name of both my mother and Margaret’s mother.

After staying with Margaret for about an hour I went to the

magazine office but couldn’t concentrate on anything, and told

Ray I was going home. Before going home I went to a cable

office in Shibuya and sent to message to both of our families in

Phoenix: “Baby girl doing fine. Margaret recovering.”

This message puzzled and scared them, and I got a flurry of

cables asking me to explain.

Margaret was in the hospital for more than a week before Dr.

King would release her. After she got home it was some three

more weeks before she was fully recovered from the ordeal.

It was not until later that we found out that Margaret’s mother

had also suffered from eclampsia when giving birth but had

never told any of her three daughters, and only Margaret in-

herited the tendency.

Daughter Dawn fortunately did not inherit the tendency from

her mother Margaret, and we hope it will not show up in our

granddaughter Haley. [Haley was married to Greg McCray in a

picturesque ceremony in the backyard of our Paradise Valley

residence in 2011.]

Japan’s “Water Business” & My Second Book

Japan traditionally had several of the world’s largest and most

exotic entertainment industries, ranging from drinking estab-

lishments, sumo wrestling and geisha inns to large prostitution

districts throughout the country—the larger ones virtual towns

within themselves.*

___________________________________________________

*In 1956, as a result of pressure from newly elected female

members of Japan’s Diet [Congress], prostitution, a major

industry, was banned and the red-light districts in the country

were given one year to close down, April 1st. the following

year. On the very last night, March 31, 1957, I and two friends


120

went to the Yoshiwara in Tokyo’s Asakusa district, the largest

and most famous prostitution district in the country. By that

time it was like a ghost town, with paper trash blowing around

the once glittering streets that had bustled with life for almost

three centuries. The area morphed into a popular restaurant and

traditional arts and crafts shopping district.

___________________________________________________

With no religious taboos against sexual activity [by men]

inside or outside of marital bonds, and with the indigenous

religion Shintō endorsing the vital role of sexual reproduction,

the country was traditionally a kind of sexual paradise for the

male population.

While this aspect of Japan began to change following the end

of the Pacific War in 1945 and the introduction of democratic

principles into the government and growing influence of women

it did not disappear altogether, and there was a new develop-

ment: the proliferation of hostess-staffed bars, cabarets and

night clubs on a prodigious scale.

These new postwar enterprises catered to the several hundred

thousand members of the U.S. Occupation forces, and from

1948 on to the foreign importers who began descending on the

country to reestablish prewar contacts and make new ones.

By 1950 some five million Japanese girls and women were

employed in these industries, and had become an integral part of

the relationships between Japanese businessmen and their

clients. Japan’s large cadre of senior politicians were also major

clients, particularly of geisha houses where they could party and

politic in private.

Traditionally referred to as the mizu shobai [mee-zoo show-

bye], which literally means “water business,” the cabarets and

nightclubs in particular played integral roles in the efforts of

Japanese businessmen to make and maintain relationships with

their customers and suppliers, both foreign and domestic.

Virtually every foreign importer who came to Japan was

taken to one or more cabarets whose hostess staffs were made

up of some of the most beautiful and talented women in the

country—at that time one of the few well-paying jobs available


121

for them. At its peak in the late 1950s the Mikado Cabaret in

Tokyo’s Akasaka district had over one thousand hostesses on its

roster. Many of the most beautiful and talented women in the

mizu shobai became wealthy. Many thousands served as mis-

tresses to well-to-do men and politicians and some made high-

profile marriages. One married Suharto, the president of Indo-

nesia from 1969-1998, after his aides called her to his suite at

the Imperial Hotel during a visit to Japan.

By that time many foreign importers who came to Japan

every two or three months had also set cabaret hostesses up as

mistresses in Western-style apartments—a phenomenon that

created extraordinary interest among the foreign com-munity

about how the cabarets worked and how the hostesses operated.

Japan was also the first country in the world to have a

nation-wide network of inns established and maintained for

travelers and vacationers that also functioned as houses of

assignation, with their own compliment of women avail-able to

male travelers as bed-companions.

I began writing about the mizu shobai in 1961, and in 1962

published Bachelor’s Japan, in which I discoursed on male-

female relations in Japan and described the role that Japan’s

huge number of hostess-staffed bars, cabarets, nightclubs and

inns played in business and politics.

Bachelor’s Japan was also the first book of its kind and like

my ethics and etiquette book it became an immediate bestseller,

with foreign women in Japan being among the biggest buyers. It

was to have a very long run.

My third book, The Tourist & the Real Japan – How to

Avoid Pitfalls and Get the Most Out of Your Trip, was also

published in late 1962. Another first, this book featured such

chapters as: The Fairyland; The Real Japan; The Ugly Tourist;

The Importance of Face, Good Guides and Bad; The Traveler:

His Stomach and Manners; The Language Problem; Mixed-

Bathing for Everybody, and The Toilet: A “Convenient Place”

(the literal meaning of benjo, the colloquial term for toilet). The

book cover was designed by Hollywood’s noted Douglas Carr,

who I met when he happened to be in Tokyo in the early sum-

mer of 1961.


122

Seeing the John Glenn Space Flight

In February 1962 I stayed up late on the night that astronaut

John Glenn’s space capsule was scheduled to pass over Tokyo

in the first orbital flight by an American. There was a tiny lanai

outside of our second floor bedroom window and I stood there

waiting and watching. At precisely the time predicted the

capsule, which looked like a shooting star, passed over the city

in a long arc. He made four trips around the Earth but I saw

only one of them.

I also kept rocks on the lanai to throw at neighborhood cats

that would begin screeching and yowling about 4 a.m. when the

females were in heat.

Leaving Salaried Employment

By the summer of 1962 income from my books made it possible

for me to retire from The IMPORTER and take up writing full

time...a move that had been overdue for some months because I

had begun to clash with Ray’s wife, Niki, who did not like my

influence in the company or the fact that I felt that her mana-

gement of the company was “too Japanese” and conflicted with

the role and needs of the magazine as an international trade pub-

lication. Ray was silent about all this… He had let Niki run the

personnel side of the company since its beginning when all of

the other editorial and sales employees were Japanese.

The end came when Niki telephoned Margaret and lam-

basted her over my attitude and behavior, causing her to cry.

When I got home and heard about the phone call that was the

last straw.

The next morning my reaction was to say to Ray, “The shit

has hit the fan! It is time for me to move on!” He didn’t object.

Obviously, Niki had been bending his ears with criticism about

me. Two weeks after I stopped going to the office he called me

and asked I would come back in temporarily and edit the next

issue of the magazine because he couldn’t find a replacement. I

did.

Before leaving The IMPORTER I had already finished a

fourth book, How to Do Business in Japan [Simpson-Doyle &


123

Company], which covered specific details of contacts, contracts,

hiring employees, dealing with distributors and retailers, adver-

tising, marketing and so on—another first in the field.

Remarkably, I was to have the Japan business book market

entirely to myself until 1968, when a Japanese businessman

named Kobayashi and a foreigner teamed up to publish The

World of Japanese Business.

After leaving The IMPORTER in the summer of 1962 I

founded a small press called Orient Holiday Publishing Com-

pany, and over the next eighteen months published a series of

my own small tourist-oriented books, along with several written

by my good friend Fred T. Perry, an American who had become

bilingual and an authority on Japanese culture during a self-

imposed teaching-and-study exile in distant Kyushu.

One of my titles in this series was an attractive quasi-leather

bound shirt pocket-sized Businessman’s After Hours Guide to

Japan. I sold large printings of the book to Air France on an

exclusive [airline] basis.

I took samples of these small-format travel related books to

the publishing division of Japan Travel Bureau [my old

employer] and asked them if they would distribute them in their

many offices in Japan and around the world.

They declined, but within a year their publishing di-vision

introduced its own line of pocket-sized tourist guides patterned

after mine—all attractively illustrated with original art and very

interesting content.

My former relationship with JTB obviously had not done me

any good, which was surprising.

The Tokyo Guide Card Concept

One of the small bilingual pocket guides I published, De

Mente’s Self-Guide to Tokyo, consisted of a deck of cards held

together by a chain. Designed to be shown to taxi drivers and

others, the cards gave the names, addresses and phone numbers

of over 300 of the most popular destinations in the city, ranging

from airline offices, banks, cabarets, department stores, antique

and gift shops to popular restaurants, along with the same

information in Japanese plus maps on the backs of the cards.


124

I sold one large printing of the cards to Air France as pre-

mium giveaways for their first-class passengers. A number of

other companies also bought the cards in bulk. Within a year or

so hundreds of Japanese shops and stores in Tokyo had begun

copying the map idea on their own store cards and small pro-

motional flyers, and thereafter the practices became com-

monplace.

The reason for the maps was that only a few of the primary

streets in Japan had names, and none of the addresses of any

building had any relationship whatsoever to the street it was on.

Addresses were [and still are] based on areas that diminish in

size: ward, district, “block,” and section within the block...all of

which vary in size and shape.

A sample address: Tokyo, Shibuya Ward, Harajuku

(district), 3-chome (third “block), 2-23 (2nd section in the block

and 23rd building or home in the section). The size of the

chome as well as the order of the houses and businesses in them

varied greatly and were not always in sequential order.

A Visit Home

In the early spring of 1963, after an absence of nearly five

years, Margaret and I decided to pay a visit to our families in

Phoenix to show off our daughter, Dawn, who was nearing the

age of two. I made arrangements with Jim Sweeney, the AIFT-

er who had recently arrived in Tokyo to train for the job of sale

manager in Hong Kong, to stay in our apartment during the

month we would be gone.

We flew into Honolulu and stopped over for three nights at

the low-rise Waikikian Hotel on the edge of Waikiki. We

arrived in the afternoon tired and sleepy and laid down for a nap

which was continuously disturbed by the roar of large machines

driving foundation piles into a vacant lot next door for the

construction of the high-rise Illikai Hotel.

On our second day in Honolulu Margaret came down with

serious food poisoning that required medical attention, and had

not fully recovered when we arrived in Phoenix.

Soon after reaching Phoenix, I went with Mom and Dad on a

trip to Mayberry, leaving Margaret and Dawn at their house.


125

Dad had recently had his stomach totally removed because of

cancer and was not up to driving, so I volunteered.

We went directly to Mother Evans’ house in Mayberry. It

was dusk as we approached the house, driving slowly in deep

ruts that had been cut in the water-soaked ground. Large over-

hanging trees in the creek bottom area made it fairly dark. As

we were approaching, the headlights of the car lit up the side of

the ancient chicken house that was still there on the east side of

the creek.

As we got closer, we saw a hand in a fingerless cloth glove

appear in a crack between the boards. The hand slowly pushed

one of the boards aside, and Grandmother Evans slowly

emerged through the opening with a basket of eggs in her other

hand.

We stayed with Mother Evans for five nights…by which time

Mom was ready to walk back to Arizona. She couldn’t take any

more of the mosquitoes and other bugs, the lack of running

water in the house, no electricity, and a bare shack toilet that

was several hundred feet away.

A recent heavy rain and runoff had washed away the bridge

over the creek in front of Mother Evans’ house. I built a new

one, using mostly logs and lumber that had washed down from

further up in the hollow. Dad supervised the construction while

sitting in a chair on the bank of the creek [He was to live for 15

more years without a stomach, by eating small amounts every

two hours or so during the day.]

Mother Evans continued to live alone in the house until she

was about 90, by which time there were only two other families

living in Mayberry.]

On the way back to Phoenix from Missouri we stopped off

in Oklahoma City to see Jessie and her husband Gene. After

over 15 years of marriage they still had no children, and then

they had three sons in rapid succession.

After Gene died an early death Jessie and her youngest sons

moved to Prescott, Arizona. As of this writing Jessie is still

surviving and thriving, and keeps up with her long study of

Arizona’s Navajo Indians and contributing to needy families.


126

Reuniting with Jim Walker

My friend Jim Walker [from my few weeks at Camp Bender

following my ousting from the ASA] was then living in Tokyo

with his Japanese wife and sons. I contacted him and he vol-

unteered to do some shopping for us at the American military

commissary in Washington Heights [a large fenced-in housing

community of American military personnel and their families,

built in the winter of 1945 in what had been Meiji Park and the

parade grounds of an elite Japanese military unit that served the

Emperor].

Jim bought us large bags of canned foods that we could not

buy on the Japanese market. One evening he also took Mar-

garet and I into the Washington Heights American residential

complex for dinner and a show, featuring a popular skinny thin-

faced American male singer [not Frank Sinatra] whose name I

can’t recall!

Jim later took a job with the American forces in Korea, as

head of a procurement office, leaving his family in Japan—and

stayed there for some 15 years, living with a Korean woman. I

visited him a number of times and met him in Seoul on several

occasions. On one of these occasions he took me to the

Demilitarized Zone on the 38th Parallel a few miles north of

Seoul, where American and South Korean troops stood guard

virtually nose-to-nose with North Korean soldiers [all especially

selected for their height in order to match the Americans and

South Koreans].

The Sakura Maru Voyage Home

In the summer of 1963 Margaret and I decided to move back to

the U.S. I sold controlling interest in Orient Holiday Publishing

Company to another Thunderbird-grad [Ed Fernandez-Roberts],

and turned Bachelor’s Japan over to Tuttle Publishing Co. The

Center for International Business at Pepperdine University in

California had picked up How to Do Business in Japan.

We booked passage on the brand new Sakura Maru pas-

senger ship for its first ever voyage: to the U.S. and South

America. The passengers included many Japanese immigrants


127

moving to Brazil. The day before we were scheduled to sail we

checked into the Yokohama Silk Hotel near the port, and that

evening hosted a dinner party for a group of our friends at the

hotel.

On the long voyage to San Pedro, California via Hawaii and

San Francisco, I began a series of commentaries that I entitled

FACES OF JAPAN—23 Critical Essays. They were published

as a book in Tokyo in 1966, first by Simpson-Doyle & Com-

pany, and then by Yen Books.

For some reason, the new Sakura Maru did not have enough

ballast in its hull to mitigate its rolling and pitching, even in

minor swells and waves. This contributed to Margaret suffering

from sea sickness for the first few days, but otherwise it was a

great trip. Our daughter, Dawn, then going on two, had trouble

walking when the ship heaved and rolled, but soon got the hang

of it. The bunks in our cabin were perpendicular to the sides of

the ship, and when we put her down for a daily nap and the ship

was really rolling from side to side, she would slide from one

end of the bunk to the other while sound asleep.

Other children on the ship used the waxed linoleum-covered

passageways that were crossways as slides, skidding from one

side of the ship to the other when it rolled. Because the ship

made a detour southeast to Honolulu and then northeast to San

Francisco it took us three weeks to reach San Pedro, where we

disembarked.

Brother L, along with Mom, drove to San Pedro from

Phoenix to pick us up….pulling our baggage and few household

possessions on a small open trailer hooked to his car. On the

way home we were stopped by a highway patrolman for

speeding. While the patrolman was writing on his pad L turned

to our mother and said; “Mom! Why did you let me drive so

fast?” The patrolman smiled, tore up the ticket and said to L:

“Pay attention to your Mom,” and let us go.

Back in Phoenix Margaret and I rented a house on El Ca-

mino Drive just east of Central Avenue on the outskirts of

Sunnyslope in what was then north Phoenix.

Our second daughter Demetra arrived on February19, 1964,

completing our family.


128

Moving to Honolulu

When Demetra was four months old I decided to do a book on

Hawaii, so we moved to Honolulu.

For the first few days we stayed with a Japanese couple who

lived in Wahiawa in the central highlands near Schofield

Barracks. The wife was the older sister of Reiko Emmi, a girl

who was then serving as the secretary of one of my old friends,

John Leinfelder, who had temporarily replaced me as editor of

The IMPORTER when I resigned in 1962. John was an ex-

Navy lieutenant who owned an English-teaching academy. Both

John and Reiko were to remain lifelong friends and play

significant roles in my life in Japan and in the U.S.

Margaret and I moved into an apartment near the University

of Hawaii, where I intended to do some studying and inter-

viewing. We had no baby bed so Margaret put Demetra in a

partially opened dresser drawer. We bought a used Renault car,

and I began working on a new book—Bachelor’s Hawaii—to

be published by Tuttle in Tokyo.

In an interview with a Hawaiian language professor I ask her

what them term haole [how-lay], used in reference to non-

Polynesians living in Hawaii, actually meant. I was amused

beyond words when she told me it meant “white pig.”

Our next door neighbors in the apartment building we lived

in included Bill and Barbara Lowe. Bill worked for the gov-

ernment at a radio-monitoring site on a mountain on the north-

west side of the island. They had a son slightly older than

Dawn. They later moved to a small town on the same side of the

island where Bill worked, and on a subsequent trip to the Orient

I stayed with them for a couple of days. They later moved to

Mesa, Arizona, near Phoenix, and our friendship continued until

Barbara died early and Bill moved to Florida.

We stayed in Hawaii for just a few months, returning to

Phoenix and renting a home on west State Street, just north of

Glendale Avenue. We lived there for about a year, during which

I continued to write. It was to be more than a year before my

first return to Japan, and follow-up on the various things I had

started there.


129

Since I worked at home I often ended up “baby-sitting”

Demetra, while daughter Dawn was in pre-kindergarten school.

Demetra began walking when she was eight months old, and

from an early age loved to play hide-and-seek and climb trees.

In October 1965 we bought our first home—in the 1600

block of East McClellan, only a short distance from Madison

Elementary School.

When in her early teens Demetra took a course in taikwando,

the Korean version of Japan’s judo. One day Dawn’s boy

friend, a six-foot tall muscular football player named Rick was

horsing around with Demetra in our front yard, teasing her

about taking a course in a martial art. He attempted to grab her.

In a remarkable display of what she had learned she flipped

him up in the air and he landed on his back on the ground with a

thud. With a shocked look on his face, he quickly scrambled to

his feet, mumbling that it was an accident.

We lived on McClellan until 1969 when we bought a home

in Paradise Valley, a ritzy residential township between Phoenix

and Scottsdale, where we now live.

Niki Woodside Dies

Not long after we moved back to the U.S. Ray’s wife Niki, my

former nemesis, came down with liver cancer and died within

months. About half a year after her death Ray married a hostess

he had met at the Mikado Cabaret, primarily because he needed

help with his two sons—the youngest of whom had become a

serious problem.

Niki’s aged mother, her sister [Kazuko] and brother,

members of a prominent Honda family of Nagoya, were shock-

ed by Ray’s second marriage, came down hard on him and

refused to recognize his ex-cabaret hostess wife…whom I had

met a number of times when I went with Ray to the Mikado.

Add to the Half-Safe Jeep Story

Shortly after Margaret and I moved back to Phoenix from

Tokyo in 1963 one of my sisters told me that Ben Carlin, the

master of the amphibious jeep Half-Safe on which he and I had


130

traveled from Tokyo to Anchorage, Alaska over the four

summer months of 1957, had showed up in Phoenix some

weeks before our arrival, called my sister Winnie and sub-

sequently held a private showing of his films of the jeep trip for

her and some of my other siblings. She said he was the perfect

host, charming and entertaining…a far cry from the SOB traits

he had exhibited from shortly after I first met him in Tokyo

until we reached Anchorage, where I jumped-jeep, as his wife

and her replacement had done before me.

We had stayed in Hawaii for less than a year, moving back

to Phoenix in 1966 where I began working on a new book,

Bachelor’s Mexico—a project that was to have a series of

extraordinary ramifications over the next several years.

One of the benefits of my writing career was that when I was

home I was a stay-at-home dad. On one occasion when Dawn

was at pre-school, I lost Demetra.

That is, I couldn’t find her in the house. I kept searching and

calling out her name. Finally, after what seemed like a long

time, I saw one of the window curtains move a little bit. She had

climbed up on the couch, stepped up on the window ledge, and

closed the curtains—a new hide-and-seek ploy she hadn’t used

before. She was about one year old.*

___________________________________________________

*Demetra grew up and began working in the health industry as

a licensed respiratory therapist, but when the high-tech infor-

mation society developed she decided to join it, attended and

graduated from DeVry University with a degree in Information

Technology in 2001.

But the year she graduated the bottom fell out of the high-

tech industry and there were no jobs available. She re-entered

the health care industry and a short while later signed up with

an agency as a “Traveler,” meaning she would accept short-

term assignments anywhere in the country where there was a

sudden need for respiratory therapists. Her subsequent travel

assignments included stays in Honolulu that amounted to

around two years, where I, Margaret and Dawn visited her on

several occasions.


131

In 2010 Demetra adopted a 11-year old girl named Rosalie

whose dysfunctional parents had given her up to the state some

six years earlier, resulting in her being bounced around to

different host families who sorely neglected her education,

abused her in many ways, and finally kept her sedated on drugs

to keep her passive and obedient. With patient and professional

care by Demetra she is developing into a fine young lady. [She

just now came into my home office and we chatted for a while.]

___________________________________________________

ONCE A FOOL Published

When I agreed in early 1957 to join Australian Ben Carlin on

the amphibious jeep Half-Safe for the final and longest sea-

segment of his trip around the world—from Japan to Alaska—I

also agreed that I would not write about the voyage for at least

five years…giving him time to do his own book.

I began working on my account of the extraordinary exper-

ience in early 1964, writing from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. every night

until it was finished. The events of my meeting Carlin and the

subsequent trip to Anchorage, Alaska were so compelling I

found I could remember every detail with absolute clarity, in-

cluding the rare verbal communications we had from our

departure from Tokyo to the last time I saw him in Anchorage.

[In addition to the fact that we had absolutely nothing in com-

mon the noise in the enclosed cabin of the jeep made con-

versation a strain. Our 4-on 4-off 24-hour a day schedule also

kept us groggy and we came alive only during times of emer-

gency.

I had instantly come up with ONCE A FOOL as the title for

the book—a clear indication of what I thought of the adventure

once it was over for me. [After I left Carlin in Anchorage three

days after our arrival on September 3rd, 1957 he later continued

driving on his own, down the Alaska Highway to California and

then across country to New York and Halifax on the East Coast

where he had originally started [with his wife as the co-driver].

Incredibly, in the late-1960s a young Phoenix lawyer named

Sidney Rosen who had come across my book when he was in


132

Hong Kong, telephoned me with a remarkable story. He said he

had just spotted the jeep Half-Safe being driven through down-

town Phoenix, and described it perfectly. I invited him to come

to my house. We talked for some three hours, and thereafter

over the years shared some adventures of our own.

Obviously, Carlin was still stuck on the jeep, like some

weird character on a ship that couldn’t reach any port. He

eventually returned to Perth, Australia, his home, and donated

the jeep to the boys’ school he had attended as a youth. It is still

on display there, behind glass.

After returning to Perth Carlin remarried and had a daughter.

When she was about 20 years old she also came across my book

[which was not complimentary to her father] and wrote to me

about him and my book.

I put her letter in the front-matter of a subsequent printing of

the book, which is still available from Amazon.com. Carlin died

of a heart attack in 1981. Still today I get occasional emails

from people in England about the HALF-SAFE story.

The IMPORTER Visit

On my first return trip to Tokyo following our move back to

the U.S. I paid a surprise visit to The IMPORTER, where my

old boss Ray Woodside welcomed me warmly. By that time, he

had constructed a new two-story office building on the opposite

side of the same street, adjoining the famous Nogi Shrine.

On a subsequent visit he rented the former office building to

me and my then Tokyo partner Ed Roberts. We turned the form-

er private office where Ray and I had had our desks into a

makeshift bedroom, where I stayed when in Tokyo and where

Ed took the girls he picked up…something he was so good at he

became legendary.

Meeting John Wilcock

In 1965 when I was back in Tokyo I met author/columnist/ John

Wilcock, who was in Japan researching for one of his famous

$5 a Day travel books—the series published by Frommer in


133

New York—beginning with Mexico on $5 a Day which came

out in 1960.

Both John and I were staying at the Asia Center in Tokyo [a

bare-bones non-profit hotel in Tokyo sponsored by a foundation

for Asian educators and scholars], and soon became acquainted.

We made a date to go see a Japanese film in Shinjuku, one of

the city’s primary entertainment districts.

When I knocked on his door John yelled out “Just a minute!”

and I could hear muted voices and scurrying sounds. A moment

later when he opened the door he had a funny grin on his face

and was still in the process of getting dressed.

I stepped inside the small room and when I partially closed

the door behind me I saw there was someone behind the door,

squatting down on the floor under a small throw-rug. I saw

immediately that it was a girl who was stark naked. She wasn’t

completely covered, and began giggling.

“I’ll wait outside,” I said to John. It was several minutes be-

fore they came out. We went on to Shinjuku and saw a Kuro-

sawa samurai film.

On another occasion I invited John to join me for an official

luncheon at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan. When

the speech-making began John lit up a marijuana cigarette and

blithely smoked it. He also mentioned that he had planted mari-

juana seeds on the grounds of the U.S. Embassy Annex.

John’s pot habits obviously did not dull his creative writer

and editor abilities. Originally a British journalist, John was one

of the five co-founders of New York’s Village Voice in 1955,

and was a columnist for the paper for the next 10 years. He then

became the editor of East Village Other, following which he

served as the travel editor for The New York Times for three

years.

He went on to write more than two dozen other travel books,

guest-edit newspapers, coordinate the Underground Press Syn-

dicate and publish his own newspaper [Other Scenes]. He is still

active as a writer and publisher—apparently unharmed by his

years of pot-smoking.

Few people have done as much with their lives and times as

John.


134

A Phone Call that Changed the World!

In early 1965 I had a phone call from a young man named

Merle Hinrichs, who explained that he was a student at my old

foreign trade school in Glendale and that he and two of his

classmates would like to come to my house in Phoenix and talk

to me about The IMPORTER Magazine and Ray Woodside, my

former employer.

Merle and two of his classmates had been contacted by Ray

about a job in Hong Kong as advertising sales manager, re-

placing AIFT-er Jim Sweeney who had started his own com-

pany in Hong Kong [Chatham Industries] and left the magazine.

Following the meeting with Merle and his classmates, I

wrote to Ray telling him that Merle was the most impressive of

the three, and recommended that he hire him. Merle was hired,

spent several weeks in Japan getting acquainted with Ray and

becoming familiar with the company, and was then dispatched

to Hong Kong as the new sales manager.

That was the beginning of a remarkable series of events that

were to impact on the economic and political history of Japan,

Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and the rest Southeast Asia,

not to mention the United States and the rest of the world.

Daughter Dawn in Charge

When daughter Dawn was about five years old she came into

my home office and asked if she could do something [I don’t

remember what].

Like many parents, I started to hem and haw. With a stern

expression on her face she said: “Just give me a yes or no!”

I said no. She turned around and walked out of the office

without another word.

I was momentarily stunned, and then realized that she was

going to be in charge of her life. She grew up, graduated from

Arizona State University, married classmate Mark Schofield,

had a daughter, Haley, and a son, Trevor, and became a career

math teacher.


135

Some Prefer Geisha

In March of 1966 John Weatherhill Inc. [ran by Tex Weatherby,

formerly senior editor of the Charles E. Tuttle Publishing

Company], brought out my new book Some Prefer Geisha: The

Lively Art of Mistress-Keeping in Japan under his Wayward

Press imprint. The book, beautifully illustrated by the Japanese

artist Tadahito Nadamoto, quickly became a classic—as much

for the drawings as for its content.

The drawings illustrate both the origin and the cultural

content of the ideographic characters that make up the Chinese

and Japanese writing systems…a factor that makes the

characters intrinsically interesting in their own right and

therefore much easier to learn than what might be imagined.*

___________________________________________________

*Later that year when I was staying at the New Otani Hotel in

Tokyo the Japanese language edition of Bachelor’s Japan was

the topic of discussion on a television show with a panel

consisting of a famous actress, a famous base-ball player, a

comedian and a fellow named Soichi Oya, Japan’s best known

sociologist. When the four were asked to sum up their opinions

of my book, Oya said: “Everything De Mente San wrote is true,

but I wish he hadn’t written it!”

Somehow, the news media learned that I was a guest at the

New Otani….and my phone rang until about 3 a.m. with people

asking for live radio interviews. I finally consented to doing

one.

___________________________________________________

The Bachelor’s BEAT Story

Back in Phoenix in 1967 I received a telephone call from a 27-

year-old guy named Jerry Evenson, who had just started a new

weekly entertainment newspaper called Bachelor’s BEAT. He

said he had come across my bachelor books when researching

the idea at the Phoenix Library, and said he would like to meet

me.


136

We met, I liked him and the idea, and soon joined the new

enterprise as the editor. The paper was an instant hit, attracting

significant advertising from bars and nightclubs throughout the

metro Phoenix area…and was soon to have an extraordinary

impact on my life.

The Amazing Larry Flynt Saga

The appearance of the notorious magazine Hustler in 1974 was

big news, but its story actually started several years before that

with my first meeting with Larry Flynt, the publisher of the

magazine.

One afternoon in 1967, several months after I started editing

Jerry Evenson’s Bachelor’s BEAT, I was sitting in the office

doing my thing when a visitor came in—a husky guy in his

mid-twenties with curly reddish hair and a hillbilly accent. He

laid a $100 bill on my desk and said he wanted a subscription to

the newspaper. I asked Jerry’s wife to take the money and give

him the change. He said: “I don’t want any change. Keep it all.”

He then introduced himself as Larry Flynt, the owner of a

chain of go-go clubs in Ohio called HUSTLER, who said he was

in town looking for dancers to work in his clubs. We then had

an extraordinary conversation that lasted for more than two

hours. Flynt was one of the most intelligent, best read and most

erudite person I had ever met. Before leaving he said that he

wanted a franchise agreement to publish Bachelor’s BEAT in

Ohio. When I later brought this up to the owner-publisher Jerry

Evenson he readily agreed.

When I got home that evening I said to Margaret these exact

words: “I just met a man who could be president of the United

States as soon as he is old enough to qualify!”

Some weeks later Flynt called me and asked me if I would

come to Ohio and teach him and a newly hired staff how to

publish a weekly newspaper. I agreed and spent three days with

him and his team.

Before long, Flynt also began publishing a monthly news-

letter named Hustler after his go-go clubs, to publicize the

clubs. He sent copies of the newsletter to me for me to critique,

and then asked me to become a contributing editor.


137

In 1974 Flynt decided to convert Hustler newsletter into a

porn version of Playboy magazine. When he brought a veteran

porn editor in from New York, I severed my relationship with

the magazine.

One particular issue of Hustler was so gross it shocked

magazine distributors, several of whom refused to distribute it.

But Larry personally visited key distributors and used his ex-

traordinary powers of persuasion [and their natural greed] to get

them to put the magazine out because he knew it would sell.

Larry was a master at manipulating the media. Earlier in his

career as a go-go club chain operator he got into a dispute with

a bank over a multi-thousand dollar loan he had received.

When the bank demanded repayment Larry had his staff buy up

pennies in the exact amount of the loan, and then had several of

his bikini-clad go-go dancers deliver the pennies to the bank in

wheelbarrows and dump them in the lobby of the bank. The

prank got him massive publicity.

The Nude Jackie Kennedy Photos

In 1974, shortly after the flap with his distributors over the

gross content of Hustler, Larry got a phone call from a freelance

photographer in Italy who had used a long-range camera to take

shots of Jackie Kennedy in the nude. The widow of the de-

ceased president John Kennedy and then the wife of shipping

tycoon Onassis had been photographed lounging around a pool

naked at the Onassis estate on a Greek island.

Flynt sent his younger brother Jimmy to Italy with a cache of

over a hundred thousand dollars to buy the photographs in a

calculated gamble that publishing the photos in Hustler would

rocket sales and make it and him world famous.

At that time Larry was over half a million dollars in debt and

in danger of losing everything, but the gamble was the be-

ginning of his incredible rise to great wealth and notoriety, and

his emergence as a public figure sought after by the news

media.

Shortly after the nude Jacqueline issue came out I was in

Larry’s tiny apartment kitchen, watching him eat a peanut butter


138

fold-over sandwich [one slice of bread folded over], when a $2

million dollar certified bank check was delivered to him by a

special courier.

Following the publication of the Jacquline Kennedy-Onasis

photos and the huge influx of cash Larry bought a large man-

sion in a ritzy section of Dayton, Ohio as a central piece in his

new image as a publishing tycoon.

He moved into the mansion with Althea Leasure, a young girl

who had been a go-go dancer in one of his clubs. Incredibly

bright and aggressive, she had become as much a business

partner as she was a live-in mistress. She later complained to

me that Larry was so busy the only time she had a chance to

talk to him was when they were sitting on their adjoining His

and Her toilet seats in the master bathroom.

During the first year or so of their live-in arrangement one of

Althea’s activities was to bring Larry girls from his clubs as

extra sex mates.

In 1976 Larry called me and asked me if I would write a

biography of his life up to that time, for which he would pay me

a $1,000 a month retainer during the writing period with the

promise of a huge royalty payoff in the end.

I agreed and a few days later met him, his girl friend Althea

and a male buddy/bodyguard in Chicago, and traveled with

them back to Dayton where he put me up in one of the many

[24!] bedrooms of his mansion.

For several weeks thereafter I interviewed all of his key em-

ployees and friends, including an ex-wife in Florida, and

traveled with him on his frequent trips around the country. One

of these trips was a visit to his birthplace in the hills of

Kentucky, where as a kid one of his jobs was plowing with a

team of mules—or as he called it, “Looking up the ass of a

mule.” [He had conned his way into the Navy when he was 16,

beginning an amazing career that was based on a combination

of superior intelligence, an obsessive ambition to learn by

devouring books, unrelenting courage, peerless guile, the will to

use people to achieve his goals, and a powerful sex drive.]

Larry left for Lakeside first, with me following in a second

chauffeur-driven limousine accompanied by his brother Jimmy.


139

By that time I had given Larry a rough draft of book he had

commissioned me to write and it had been read by his girl

friend Althea [who became angry because in the manuscript I

described her sister as the real beauty in her family] and by

Jimmy.

An hour or so after we left Dayton, Jimmy brought up the

subject of the manuscript, and said: “Do you really think Larry

will let you publish it?”

I was taken aback a bit, but Larry had always treated me

with a great deal of respect and had frequently referred to the

benefits that both of us would get from its publication. I told

Jimmy that at that point I would only rely on Larry’s word.

A short time later Larry was invited to give a lecture on

pornography at Ohio State University. He had never made a

speech before a public audience before, and I was amazed at

how well he did. He spoke for nearly an hour without notes,

getting a number of standing ovations from the students. It was

a remarkable performance.

Two of my trips with Larry were especially noteworthy.

Another freelance photographer had come up with some very

explicit pictures of Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner engaged in

some very non-missionary type sex with one of his many girl

friends, and offered to sell them to Larry.

Larry bought the photos and negatives, but rather than

publishing them in Hustler magazine he sent them to Hefner,

with a note saying he had learned a lot from Hefner and

Playboy and chose not to publish the photos.

An obviously grateful Hefner called Larry and invited him to

come to the Playboy mansion in Hollywood for one of his

famous parties. Larry asked me to go with him, and also took

along a large rolled up proof of the coming HUSTLER HONEY

center section of to show to Hefner.

We arrived in Los Angeles late in the afternoon and checked

into one of the top hotels. Larry asked for a limousine to take us

to the Playboy mansion, but none were available so we had to

go in a taxi—much to Larry’s chagrin.


140

When we arrived at the Playboy mansion movie actor Ryan

O’Neal who had obviously been drinking was acting as the

doorman and opened the door for us with a dramatic bow.

Inside the huge foyer, a male employee of the mansion who

had obviously been stationed there to greet Larry asked us to

follow him to the backyard where the party was already in

progress. At that moment Larry had second thoughts about

showing the centerfold proofs he had brought along to Hefner,

and asked the attendant to put them somewhere. He put them in

a hallway closet.

The very instant that Larry and I stepped out of the back

door overlooking the party grounds, Hefner saw Larry, jumped

up from the table he was sitting at and rushed forward to

welcome him. Larry introduced me to Hefner as “a novelist,”

and for the next several hours we were treated as his special

guests.

The final event of the evening was a movie in the mansions

large showroom. After we sat down Larry nudged me and said

“Look there.” Cher, the famous singer-actress, was seated some

three chairs away from us. I had not recognized her without her

war paint. Movies at the Hefner mansion were a nightly affair

for the large number of Hollywood celebrities who were happy

to take ad-vantage of his generosity.

On another occasion I accompanied Larry and Jimmy to a

conference of magazine distributors in Las Vegas. As soon as

we walked into the suite, Larry turned to Jimmy and asked him

if they should order in a couple of hookers. Jimmy, who had

recently married, said no thanks, and then took off to do

something.

While Larry was unpacking an overnight bag he turned to

me and said:

“Boye, you are twice as smart as I am and you taught me

everything I know about publishing. How come I’m rich and

you’re not?”

I didn’t have to think twice. “Because your balls are bigger

than mine,” I replied instantly.

In fact, Flynt was one of the most aggressive and cou-

rageous men I had ever met—confronting events and doing


141

things in situations that most people would avoid like the

plague. Among many other things he had shot a man who

wronged him and nearly beat another man to death with a

baseball bat after the man set him up for a beating by rival bar

operators—a beating that crushed several bones in his face and

nearly killed him.

Perhaps the most impressive event that I witnessed while

traveling with Flynt as his biographer was his appearance as a

lecturer on morality at the University of Ohio. Given the fact

that he had hardly finished grade school, had come out of the

hills of Kentucky and was never exposed to any additional

formal education, I was astounded by his eloquence and logic,

which earned him standing ovations from the huge audience in

the school auditorium.

Some weeks after this event Larry, Althea and Larry’s go-go

days buddy showed up in Phoenix and came out to my house by

taxi. Margaret and I loaded them up in the backseat of our

small car and took them to a Mexican restaurant on the north

side of town for dinner.

Sometime later Larry called me and asked me to go a prison

facility in Clifton, Arizona, pick up his buddy and take him to

the airport. He had been arrested on a marijuana charge and sent

to the prison camp, and was being allowed to travel on his own

to a similar facility closer to his home in Ohio.

Several weeks after I finished the manuscript of the book,

which I had entitled LARRY FLYNT’S WORLD – From Raunch

to Rich in the Grand American Tradition!, and mailed it to

Larry I had a late-night call from him.

“It looks like we have a book,” he said.

Some weeks later he called again to say that he had retained

a New York writer-editor named Black to do the final editing of

the manuscript and that he was sending the editor to Arizona to

work with me. The editor showed up and we met—once for

dinner and once to discuss the manuscript. The editor said that

Larry wanted the book jazzed up a bit—that it was too “fact-

oriented.”

The editor returned to New York. A month or so later I

received check for $10,000 and a letter from Larry’s attorney,


142

noting that the verbal agreement between me and Larry was

terminated and that the check was payment in full for my

services. The book was never published. I still have my file

copy of the manuscript in my office closet. It would have been a

bestseller.

About a year after the book incident Margaret and I received

a formal invitation to attend Larry and Althea’s wedding at their

Dayton mansion. [She was to be his fourth wife.] The invitation

had been handled by a secretary, and we were on our own as far

as transportation and hotel accommodations were concerned.

On our way to our hotel in downtown Dayton we shared a

taxi with one of the most notorious of the New York porn

publishers who had also been invited to the wedding and was

also on his own.

The wedding was the following day, and was attended by

some 200 guests, including magazine distributors from around

the country and some of Larry’s early friends and employees

from his go-go nightclub days. We also later learned that the

guest list included several men for whom Larry had previously

arranged a sex orgy in a hotel suite featuring half a dozen totally

nude go-go girls from his clubs, recounted to me by both Larry

and one of his friends during my earlier interviews for his bio.

Two events made the wedding, held in the huge back-yard of

the mansion, stand out. One of the gangster-looking guests got

roaring drunk and began grabbing at some of the women. Two

of Larry’s go-go days male bouncer friends grabbed his arms

and a third one knocked him out with several blows to the body.

After the wedding ceremony several of Larry’s friends sud-

denly picked him up and tossed him into the backyard swimm-

ing pool. He didn’t appreciate the unexpected act, and when he

dragged himself out of the water he said plaintively: “Why did

you do that?”

I was not greeted by Larry or Althea and did not make any

effort to greet or congratulate them. The whole setting was

simply too surreal; so strange I simply didn’t feel like con-

fronting them. That was the last time I was to see Larry in

person.


143

Following Hugh Hefner

Although Larry’s role model Hugh Hefner had moved his own

residence from Chicago to Hollywood, he left his publishing

operation in Chicago. Larry went further. He not only bought a

mansion in Hollywood, he moved his entire publishing oper-

ation to Los Angles, morphing it into a major conglomerate.

On March 6, 1978 Larry was shot by a sniper while he was

in Georgia for a porno trial. The shot shattered his spine and left

him permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

After returning to the management of his empire [from a

gold-plated wheelchair] Larry continued his obscenity bouts

with the government, winning all of his cases, including one

that went to the Supreme Court.

His numerous activities since then have included making

movies, publishing books, and making PR-based gestures to-

ward running for president of the United States and the

governorship of California. He also became noted for having

his own private jet, making frequent trips to Las Vegas to

gamble and for entertaining Hollywood movie stars a’la Hugh

Hefner.

Larry also periodically placed full page advertisements in the

Philadelphia Enquirer offering $1 million dollars for infor-

mation about any Congressman or Senator who had a mistress,

frequented prostitutes and or otherwise engaged in sexual

behavior that was not in keeping with their role as leaders of the

country. He “outed” a number of members of Congress who

were guilty of sexual peccadilloes.

On fairly regular occasions over the years he has continued

to be featured in the national news for a comment or some other

action that resulted in a swarm of media attention. In the early

summer of 2011 he appeared as a solo guest on the new Piers

Morgan TV talk show program, using some of the trenchant

one-liners that he had first come up with decades ago.

A movie entitled “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” based on his

development of HUSTLER magazine into a porn publication,

his legal battles, his arrests, the attempt to assassinate him, the

drug-related death of his wife Althea, and finally his victory in

the Supreme Court, has been playing on TV nightly this past


144

week. Filmed in 1996, it stars Woody Harrelson and Victoria

Love, and features numerous raunchy scenes that depict the

very basic view Larry had of the female genitals. In earlier

times he wore a colorful bola tie in the form of the female

genitalia. Larry himself plays a judge in one of the court scenes

in the movie.

Face-Reading for Fun & Profit

In addition to working for Bachelor’s BEAT I finished writing a

new book, Face-Reading for Fun & Profit. It was based on

information I had gleaned from an interview with the Japanese

face-reader called in by the Japanese military in 1939 to help it

decide on the specialized training new recruits would have the

most aptitude for, combined with research I had done in Chin-

ese archives at the Diet Library. [I learned at that time that the

Japanese had imported the art from China some 300 years

before and improved on it. The Japanese term for face-reading,

ninso-mi (neen-so-me), literally means “body-reading.”

The face-reading book was brought out by Phoenix Books /

Publishers, which I had founded the year before.* I sold purse-

books rights of the face-reading book to Dell in New York.

They marketed it in drugstores and super-markets, and sold

around one million copies at 69 cents each. I got less than a

penny from each sale.

Dell kept the purse-book edition out for only about a year,

and I never understood why they let it go out of print.

I subsequently published around 75 titles under the Phoenix

Books imprint, some 15 of them my own books. I had become

acutely aware that regular book publishers were incapable of

handling more than two or three dozen writers successfully,

with most of their other authors getting little if any advertising

and marketing effort.

According to the book trade, some 85 percent of the books

brought out by New York publishers did not sell out the first

print-run…meaning that most publishers lived off of their Back-

List of books…and if lucky they added a few titles to this list

each year—usually written by their small number of name

authors. I found that if I could sell 3,000 copies of a book I


145

owned outright I could make as much or more than what I

would get from a royalty publisher on sales of 15,000 copies.

“What’s My Line?”

When I was in Hong Kong shortly after the face-reading book

came out Margaret called to tell me that the popular TV show

What’s My Line in New York wanted me to appear as a guest.

When I returned to Phoenix my appearance was scheduled and I

did the show. Panel members included actress Arlene Francis,

publisher Bennett Cerf and comedian Soupy Sales.

As a finale to my appearance the host asked me to read the

faces of the panel. When I got to comedian Soupy Sales I said

that his most prominent facial feature was his big mouth. He did

have a very wide mouth. He jumped up from his chair and came

at me with his fists up in a mock attack.

That was the highlight of my appearance. Back at my hotel a

short time later, I was a celebrity among the crowd in the lobby

who had witnessed the show.

The face-reading book is now at Tuttle Publishing, re-titled

ASIAN FACE READING – Discover the Secrets Hidden in the

Human Face, and available from Amazon.com and other book

retailers.

By that time I had left the Phoenix Bachelor’s BEAT, but

continued to contribute a weekly news service called Bachelor’s

New Service [BNS] for the next year, including when I was

traveling in Asia. I then turned the news service over to a bright

young journalist named Bob Golden.

Girl-Watching in the Orient

Back in Tokyo in 1967 I met my old Sophia classmate and

friend Len Walsh. One of the topics that came up was my idea

of eventually doing a girl-watcher’s guide to the Orient. He

asked me why I didn’t continue on around Southeast Asia and

do it on that trip. When I told him I had already spent by travel

budget, he insisted on advancing me the money to cover the

extended trip.


146

I made the tour and subsequently wrote Girl-Watcher’s

Guide to the Far East, published in Tokyo by Bachelor Books,

another imprint I had helped establish before moving out of

Japan. It was distributed worldwide by Tuttle Publishing Com-

pany.

The book detailed the sensual appeal and sexual behavior of

the girls of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Viet-

nam, and the Philippines. A long-time best-seller, it was to be

the cause of a number of significant events in my life thereafter;

some constructive and some not!

Three unusual events occurred during my girl-watching tour

of Southeast Asia.

In Taiwan I ran into John Rohrbough, whom I had met on

Shemya when en route to Anchorage, Alaska aboard the am-

phibious jeep HALF-SAFE. John took me to the notorious

Peitou hot spring spa in the hills outside of Taipei, where one of

the bath-house girls told us they often had visits from the

Catholic priests who taught at Sophia University in Tokyo.

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the minister of tourism took me

in his chauffeured limousine to his favorite ocean-side seafood

restaurant about an hour away from my hotel.

In Manila I stayed at the hotel that had served as Gen.

Douglas MacArthur’s home and headquarters in the 1930s

when he served as marshal of the Philippines, and received a

private tour of his suite that had been preserved in his honor.

My next book. RETIRING IN ARIZONA – Senior Citizens’

Shangri La, was also a “bestseller” primarily because it was

purchased in large bulk by First Federal Savings in Phoenix and

used as a premium in attracting new accounts.

I then wrote a series of “insider’s guides” to Arizona’s main

cities [one of them for Frommer in New York], to the state’s

twenty-two Indian Reservations, and to the most popular border

towns and beach resorts of northwestern Mexico. The book on

northern Mexico’s tourist resort towns was picked up by Banco

de México as a marketing premium.

While I had succeeded in exporting books to several coun-

tries around the world it was these commercial tie-ins that made

my publishing efforts successful.


147

The Rest of the Merle Hinrichs Story

Merle Hinrichs, whom I had recommended in 1965 to my old

boss Ray Woodside as a sales manager for The IM-PORTER

magazine’s Hong Kong office, turned out to be an outstanding

salesman and a master manager. Ad sales in Southeast Asia

climbed rapidly as a result of his efforts. In 1967 on my first

visit to Hong Kong after he took over the office I stayed in his

apartment as his guest. On my next trip to Singapore he was

there on a sales visit and invited me to share his hotel room.

By 1969 Ray was so impressed and appreciative of Merle’s

amazing sales record that he agreed to make him a director and

part owner of East Asia Publishing Company.

But in 1970, before this agreement could be officially

formalized, Ray suddenly died of a pancreatic rupture [he had

become a heavy drinker]. His deceased wife’s sister, Kazuko

Makino, whose husband was the owner and president of a

successful manufacturing company in Nagoya, was dispatched

to Tokyo to take over East Asia Publishing Company and act as

publisher of The IMPORTER.

Immediately after learning of Ray’s death Merle hurried to

Tokyo to follow up on Ray’s intention of making him a director

and part owner of the company.

Kazuko and her family refused to honor Ray’s promise. This

resulted in Merle returning to Hong Kong and setting up his

own publishing company, Trade Media Ltd., and starting his

own magazine, ASIAN SOURCES.

Kazuko knew nothing about business or publishing…and

could not control the Japanese department heads in the company

who began competing with each for power the day Ray died.

She ended up appointing a magazine design studio headed by a

foreigner who quickly took control of all of the production of

the magazine, including all contact with the printer. This gave

him virtual control of the magazine.

During a trip to Tokyo I made a casual visit to the company,

met Kazuko and also talked to the department heads who were

continuing to battle with each other, finally coming to under-

stand the depths to which the magazine had sunk.


148

The only rational senior individual in the group was the

office manager, Mr. Kozuka, with whom I had a good rela-

tionship. He was the one with whom I had gone to Sony in 1958

about a badly written ad they wanted to run to commemorate

the 5th year anniversary of the change of their name from

Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. to Sony. The whole situation at The

IMPORTER was untenable.

In the meantime, Kazuko had arranged for the company’s

lawyer to put Ray’s sons Jay and Richard on very generous

monthly retainers so they could pay their own expenses. Rich-

ard, the youngest son, repeatedly gambled his stipend away in

illicit gambling parlors in Shinjuku.

I was staying at the Imperial Hotel and one evening had a

call from Kazuko who broke down and cried. I knew her situ-

ation but there was nothing I could do, and a few days later I

returned to Arizona.

Exactly five days after I got home Kazuko called me and

begged me to come back to Tokyo immediately and help her

straighten the mess out. I reluctantly agreed. She said she would

set up a meeting for me with the department heads and the

foreigner who had taken control of the operation of the com-

pany.

The meeting occurred at The IMPORTER building in

Harajuku on the second day after my arrival in Tokyo. It was a

very tense situation. I made an opening statement, blaming all

of the participants for the mess the company was in.

This resulted in a loud outbreak of accusations that was

finally quelled by Kozuka. I then went on to tell the foreigner

that his control of the company was outrageous, amounted to

theft, was illegal, and could not continue. To my surprise, he

said he would return the production of the magazine to the

company and severe his relationship altogether if the company

would pay him a fee of several million yen. Kazuko agreed to

his demand.

Soon after Kazuko and her staff regained control of the mag-

azine she took my advice and moved the editorial production

and printing of the magazine to Hong Kong, where the cost was

less than half of what it was in Tokyo.


149

She sent her oldest son, Tsuneyoshi, to Hong Kong to set up

the office and remain there as the manager. Just out of uni-

versity, Tsuneyoshi knew nothing about publishing or manag-

ing, but he made a valiant effort.

In the meantime Merle Hinrich’s new magazine, ASIAN

SOURCES, had flourished from the start and he had added new

titles based on different product categories. Taiwan manu-

facturers in particular came into his new magazines in droves.

Merle had the good sense to buy stock in a number of these

companies.

With the inept management of The IMPORTER and in-

creasing competition from Merle’s magazines, East Asia Pub-

lishing Company continued to spiral downward in both adver-

tising and circulation.

When the representative of an British publishing company

approached the Hong Kong office of The IMPORTER with an

offer to buy the magazine, Kazuko asked me to go there and

help Tsuneyoshi investigate the English firm and let her know if

the offer was legitimate. She was so anxious to get out of the

situation she was willing to accept far less than what the com-

pany was worth.

I went to Hong Kong, met the agent for the British pub-

lishing house, which had a good reputation, listened to his pro-

posal, and asked questions about how they proposed to take

over the magazine without any disruptions.

In short, the offer looked legitimate and the steps to turn over

all of the operations of East Asia Publishing Company to the

British firm appeared both reasonable and practical. The IM-

PORTER was to be continued without any break in its pub-

lication.

I had no qualms about recommending to Tsuneyoshi and his

mother that they proceed with the sale. The price settled on was

U.S.$150,000, far less than what the magazine was worth…but

the sale covered only the magazine; not East Asia Publishing

Company’s two buildings and land in Tokyo.

After Tsuneyoshi and the British agent signed the contract in

The IMPORTER office, with me as a witness, Tsuneyoshi and I

were invited to a noon-time banquet to celebrate the occasion.


150

When we arrived at the banquet room we found more than a

dozen individuals already seated around a large table.

Merle Hinrichs, the company’s former Hong Kong sales

manager and now its primary competitor, was sitting at the head

of the table, along with the British agent who had negotiated the

sale. Merle got up immediately and rushed to greet us. Both

Tsuneyoshi and I were shocked; he speechless and looking like

he was going to pass out.

While Merle was shaking my hand, I said: “This wasn’t well

done!”…with the intention of adding, “I could easily have

arranged the sale to you if you had approached us directly” but

Merle immediately began to introduce us to the other members

of the group who had also rushed up and I didn’t have a chance

to finish my opening comment.

When we got back to The IMPORTER office Tsuneyoshi

called his mother and told her what had happened, breaking

down and sobbing and unable to continue the conversation. He

had been even more desperate than his mother to get out of an

untenable situation, but having unwittingly sold the company to

Merle was more than he could handle.

It was natural that there would be some suspicion that I had

been part of Merle’s scam because we were friends and fellow

alumnae brothers. But I knew nothing about the original ap-

proach and the discussions with Merle’s British “agent” before I

arrived on the scene, and the only time I was ever alone with the

agent was the last two days when I accompanied him to Taipei

to apprise the Taiwan office manager of the change that was

taking place; that The IMPORTER had been sold to Merle’s

group.

Knowing of my early role in recommending Merle to East

Asia Publishing Company and my subsequent friend-ship with

him, Tsuneyoshi did ask me outright if I had known all along

that Merle was behind the scheme to buy the company. I assur-

ed him that I was as surprised as he was.

He apparently accepted my denial of any knowledge of the

scheme prior to the banquet, as did his mother, Kazuko. When

the money for the purchase was deposited in the company’s

bank in Tokyo she used virtually all of it as severance pay for


151

the employees who were not offered jobs by the new owner,

which included Kozuka, the office manager, and the Tokyo ad

sales manager. While there had been no previous discussion

about me receiving any kind of pay off for my efforts she had a

$5,000 fee wired to my bank in Phoenix.

At first, I was very disappointed in the way Merle had

handled the buyout but this was quickly cancelled out because I

soon realized that if Kazuko had been aware that he was the

buyer she would not have sold the company to him regardless of

my recommendation. In retrospect I was pleased at the way

everything turned out.

Within five years after his takeover of The IMPORTER,

Merle and his junior partner Joe Bendy had magazines in vir-

tually every product category coming out of Asia, and would

eventually have some 3,000 employees, making him the largest

trade publisher in Asia and a key player in the subsequent

growth of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China as

economic powerhouses.

Merle had a multi-million dollar yacht built for his personal

use, became a major financial donor to Thunder-bird school,

was appointed to the board of directors and continues as of this

writing to support the school. [His name is on one of the

school’s main buildings.]

Merle was wise enough to quickly adopt all the new tech-

nology that came along and to stay ahead of the economic and

political changes taking place not only in Asia but around the

world, gradually morphing his operation into Global Sources,

Ltd., and becoming a prime leader in international trade.

A few days before the 9-11 terrorist attack on the twin tower

buildings in New York and the Pentagon in 2001 Margaret and

I received an invitation from Merle’s office to attend a reception

to be held at a new home he and his wife Miriam had bought in

Paradise Valley where we lived. The party was cancelled

because of the terrorist act.

My last meeting with Merle occurred on 11 November 2011,

his 70th birthday, when the newly renovated old airfield tower

building on Thunderbird campus was dedicated at a large public

gathering. [My 83rd birthday was the following day.]


152

Merle’s wife Miriam officially put up the money for the reno-

vation of the building, but Merle was the star of the show. I had

received a formal invitation to the ceremony and Merle greeted

me warmly when I arrived, but I spent only about two minutes

with him because he was in great demand by others.

I later contacted Merle’s head office in Hong Kong and

asked if Merle had a private email address. I didn’t hear back.

The Richard Woodside Episode

With East Asia Publishing Company dissolved and its office

buildings and landholdings in Tokyo sold, the Family Court

awarded major settlements to Ray and Niki’s sons, Jay and

Richard. By this time Richard had increased his gambling and

dissolute lifestyle and was completely alienated from the Honda

family.

Some months later when I was again back in Tokyo I phoned

Kazuko and Tsuneyoshi in Nagoya. After the sale of East Asia

Publishing Company both of them had re-turned to their home

in Nagoya, where Tsuneyoshi began working in his father’s

company. As a result of my phone call I got a call from Mrs.

Honda, Richard’s 80-plus year-old grandmother in Nagoya. She

literally demanded that I take Richard with me when I went

back to Phoenix.

She was well aware of my long association with Ray and her

daughter Niki, and was famous in the family for her strong will

and unbending character. I recalled that when I had visited her

in her home in Nagoya some years back and asked how she

was, she replied in a loud, forceful voice: Kuchi dake mada

ugokeru! Figuratively, “The only thing that still works is my

mouth!”

Mrs. Honda was adamant about my taking Richard with me,

speaking loudly and forcefully—and as far as she was con-

cerned leaving me no choice. She gave me no opportunity to

question or debate her demand. I finally said I would do it if he

willingly agreed to go. She said she would have him visit me at

the Imperial Hotel.

That evening Richard showed up at my hotel door. I had not

seen him for several years. By this time he was well over six


153

feet tall, handsome, sure of himself, brash and outspoken—but

like an over-grown kid. His older brother, Jay was already in the

U.S., married, and had used his portion of his inheritance to

establish a construction company in Denver, Colorado.

Richard agreed to return to the U.S. with me. In Phoenix my

wife and I found him an apartment, and got him to enroll in

nearby Phoenix College. A short while later we learned that he

had quit going to class, taken up with a young prostitute, given

her substantial amounts of money, and made several trips to Las

Vegas to gamble.

One day he and the girl showed up at our home, driven there

by her father who stayed in his car. She asked me to step

outside with her, and there she told me that Richard was out of

control, that he was throwing his money away in Las Vegas,

and that she was afraid for him and of him. All I could do was

tell her I would talk to Richard and advise her to be careful and

take care of herself.

Several days after this our front doorbell rang. When I

opened the door Richard literally threw an overnight bag inside

the house and pushed his way in. He had come by taxi, which

was turning around to leave.

I quickly discovered that he had gambled and given away all

of his money, had not paid his rent for several weeks, and had

been locked out of the apartment by the landlord.

I had no intention of taking him in or finding him another

place to live and paying his rent for him. I called his brother Jay

in Denver and explained the situation to him. He finally agreed

to take Richard in temporarily and to send me the money for his

airfare to Denver.

For the next three nights Richard slept on the couch in my

home office. I took him to the airport on the third day, and

never saw him again, but years later I heard that he was in San

Francisco working as a tout, sending Japanese tourists to shops

that paid him a commission on their purchases.

Watching the First Moon Landing

I was in Tokyo on 20 July 1969, the date that America’s Apollo

11 space craft was scheduled to land on the moon just before


154

noon Tokyo time. I was in the Harajuku area of Tokyo as noon

approached, and began looking for a public place that had a TV

so I could watch the landing.

Finally I found a bar on the lobby floor of the Central Apart-

ments Building on the northeast corner of Omotesando Blvd

and Meiji Street that was open. The bartender was cleaning the

place up in preparation for the afternoon and evening business.

[The apartment building was well-known for the number of

mistresses who lived there.]

The bar had a TV with a 10 or 12-inch screen setting on the

counter that was turned on. I asked the bartender if I could

switch it to the NHK news channel and he said yes.

So I got to watch Neil Armstrong step off the Lander onto

the surface of the moon, and heard him make his famous state-

ment which was something like: “One small step for man, one

giant leap for mankind!’

What is curious about the experience is that I did it in the

company of a Japanese bartender near where Margaret and I

used to live.

Fernie’s Rise in the PR World

In 1967 sister Fernie and her family moved to Redmond, Wash-

ington where she was hired as a columnist and reporter for a

weekly newspaper. They next moved to Lake Oswego in

Oregon, where she became a staff writer and assistant to the PR

director of First Interstate Bank of Oregon.

When her marriage broke up in 1972 she returned to Phoe-

nix, Arizona where she was hired as the PR director for The

Arizona Bank. Her responsibilities included writing, editing and

overseeing the design of a monthly magazine for bank em-

ployees, clients and others. She knew this was an area in which

I had experience and frequently turned to me for guidance, but

she had great aptitude for the craft and mastered in quickly.

After a number of years this experience led to her founding

and directing her own public relations firm. It was during this

time that she met and married Kenneth Welch, founding pub-

lisher and owner of PHOENIX Magazine, one of the top city

magazines in the country. She went on to become editorial


155

director of the magazine, a freelance travel writer for The Los

Angeles Times, a contributing editor to One Planet Magazine,

an essayist, and ultimately the author of three books.

Continuing to act as her advisor over the decades has been

one of my special pleasures.

Teaching at Thunderbird

In early 1970 the former dean of Pepperdine University, who

was familiar with my books on Japan, took up the same position

at the Thunderbird Graduate School of International Manage-

ment [as it was then known], my old school. He called me and

asked me to teach a course on doing business in Japan at

Thunderbird.

I accepted his offer and taught two semesters; in the fall of

1970 and the spring of 1971. In the second semester, enrollment

for the course was too large for a regular classroom, so it was

move to the campus chapel.

However, teaching the same course for two semesters was

enough for me, not to mention the constraints on my time and

travel so when the spring semester ended I went back to writing

full time, concentrating again on Mexico, Korea and China as

well as Japan.

As the years passed, however, I began to benefit from and

appreciate my Thunderbird teaching experience far more be-

cause a number of my former students went on to have suc-

cessful careers in Japan and elsewhere in Asia and aid me in

various ways when I encountered them during my travels.*

___________________________________________________

*In early 2011 one of my former students, James Fink, manag-

ing director of a major real estate leasing company in Japan, and

his family visited Margaret and I in Paradise Valley, Arizona.

Prior to that he and his wife had visited Perth, Australia, went to

the school where the amphibious jeep HALF-SAFE is on per-

manent display, had photos taken of themselves in front of it,

and sent them to me.

___________________________________________________


156

The Insider’s Guides

In the early 1970s I researched, wrote and published Insider’s

Guide to Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa & Tucson—a pio-

neer work. I arranged a tie-in with The Arizona Bank for this

title, subsequently selling the bank some 100,000 copies to be

used as marketing premiums.

Following this, I wrote and published Insider’s Guide to

Rocky Point, Nogales, Guaymas, Mazatlan & La Paz—all tour-

ist destinations for Arizonans. I was later able to arrange a tie-in

with Banco Nacional of Mexico, and sold them a 10,000 copy

print-run. My ties with the Arizona Bank ended when a new

marketing director came in.

I Like You Gringo! – BUT!

The Mario [“Mike”] de la Fuente Story

While researching the book on the Mexican border cities and

Sonoran tourist destinations that were especially popular with

Arizonans I met Mario [“Mike”] de la Fuente, one of those rare

individuals whose personality and mindset makes them stand

out among millions. Mike was a senior advisor to the Nogales

Visitor’s Bureau, and readily agreed to assist me.

Shortly after I met Mike he said to me: “My motto is to work

like a Gringo and play like a Mexican!” I knew then he was an

extraordinary man. I was to find out later just how extra-

ordinary.

Mike was the son of a prominent Mexican businessman and

political power who was marked for execution near the end of

the 1910-1921 Mexican revolution. To escape this fate his

father secreted the family on a train going north, and crossed the

border into the U.S. at Eagle Pass, Texas.

Mike graduated from the University of Texas where he was a

standout baseball pitcher. Following graduation he joined a

semi-professional baseball team, pitched against the great Babe

Ruth, and struck him out. He was then hired by a Mexican

baseball team. After this he became a representative for Shell

Oil in Mexico.


157

This led to him being stationed in Nogales, Mexico on the

Arizona-Sonora border where he put his business experience,

bilingual skills and entrepreneurial spirit into gradually building

a business empire of his own, including a bank, a newspaper, a

bull ring, a real estate portfolio that included property in Ari-

zona, as well as part ownership of Arizona’s professional base-

ball team.

During our third meeting Mike showed me an autobio-

graphical manuscript he had written and asked me to read and

consider publishing it. The title of the manuscript was: I Like

You, Gringo!–BUT!

The style and tone of his writing was not natural English but

it had an incredibly delightful flavor and charm of its own, and I

decided to publish it without any editing whatsoever.

When the 20,000 copy print-run came off the press I

traveled with Mike from California to Texas, promoting it and

lining up distribution channels. Mike himself sold several thou-

sand copies of the book in Nogales, Mexico, Nogales, Arizona

and in Tucson [where his two sons had attended the University

of Arizona].

Margaret and I were subsequently guests of Mike and his

wife in Nogales for a bullfight at his ring and a night out on the

town at the Caverns, the most famous nightclub in the city. At

the club Mike and his wife put on an exhibition of dancing that

would please today’s Dancing with the Stars fans.

Many of the stories in Mike’s book—his romantic affairs,

his parties for visiting bigwigs in the sports and political worlds,

and more—were the kind of things that make people legends in

their own time.

Mike lived into his 90s, and was still going strong when in

his late 80s.

In the 1990s when I was researching for my book Mexico’s

Cultural Code Words one of my most important interviewees

was Mike’s youngest son, Lorenzo [named after the great

Spanish toreador]. Totally bilingual and bicultural [he attended

school in Tucson, Arizona] he made a valuable contribution to

the book, including naming what he considered to be the most

important culturally laden “code words” in Mexican-Spanish.


158

The U.S. “Discovers” Japan

It was not until 1973, when the so-called “Oil Shock” occurred

and it seemed that Japan was going to colonize the United

States that American businessmen and educators finally began

to pay attention to Japan, resulting in a flood of other business-

related books appearing on the market.

By this time several of my earlier books were out-of-print,

and the spate of new business-related books on Japan began

cutting into the sales of my titles that remained in print.

The Naming of NEW TIMES

My brother L who had his own small construction company and

was doing some kind of work in Tempe, met a group of Arizona

State University students who wanted to start a weekly

newspaper. He advised them to come to see me, and a meeting

was arranged. The group of six or seven, headed by Michael

Lacey, showed up and we spent the next three or so hours

talking, with some of them sitting on the floor in my front room

because there weren’t enough chairs.

As the conversation began to come to a close one of them

asked if I could help them get a Japanese camera. As it

happened, I had just bought a new Nikon on my last trip to

Tokyo and offered to sell it to them for $400 [I think it was], the

amount I had paid for it. I also showed them the fancy new

mimeograph machine I had just bought.

The group quickly took up a collection among them-selves

and came up with the money for the camera. And then one of

the asked: “What should we call the newspaper! Do you have

any suggestions?”

Based on the theme I had proposed that the newspaper pur-

sue, I said almost instantly: “NEW TIMES!” They were de-

lighted with the name.

The inauguration of NEW TIMES a few weeks later was ex-

traordinarily timely, as Phoenix was growing rapidly and there

was no real competition from other newspapers in the Valley.


159

By the early 1980s Lacey and his group had turned the New

Times enterprise into the largest weekly entertainment news-

paper chain the country, buying out the famous Village Voice in

New York along with several other well-known weeklies, and

starting a number of others.

There was a remarkable postscript to my experience with

Lacey and his cohorts. A few days after their visit my wife and

I and our two daughters took an overnight trip to the Grand

Canyon. When we returned we found the front door of our

house slightly ajar. Obviously, someone had broken in during

our absence. When we took our overnight bags into the main

bedroom we found a window had been broken and there were

muddy footprints on our bed.

We then discovered that my brand new mimeograph machine

had been stolen! We called the police and a patrol car came

out. The policemen asked a few questions, wondered why the

thieves took only the mimeograph machine, said they seldom if

ever caught burglars, and left. It was obvious that one or more

members of the group of would-be publishers had paid me a

visit, but I let it go.

Some 20 years later I emailed a note to New Times,

recounting this incident and hinting that they should be obli-

gated to me. A columnist from the paper called me and invited

me to meet him for lunch. I told him the story and we talked

about other things. He subsequently mentioned some of my

books in the article he wrote but nothing about my having

named the newspaper and losing my mimeograph machine.

I had another accidental encounter with a staff member of

New Times in 2011, and related the above incident to him. He

did not seem to be surprised at the revelation.

The Gordon and Roberta Haas Story

During one of my trips to Tokyo in 1977 when I was staying at

the Imperial Hotel [still the original Frank Lloyd Wright version

at that time] I stopped by the lobby book-shop to talk to the

manager, Mrs. Kagami, about my books. During the 1960s she

had sold more copies of my first book, Japanese Manners &

Ethics in Business, than any other outlet worldwide. [In sub-


160

sequent editions the title of the book was changed to Japanese

Etiquette & Ethics in Business.]

When I finished talking to her and stepped outside of the

doorway I was accosted by a nattily dressed smallish young

man with a beard who had been in the shop browsing the book

shelves. He obviously had been listening to my conversation

with Mrs. Kagami.

He introduced himself as Gordon Haas from San Francisco,

said he was interested in getting a book printed and wanted to

ask my advice. He also said he was visiting in Tokyo with his

wife Roberta and infant child Courtney Flower, and that they

were staying at the home of a friend in the city.

It turned out that he and Roberta had operated a real estate

company in San Francisco, made a substantial amount of money

[with Roberta being the moving force in the agency], and

recently sold the company. Both he and Roberta were classic

“flower children” of the 1960s—in dress and in behavior…but

Roberta had maintained a very practical streak in her behavior

and view of the world.

They had started the construction of a large Hawaiian

temple-style home [which I later visited] in a very narrow re-

mote gorge on Kauai Island that was just beyond a state park

and arboretum. A fast-moving stream ran down the gorge, and

there were banana and coconut trees on their property.

Gordon wanted to find a printer for a book he and Roberta

had created featuring exquisite drawings of a “flower child”

[based on their daughter Courtney], with only a small amount of

very poetic text. I turned him on to Dai-Nippon, the huge print-

ing firm that printed The IMPORTER magazine and several of

my first books.

I advised Gordon to have no more than 3,000 copies printed,

and that 1,500 would be enough to start out with. He had 10,000

hard-cover full-color copies printed, and because he had no

other place to send them he had them shipped to a warehouse in

Phoenix, Arizona.

He and Roberta then moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, rented an

apartment and began trying to sell the book at a kiosk in the


161

popular town’s famous shopping district, with Roberta manning

the kiosk. She sold a few copies a day.

Some months later they gave up on this project, went back to

the construction site of their isolated home on Kauai [con-

struction had stopped mid-way] and began housekeeping in a

tiny wooden shack that had been put up as a storage shed. I

visited them on one occasion during a stop-over from Tokyo,

and on another occasion took Margaret and Dawn and Demetra

along. They were impressed when we ate lunch off of large tee

leaves instead of plates.

After that I saw both Gordon and Roberta, or at least her,

two or three times a year during my stopovers in Hawaii.

Roberta finally became disgusted with living in a tiny shack

away from everything. She and Gordon began to have serious

problems. She rented a condo apartment in Princeville, a pic-

turesque resort village on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean,

moved in by herself and went to work for a local real estate

company as a secretary. One of the clients of the firm was the

entertainer Bette Midler.

On one of my later visits she and Gordon [who had returned]

had rented an apartment in Honolulu, where both took lessons

and succeeded in getting licensed as real estate agents in

Hawaii. I went with them to one of their meetings, where the

whole group smoked pot. I waited outside in the hallway.

This was the period in which I was putting together a month-

ly magazine called Arizona Trading Post to feature articles and

cultural-related Western and Indian products. Roberta engaged

a photographer to take shots of some Hawaiian fashion apparel

to feature in a special section of the magazine. There is more to

the magazine story.

Some months later I got a call from Roberta saying she was

in Los Angeles, and asking me to stop by on my way to Tokyo.

She was renting a cabin on the retired Queen Mary passenger

ship docked in Long Beach, and said she wanted to show me

something. I stayed with her one night and the next day she

took me to a nearby prison com-pound. We were allowed to

enter the visitor’s area of the compound. A few minutes later I

was shocked when Gordon appeared, wearing a prison uniform.


162

He had gone to Columbia, bought a substantial amount of mari-

juana, attempted to bring it into the U.S., got caught and was

sentenced to two years in prison.

Following this episode, they broke up. Roberta stayed in

Hawaii, running a real estate agency on Kauai. Gordon rented a

beachfront condo home outside of Malibu about 50 miles north

of Los Angeles, and set up a development company…selling

shares in an oil well. He called me at my home in Paradise

Valley and invited me over for a visit.

The very first thing he did when I arrived was to take me to

the basement of the condo [built on the slope of a fairly high

cliff overlooking the ocean], slide open a set of doors and point

inside. There, scattered around on the sloping dirt embankment

were hundreds of cartons of the book that had been printed in

Tokyo and then shipped to Phoenix. He had finally had the

Phoenix warehouse ship them to him.

The next day Gordon took me to his office and from there to

an old oil well he had leased and was trying to put back in

service. Most of his employees spent their time on phones,

trying to sell shares in similar oil properties. He was living with

a voluptuous hippie-type girl.

Gordon himself was the top salesman. He could mimic

accents with incredible perfection and present himself and the

company as a very legitimate enterprise.

That was the last time I was to see Gordon, but I heard later

that he was back in Hawaii running a taro farm. I also learned

that Roberta had moved to Florida to be near her family, and

that their daughter Courtney had married.

The Arizona Trading Post Gamble

In 1977 I came up with the idea of publishing a monthly mail-

order catalog entitled ARIZONA TRADING POST, with the

subtitle: Your Western Heritage Mail-Order Catalog – Unique

Tri-Cultural Products. On the front cover just below the title and subtitle was a

hanging “shop sign” that read: A Better Way to Shop – Home

Delivery Anywhere in the U.S. or Abroad!


163

The plan was to feature Indian, cowboy and Mexican handi-

crafts and other items in free advertisements, along with cultural

and historical insight articles as reading material, and have it

distributed to magazine outlets around the country.

The idea was to take advantage of, promote, and add to, the

Cowboy, Indian and Hispanic mystique of Arizona and the

American Southwest with free display advertisements for Ari-

zona and Southwest products, barter arrangements for goods

and services, and paid advertising from hospitality and service

industries.

Each product advertisement was to include historical-heri-

tage content to enhance the image of the catalog and the pro-

ducts and encourage sales.

With the help of my sister Fern and anthropologist Dr. B.

Alan Kite and others I published one issue of the mail-order

magazine, printing 5,000 copies, and got it distributed as a test

in key outlets by the local branch of a national magazine dis-

tributor.

Where ATP was on sale it outsold Arizona’s famous Arizona

Highways magazine, and results from the free advertisements

started dribbling in. But I was unable raise financing for the

project and had to let it die.

I still have a full business plan for ATP—but now designed

to be an online web-based magazine instead of a printed

product. Attempts in 2010 to get someone interested in taking

on the digital-based project failed—I believe because of the

ongoing economic recession. I still think it is a viable idea, and

could be very profitable for many Arizona businesses and the

tourist industry.

The Apple [Japan] Connection

On a visit to Tokyo in late 1977 I met with the American mana-

ger of the newly established Japan branch of Apple, Inc. who

was having problems interacting with his Japanese staff. He was

aware of my books on the Japanese mindset and business

practices and was favorably inclined to take my advice. I re-

commended that he hire a non-Japanese bilingual assistant who

was intimately familiar with the Japanese way.


164

I didn’t have any such foreign individual in my address book

but I did know someone whom I thought was amply qualified: a

Japanese girl named Reiko Emmi, in her early 20s, who had

been the secretary of an old friend, John Lienfelder [a former

Navy officer and then the owner-director of a successful Eng-

lish language academy who had originally replaced me as editor

of The IMPORTER magazine in 1962 but lasted for only about

three months].

Reiko had not only become sufficiently fluent in English,

she had also absorbed American culture to the point that her

reactions were American first and Japanese second—if and

when the latter was of value. She was recently divorced from a

Japanese dentist and had a son.

The Apple manager hired her and she worked for him for

around three years—until it got to the point that the top Apple

brass in California concluded that only an experienced Japanese

manager could grow the company, and they let him go—a step

that senior Japanese managers in the branch had been virtually

demanding since shortly after the branch opened.

One of the first steps that the new Japanese manager took

was to fire Reiko, who then went to work at Apple headquarters

in Cupertino, California. After several years there she estab-

lished her own consulting company in San Francisco and

operated it until illness forced her retirement in 2009.

Arizona Authors’ Association

In 1978, responding to the increasing number of inquiries I got

about book publishing from writers and would-be writers in the

Phoenix area, I obtained a mailing list of authors living in the

state from Diamond’s Department Store’s book department

which sponsored an annual “Authors’ Day” program, and sent a

mail-out to the list.

The response was quite extraordinary. Some 75 people

attended the first meeting during which I was elected president

of the Arizona Authors’ Association by acclamation. I began

publishing a monthly AAA newsletter and conducting bi-annual

seminars for which I brought in literary agents, book editors and

book distributors as speakers. I also inaugurated an annual short


165

story contest and the Arizona Literary Magazine to publish the

winning entries.

By the end of the second year the Association had over 400

members, making it the largest writer’s organization in the

western of part of the country.

I remained president of the AAA for its first eight years, but

it was managed successfully only because of the contributions

made by my wife Margaret, who functioned as the office

manager, secretary, accountant, seminar coordinator and mail-

clerk for the monthly newsletter—leaving me free to make two

or three annual trips to Asia and continue my own research and

writing.

During these years we staged two major meetings each year,

in the spring and fall, featuring lectures and panel discussions

by editors, book distributors and literary agents we brought in

from around the country.

Among our most memorable members and speakers were the

famed mystery author Brad Steiger [what a voice that man

had!]; the man who wrote the original “The Greatest Story Ever

Told!”; and Dan Poynter of Para Publishing, the self-publishing

guru of the universe who had probably done more for would-be

authors than anyone in history. As of this writing a much small-

er version of the AAA is still in business.

Shoot-Out at Dawn

In 1981 a man named William McCreary who lived in Safford,

Arizona contacted me about a manuscript he had describing a

tragic shootout and the largest manhunt in Arizona history.

The shootout occurred on February 9, 1918, and re-sulted in

the most controversial gunfight in the history of the state—far

surpassing that of the famous OK Corral in Tombstone. On that

morning the sheriff of Graham County and several deputies,

reputedly all drunk, sneaked up on the Galiuro Mountain cabin

home of gold miners Thomas Jefferson Power and his two sons,

Tom and John, along with an old army scout named Sisson. The

raid was ostensibly to arrest the Power brothers for not

registering for the World War I military draft.


166

In the unprovoked melee that followed the father was killed

and both of his sons were seriously injured in their left eyes by

wood splinters sent flying by gunshots. They returned the fire,

killing the sheriff and two of his deputies. One of the survivors

took off to get reinforcements.

Tom and John, with the old army scout, escaped from the

cabin, and for nearly a month eluded over 3,000 posse men and

soldiers in the dead of winter in some of the roughest terrain in

the state. When captured and tried the brothers were sentenced

to life in prison, despite evidence that the raid on their home

was a setup to get control of their gold mine and the fact that the

sheriff and his deputies shot first.

The original manuscript, written by Tom Power after he

served 42 years in prison, was later burnished by writer John

Whitlach who interviewed many of the surviving families, with

contributions added by journalists Don Dedera of The Arizona

Republic, Bob Thomas of The Arizona Daily Star and Rose

Stewart of The Copper Era. Others who were alive during the

shootout and attended the trial also came forward to contribute

to the manuscript.

After McCreary came into possession of the manuscript and

brought it to me I edited and published it as SHOOT-OUT AT

DAWN – An Arizona Tragedy. It is an extra-ordinary read and I

thought it would make a great movie, but that never happened.

I printed 5,000 copies of the book, but was unable to get

widespread distribution for it. I finally sold most of the print-

run to McCreary, who had become disillusioned with my efforts

to market the book.

Prentice-Hall Comes Through!

In 1981, twenty-two years after my first book Japanese Man-

ners & Ethics in Business was turned down by Prentice-Hall,

the company had a change of heart and brought out a revised

edition under the title The Japanese Way of Doing Business:

The Psychology of Management in Japan.

This delay was in keeping with the time it took American

business people and educators to recognize that Japan had

become a powerful economic force, had already smothered


167

large segments of American industry and was continuing to

threaten many remaining industries. P-H did not sell many

copies of the book, and dropped it some two years later.

Meanwhile, after Nick Ingleton [a former Kodansha Inter-

national man] had taken over as editor-in-chief at Tuttle

Publishing Company’s Tokyo office in the early 1980s he asked

me to do a series of small business and travel-oriented books on

Japan books…which I did.

I was only partly pleased with the results because by that

time the distribution and marketing arms of the company had

degenerated and there was a great deal of new competition.

Margaret’s Travels

After our daughters Dawn and Demetra reached their late teens

Margaret began to work part time for the Phoenix Convention

& Visitors Bureau, becoming an expert at handling the details

of conventions and meetings of other kinds.

Later she began to accept short-term assignments with

convention planners around the U.S, several of which spe-

cialized in international events in various cities around the

world. This resulted in assignments that took her to Cancun,

Mexico, the Bahamas, Egypt, Italy, Singapore, Spain and other

countries, during which she met the senior executives of many

major corporations, movie star entertainers and other notables.

On a number of occasions I was able to rendezvous with her

in such places as Honolulu and Tokyo after she completed

assignments.

She was still accepting out-of-state assignments when the

international convention business fell victim to the 2008 eco-

nomic debacle brought on by Wall Street bankers and their

political cohorts.

The Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery Story

In the early 1980s Haruo [Harry] Shinoda and his wife Kyoko,

among my oldest and closest Japanese friends, visited Margaret

and I in Paradise Valley. I had met Harry in the mid-1950s


168

when both he and I worked for Today’s Tokyo, published by

Philadelphian Marvin Meyer. Harry later became a salesman for

The IMPORTER while I was still there as the editor.

At the time of this visit Harry was the owner-president of a

company that made plastic decorative striping for automobile

manufacturers as well as inscription signs for companies and

various other organizations—a company he had set up in the

1960s after leaving The IMPORTER.

He had received a commission from the historically famous

Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery [Meiji Jingu Gaien] in Meiji

Park to prepare new signs for the 80

murals framing the walls of the huge gallery room—murals

commemorating events in the life of Emperor Meiji, who

reigned from the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1867 until

his death in1912, and Empress Shoken. The signs were to

include Japanese inscriptions and their English translations.

During Harry and Kyoko’s stay with us he retained me to do

the English versions of the inscriptions. Still today the signs are

key parts of the gallery. My fee was substantial, but I get much

more satisfaction out of visiting the gallery and viewing the

inscriptions; a rare legacy that I prize.

Japan historical buffs might want to check out the Gallery at

www.meijijingugaien.jp.

The National Textbook Company Connection

In early 1986 at the annual book fair of the American Book-

sellers Association [ABA], where I had a booth, I met the pub-

lisher and editor [his son] of National Textbook Company

{NTC], a mid-sized publisher based just outside of Chicago.

I had about maxed out my efforts as a small press publisher,

having brought out some 75 titles, including about a dozen of

my own, over a 20-year period, and was looking for a personal

connection with a company that had far better distribution and

marketing capabilities.

I invited the NTC people to stop by my booth. They liked

what they saw and agreed to take on several of my titles. Over

the next several months I turned all of the other Phoenix Books

titles back to their authors and virtually closed the operation


169

down, keeping only the name Phoenix Books/Publishers as my

dba for bank account purposes. I recently resurrected it as an

ebook publishing imprint.

Over the next decade NTC brought out all of my new eti-

quette and ethics and cultural code word books on Japan, Korea,

China and Mexico. This relationship, too, was to have extra-

ordinary consequences on my career as an author—some more

pleasurable than others.

The Japanization of America Episode

And My Second Face-to-Face with Sony

In late 1986 I sent a manuscript entitled The Japanization of

America to NTC [the National Textbook Company] in Chicago,

which had several of my other business and language titles. My

purpose in this new book [besides making money!] was to

shock American companies into taking the Japanese more

seriously and to learn from them.

But the founder-owner of NTC, S. William Pattis, did not

like the implications of the title and told the publisher [his son

Mark] to change it to something else. Mark changed it to MADE

IN JAPAN.

Three weeks after the title was released another book with

exactly the same title was published in New York. The author

of this second book was Akio Morita, co-founder and leading

light of Sony Corporation, which had become an international

phenomenon. His book was reviewed and promoted by every

major newspaper and business magazine in the world, and be-

came a world-wide bestseller. My book didn’t sell out the first

short print-run.

Some months later I met Morita at a business conference in

Denver, Colorado, and told him that his book had killed my

book. Of course, he didn’t know what I was talking about and

gave me a puzzled look. After I explained, he smiled wanly but

I don’t recall him saying anything about the books.

I did, however, manage to get permission from NTC to offer

the book to a publisher in Japan for a Japanese language edition.

My Japanese agent, Kiyoshi Asano [The Asano Literary


170

Agency], placed the book with [Chukei Shuppan] which was

delighted with my original title.

When The Japanization of America came out in Japan as

Nihonka Suru Amerika [which literally means “The Japani-

zation of America”] it had a pretty good run, but at that time the

Japanese were so sure they were going to Japanize the whole

world that it was not such a big deal.

In 1996 NTC was bought out by the Tribune Company, pub-

lishers of the Chicago Tribune newspaper. In 2001 the Tribune

Company sold the NTC imprint to New York-based McGraw-

Hill, one of the largest book and magazine publishers in the

U.S. So after having been turned down by McGraw-Hill in 1959

when I sent them the manuscript for Japanese Manners &

Ethics in Business [JMEB], my first book, they ended up with

all of my NTC titles, including JMEB which, in its 8th edition,

was kept in print until 2011 as Japanese Etiquette & Ethics in

Business.

I got all rights to the book back, but have not taken the time

to update and republish it. Copies of the McGraw-Hill edition

are still available on Amazon.com as used books.

The “Code Word” Approach

To Understanding Cultures

In the latter half of the 1980s I made several trips to Japan,

Korea and China, researching and writing a series of “etiquette

and ethics” and “cultural code word” books on those countries.

My experience with my first book had clearly revealed that

the content of cultures is bound up in key words in the

languages concerned—words that are pregnant with cultural

meanings, and control both the mindset and behavior of people

raised in those cultures.

I spent well over a year researching and writing China’s

Cultural Code Words, a large book that explains the cultural

content and role of 305 of the most important words in Man-

darin, which had been made the national language of China by

Mao Tse-Tung, founder of the Communist regime in China and

its head of state from 1949 until 1959.


171

At that time China was already beginning to show results

from its new “To Get Rich is Glorious” policy, made famous by

the new leader Xiaoping Deng after he made an inspection trip

to Shenzhen just outside of Hong Kong and saw the fantastic

progress the city had made in less than a decade after becoming

a free-wheeling center of capitalism.

On my first foray outside of my hotel in Beijing following

this transition my taxi driver claimed that his monthly income

from fares and tips was greater than that of a top government

minister and that he would soon be rich enough to start a

business. On that same trip I read in a local Beijing newspaper

that a group of farmers in some outlying province had chartered

a plane to fly them to Beijing to go shopping—an incredible

event in the history of China.

Daughter Dawn’s Wedding

While a student at Arizona State University in Tempe daughter

Dawn began dating a fellow student named Mark Schofield,

from Ohio. Mark was an exceptionally bright, handsome fellow

whose character and various manual and management skills

delighted both Margaret and me. When he formally asked our

permission to marry Dawn we were equally delighted. They

were married in June 1986.

Our great friends from Tokyo, Frank and Kim Kawahara and

their children came from their home in Torrance, California for

the wedding. The wedding and reception were held at the

famous Hermosa Inn Resort in Paradise Valley, some two or

three car minutes from our home.

Mark had a bent for business and upon graduating from ASU

he formed his own company, Marker Graphics, a design and

printing service for other firms, with Dawn working with him.

For a short while he also took over management of my Phoenix

Books imprint.

Mark operated Marker Graphics for several years before

selling out to Bowne Company, a major Philadelphia printing

firm that dated back to the days of Benjamin Franklin, where he

then headed up the computer division of the Phoenix branch.


172

The Tokyo Journal & Japan Journal Episode

In 1987 while I Tokyo I was introduced to Peter Yamauchi, the

Japanese president of a company who owned and operated

several private English language schools that together had some

3,000 students, making it a very profitable enterprise.

Six years earlier Peter had financed the founding of a new

monthly magazine called Tokyo Journal and hired a European-

born editor to run it. Not knowing the publishing business and

taking a hands-off approach, he inadvertently allowed the editor

to take absolute control of the publication and treat the company

has his own.

When Peter was told that I was an author and had had ex-

perience editing magazines and dealing with rebellious em-

ployees he explained the situation with Tokyo Journal, and

asked me to help him resolve the situation. I agreed, and we

settled on a monthly retainer for my ongoing services.

We went to the office of the magazine unannounced. Peter

introduced me to the editor as the new associate publisher. The

editor was furious at Peter and began to use some very strong

language aimed at both him and me.

After a lengthy word battle then and a later follow-up meet-

ing with the editor by myself he finally said he would return

control of the magazine to Peter and leave the company in

exchange for several million yen. When I reported this to Peter

he said: “So it’s all about money!” and agreed to pay the editor

off. I wasn’t privy to the amount of money Peter later gave him.

Peter then rented space in a new office building in the

Yotsuya district of Tokyo [near Jōchi Daigaku, the university I

had graduated from in 1954/55]. I rented an apartment a short

walk away, and we started the first steps to resuscitate Tokyo

Journal. Peter assigned some of his school staff to the magazine

and I began looking for a new editor.

I also invited youngest daughter Demetra to come to Tokyo,

stay in the apartment with me, and take lessons in Japanese at

one of Peter’s schools. She turned out to be an excellent student,

absorbing the language with ease. One evening we were invited

to Peter’s home for dinner. While there, his wife dressed

Demetra in a beautiful kimono. A photo of her that Peter took


173

has since been featured in our family gallery. She made some

lifelong friends while at Peter’s school.

To serve as editor of Tokyo Journal I brought in one of my

journalist friends Glenn Davis, a tall Texan who had been in

Tokyo for more than a dozen years, was also a graduate of Jōchi

Daigaku, spoke excellent Japanese, and was a successful

freelance writer for major American magazines,

Glenn was a Mackintosh computer user, and came up with

the idea that the magazine should be created on a computer

instead of depending on typesetting by a traditional typesetter

and formatting by a designer.

We made an appointment with the American manager of the

newly established Japan branch of Apple, and convinced him to

donate two Macs to us in exchange for the publicity benefit.

Converting the production system over to Macs was a slow

and painful process. No one in Japan had produced a pub-

lication on a computer so no one had any experience doing it.

Both Glenn and the foreign “typesetter” we hired to do the

inputting nearly put themselves in the hospital over the next

three months. But they survived and persevered, making the

Tokyo Journal a pioneer in the use of computers to create

magazines from scratch.

With Yamauchi San’s full support I then began laying the

ground work for a second magazine, Japan Journal, for inter-

national distribution, with Glenn to serve as the editor of both

publications at the beginning.

I went to New York and succeeded in getting a contract with

the magazine distribution division of Warner to distribute Japan

Journal in the U.S. We then convinced Northwest Airlines to

agree to carry the first issues of the magazine to the U.S. in

exchange for advertising. The first small test issues of the

magazine had good sales.

Soon thereafter the decision was made to open an office in

California to produce and print the magazine in the U.S. I went

to Marina del Rey in Los Angeles, rented an apartment and

office space and hired a small staff to initiate the transition. I

also rented a car, in my name, for use by the office staff.*


174

___________________________________________________

*Shortly thereafter, during one of my stays in the apartment,

Margaret called to tell me that our oldest daughter Dawn De

Mente-Schofield had given birth to a baby girl, Haley Katherine

Schofield. Dawn later had a son, Trevor, giving us two

grandchildren. Jumping ahead a bit, when Haley was 14 years

old she was awarded a black belt in karate and when she was 17

years old she was certified as a piano teacher.

___________________________________________________

However, communication between me and the Tokyo office

was virtually nil [no email at that time!], resulting in a variety of

problems I could not solve on my own—paying the local hires,

contracting with a local printer, etc. I went back to my home in

Phoenix for a visit. Peter and his younger brother came to

Marina del Rey, staying in the apartment I had rented in the

company name.

Peter then insisted that all three of us go to New York for

some important meetings. I met them at Los Angeles Airport for

a flight to New York. There we checked into an expensive

hotel. I have no recollection of any meetings or accomplishing

anything on the trip…except going with Peter to the campus of

Princeton University, which he had attended when young.

I then went to Tokyo and was asked to accompany Peter’s

brother on a trip around Southeast Asia to set up more dis-

tribution for Japan Journal. It turned out to be more of a plea-

sure trip than anything else.

I returned to Marina del Rey but the problems continued so I

scheduled another trip to Tokyo, and there I found that things

had fallen apart. It seems that Peter had borrowed large sums of

money from a yakuza gang, and had been ordered to pay up.*

___________________________________________________

*Yakuza gangs, some numbering in the hundreds, had been a

significant part of Japanese society since the early days of the

Tokugawa Shogunate era [1603-1867]. They originated as

gambling syndicates and remain prominent today in the so-


175

called entertainment trades—bars, cabarets and illicit pros-

titution—as well as in construction.

___________________________________________________

One of the ways the yakuza gang got its message across to

Peter was to have a gunman member spray the front of our

office with bullets one night—a common yakuza ploy. When I

arrived at the office the following morning to unlock the front

door the police were there. They had been called by people in

the neighborhood who heard the shots.

In the next few days the plans for Japan Journal felt apart. I

ended up giving a month’s pay of my own money to one of the

new editors I had hired who was loudly upset at this turn of

events.

The Marina del Rey office was closed down, I vacated my

apartment there and returned to Phoenix. A few weeks later I

was sued by the company I had rented the car from because it

had not been paid and the former employees of the magazine

had continued using the car for several weeks. An Arizona

attorney introduced to me by my brother Don got the lawsuit

dropped, but I ended up voluntarily paying the lawyer a fee.

On my next trip to Tokyo I was staying at the New Otani

Hotel when I run into Peter in the lobby. I said to him: “Peter,

I’m so sorry…!” but that is as far as I got. A yakuza member

grabbed him by the arm and led him to a table in the lobby bar

area.

I waited and watched for several minutes but not want-ing to

make any kind of scene with the yakuza, I walked away. About

a year after I had returned to Arizona I heard that Peter was

dead, There was no mention of how he died or his connection

with the yakuza gang, but it was obvious that the gang he had

borrowed—and squandered!—money from had taken their re-

venge in the usual manner.

The Mike Ohshima Story

Shortly after this debacle I was contacted at my Paradise Valley

home in Arizona by a Scottsdale company that had been ap-

proached by a Japanese entrepreneur who wanted to import


176

cosmetic products from them. The company retained me to

meet the man, Shichiro [“Mike”] Ohshima on my next trip to

Tokyo and find out what kind of operation he had.

I found Mike Ohshima to be extraordinarily friendly, out-

going, personable and very likeable. We hit it off in minutes. He

was from a very good family in Shizuoka, had become fluent in

English during the war and the years that the U.S. occupied

Japan [1945-1952], and was making a good living acting as an

agent for American and Japanese firms, with the huge Mitsu-

bishi Trading Company his largest client.

My involvement with Mike and the Scottsdale company was

minor, but I became involved with him directly on a number of

projects that he was trying to put together, including creating a

new “residential enclave or town” for American Navy personnel

stationed in the Fukuoka area of Japan.

At that time, any kind of construction in Japan invariably

involved the yakuza, Japan’s professional gang groups. On one

memorable occasion I and Mike met his yakuza con-tacts in the

tea/coffee area in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel.

The head yakuza, an impressive looking man with an out-

going personality, came in carrying a fairly large suitcase—the

kind of case the yakuza often used to carry around large sums of

cash in their business and political deals.

Smiling, I asked the yakuza if the case contained his laundry.

He roared with laughter, and the meeting was off to a good

start. In addition to making several trips to Fukuoka with Mike

to discuss the project with the head of the U.S. Naval Command

in Fukuoka I also contacted Pentagons officials in Washington

and the military attaché at the American Embassy in Tokyo to

help further the project. Ultimately the plan failed, apparently

because the construction contractor and the yakuza gang boss in

Fukuoka could not resolve all of the political and official issues

involved.*

___________________________________________________

*Mike knew the top yakuza boss in Japan personally and told

me he was so powerful politically that he was known as the

unofficial emperor of Japan—and that without his approval few

things could happen in the Japanese Diet [Congress].


177

___________________________________________________

Mike was also involved in the Senior Olympics program in

Japan, serving as chairman of the program for several years. He

and I jointly staged several lecture programs at different venues

in Tokyo, including the Sheraton Miyako Hotel where I often

stayed.

I edited a number of books Mike had written in English, and

together we put together an anthology of famous Japanese and

Western poetry in a large volume we entitled POETRY FOR

THE SOUL – Enhancing the Quality of Your Life! It was

published by 1st Books Library in a beautiful hardcover edition

and is still available from Amazon.com.

When in his mid-60s Mike moved from a ritzy suburb of

Tokyo back to his hometown in Shizuoka, buying a house on

the slope of a mountain that had a magnificent view of the

pinnacle of Mt. Fuji some 100 miles away. Daughter Demetra

and I visited Mike’s home in Tokyo just prior to his return to

Shizuoka, and I later visited him and his wife Masako in their

beautiful mountain-side home.

Mike was a good soul who spent his life trying to help peo-

ple. My last “project” with him, shortly after the turn of the cen-

tury, was helping to arrange a tie-up with the American Asso-

ciation of Retired People [AARP] and a similar organization

that he co-sponsored in Japan.

The Michihiro Matsumoto Connection

In 1988 a magazine article about NHK [Japan Broadcasting

Corporation] talk-show host and author Michihiro Matsumoto

caught my attention, and I made arrangements to interview him.

The meeting turned into a talk-fest and a series of collaborations

on books and lecture events that were to continue for more than

20 years.

Matsumoto [“Michi” to his foreign friends] turned out to be

a modern day samurai in his approach to writing and lecturing,

and, in fact, styled himself after Japan’s most famous samurai,

Musashi Miyamoto who lived in the 17th century. Musashi

killed his first duel-to-the-death opponent when he was only 13


178

years old. When he attained his 15th birthday and was formally

invested as a samurai, he re-fused to become the retainer of a

lord, and began roaming the country as a pennyless shugyōsha

or “samurai in training,” killing over 60 other veteran warriors

in death duels by the time he was 28 and living another 35

years, giving demonstrations, teaching his way of fighting, and

writing poetry. For much of his last years he lived in a cave.

Just before dying of natural causes Musashi wrote the now

famous treatise “Book of Five Rings” as an instruction manual

for his students. The book was translated into English and had a

good run in the U.S., despite the fact that the content was so

obtuse few people could understand it.*

___________________________________________________

*In 2005, in collaboration with Matsumoto, I published a mo-

dern day interpretation of the Book of Five Rings under the title

of Samurai Strategies – 42 Martial Arts Secrets from Musahi’s

Book of Five Rings [Tuttle Publishing], now one of my best-

selling books and available in several languages.

___________________________________________________

Michi had become perfectly fluent in English on his own,

without attending English language schools or leaving Japan—

attacking the challenge of language learning the way Musashi

psyched out and defeated his opponents. He went on to earn a

Ph.D and teach at several universities.

His English language fluency led to a series of jobs with the

American Embassy and major Japanese corporations, including

NHK, the huge public broadcasting company—all of which he

left or lost because he did not accept the Japanese way of

blindly accepting the traditional approach to things—kow-

towing to seniors and never questioning or speaking up.

A prolific writer [over 100 books] Michi became a master

debater, demolishing his opponents by asking why, why, why—

forcing them to explain their claims and statements… some-

thing that went against the Japanese grain. In an essay on his

life I described him as the most dangerous man in Japan.

Michi’s best-known English language book is Haragei,

which translates as “The Art of the Stomach,” in which he


179

identifies and describes the Japanese use of culture-based in-

tuitive knowledge—the kind of knowledge that made Matsu-

shita, Honda, Sony’s Morita and other great Japanese business

leaders so capable and formidable.

Matsumoto headed a foundation that sponsored regular

training lectures in English. I became a frequent guest lecturer

at many of his meetings.

The Kata [kah-tah] Factor

In the late 1980s, Ben Izumida, an American Nisei from San

Francisco who was the manager of an advertising agency in

Tokyo and had gotten me several writing assignments for Japan

Air Lines and the Imperial Hotel, told me that my use of cul-

turally pregnant key Japanese terms in my books was a break-

through in explaining Japanese culture and suggested that I take

the concept all the way with a book devoted just to that concept.

That was the genesis of what may have been my most important

book on Japan: THE KATA FACTOR - Japan’s Secret Weapon.

My then son-in-law Mark Schofield published the Kata

[Kah-tah] book in 1990. In the book I attempted to get down to

the absolute basics in identifying and describing the cultural

factors that created and controlled the mindset and behavior of

the Japanese and made them a superior people.

Over the previous decades I had learned that every aspect of

the mindset and behavior of the Japanese was controlled by

specific kata, or “way of doing things,” that was the foundation

of their culture. But it was not until Ben Izumida put the bug in

my ear that I took up the challenge of addressing it directly.

On the cover of the book I described these kata as the Ro-

setta stone of Japan’s enigmatic culture…as the keys that

unlock the mystery and the mystique associated with how the

Japanese do business and conduct all of their professional and

personal affairs. [The cover that Mark designed for the book

was outstanding, and remains today one of my favorites.]

A subsequent edition of the book in Japanese [KATA –

Nihon no Himitsu Heiki] by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich [Japan],

was only a modest success as far as sales were concerned but it


180

got me a number of speech and writing assignments that were to

have a far-reaching influence on my life.

An updated version of the book is now at Periplus-Tuttle, as

KATA – The Key to Understanding & Dealing with the Japan-

ese. Overall the role of the kata has diminished over the years

but there is still a precise “Japanese way” of doing everything

that must be understood and taken into consideration.

The Kodansha Intl Episode

In the late 1980s I had occasion to meet several of the top exe-

cutives and editors of Kodansha International [KI], the English

language publishing arm of the huge Kodansha publishing

conglomerate—Japan’s largest book and magazine publisher—

founded in 1909.

KI was known for its beautiful coffee table type of books on

Japanese culture but sales were down and the division was

losing buckets of money. I was retained to act as advisor to the

company and to look for a new editor for the division.

My advice consisted of suggesting that they begin publishing

mass-market type of books that would have a far wider appeal

than their expensive hard-cover and full-color laden books that

sold only a few hundred copies a year, primarily to institutions.

They accepted this proposition.

I then went to New York to interview some candidates to

head up this new approach, and found one individual who not

only had an excellent background in mass-market books but

also had a Japanese wife and therefore had a special interest in

Japan. He was subsequently hired and spent something like 10

years at KI, helping to put the company back in the black.

In later years KI published a number of my books, some of

them joint ventures with my author-debater friend Prof. Mi-

chihiro Matsumoto.

In 2011 Kodansha International was shut down by its parent

publishing company, Kodansha, Inc. Competition from the new

Periplus-Tuttle-Berkeley Group of companies and Internet

publishing companies finally did it in. My royalty checks from

KI had dribbled down to a few dollars, so I was not surprised.


181

Taken Down by Japan’s Shinto Guru

After THE KATA FACTOR: Japan’s Secret Weapon came out

in Japanese in the early 1990s I was invited to lecture to some

300 Japanese professionals from all fields. During the Question

and Answer session that followed all of the Japanese who spoke

up, except one, expressed amazement at my use of the kata to

explain the Japanese mindset and behavior….something they

had not thought of.

The one who disagreed with the book was later described to

me as Japan’s premiere Shintō authority. He said: “Everything

Mr. De Mente said is wrong! Shintō, not kata, is responsible

for how we Japanese think and behave! He does not mention

Shintō at all!”

When he added that, I knew he had not read the book all the

way through because I had attributed much of the early core of

Japanese culture to Shintō precepts.

.

Tanka Poet Master Mutsuo Shukuya

One of the people who attended my kata lecture after the book

came out in a Japanese edition was educator and tanka poet

Mutsuo Shukuya. After the meeting adjourned he introduced

himself to me, and with a number of his friends, invited me to a

coffee shop in the huge Tokyo Central Station underground

complex on the Yaesu side of the station. This was the be-

ginning of a close relationship that continues today.

Shukuya San later wrote extensive reviews of my kata book

and other titles and had them published in the monthly bilingual

cultural magazine Plaza-Plaza as well as in nationally circu-

lated daily newspapers. He was impressed with my pioneer use

of kata to unveil the mindset of the Japanese, and went on to

corroborate my theory as well as to compare my books with

those of prominent Japanese authors such as Dr. Michinobu

Kato, especially known for his bestselling Shin Ninhonjin-Ron

[New Japanology].

Mutsuo later gave me a key and free use of a 3-bed-room

guest house he owned in Funabashi on the eastern edge of

Tokyo, where I stayed many times on subsequent trips to Japan.


182

On a recent trip both author-debate enthusiast Michi Matsumoto

and I were there at the same time.

In addition to his pursuit of writing tanka poetry in the classic

Kamakura [1185-1333] style, Mutsuo was also a pachinko play-

er who had become so good at the pinball-type of game he

consistently won large baskets of small ball-bearings that he

then converted to cash at special windows in alleys behind the

pachinko parlors.

Mutsuo, whose ancestral antecedents put him in the upper

class, was also a patron of kabuki and noh, and often invited me

to attend performances with him, where I met other devotees of

these traditional art forms.

Over the years I returned his many favors by editing many of

his translations of tanka poetry [his own as well as that of other

master poets], profiling him and his work in some of my books

and blogs, and finally, in 2010, creating a blog featuring his

commentary on tanka and his lectures on how to compose it.

Among the several high-ranking people in Mutsuo’s circle of

friends whom he introduced me to were Yoshio Karita, former

protocol officer for the Imperial Family, and Dr. Tadanobu

Tsunoda, noted authority on the function of the brain and the

author of numerous works, including the classic The Japanese

Brain. Over the following years I had many meetings with

Karita San, including day and night-time forays around Tokyo

and Yokohama’s famous China Town. He was also a frequent

visitor at Shukuya San’s guest house where I stayed.

For the last several years Karita San has been Senior Advisor

to the famous Mori Building Company, the developer of major

office and apartment complexes around the world, including the

famous Ark Hills complex in Tokyo’s Roppongi district, and a

second more elaborate complex in the same district that is

designed to look like, feel like and function like a full-fledged

town—a town “with heart,” said the president of Mori.

Karita San also serves as Mori Building’s roving ambassador

in its dealing with foreign governments and businesses. He is a

wonderful example of a cultured gentleman.


183

Dr. Tadanobu Tsunoda, the Brain Man

Dr. Tsunoda is best known for his work on distinguishing be-

tween the functions of the left and right sides of the brain, and

determining that the Japanese are programmed to be primarily

right-brain oriented and then bring in the left side if pure logic

is required, whereas virtually everyone else in the world [except

for Polynesians] are programmed to be primarily left-brain

oriented.

The reason for the right-brain programming of the Japanese

and Polynesians, according to Dr. Tsunoda, is the number of

vowels in their respective languages. Approximately half of all

the words in the Japanese and Polynesian languages consist of

one or more of the vowels a, i, e, u and o—pronounced in

Japanese as ah, ee, ou, eh, oh.

I later served as one of Dr. Tsunoda’s linguistic guinea pigs,

and used his theories as the basis for two of my books: Which

Side of Your Brain Am I Talking Too? and Why the Japanese

are a Superior People! – The Advantages of Using Both Sides

of Your Brain!

These two books go a long way toward explaining why men

and women have difficulty communicating fully with each

other, and why women have traditionally been at a disadvantage

in the male-dominated world.

The Subway Guide to Tokyo

Tokyo has long had one of the world’s largest subway systems

to help the millions of residents and visitors come and go in the

huge city. While this has been a great boon for the Japanese it

did not solve the problem for foreign visitors who could not

understand or read Japanese

Tokyo was [and still is] a frustrating maze to most residents

and visitors—including the Japanese—became most streets are

still not named, there is no specific pattern to most of them, and

addresses of places have absolutely nothing to do with whatever

street they are on or near. As noted earlier, addresses are based

on districts that diminish in size from indiscriminately sized

wards and irregular-shaped sections until you get down to “cho”


184

that may have from a dozen to several dozen buildings within

each of them. Furthermore, subway stations have from one to

20 or more exits that can bring you up as much as half a mile

from your destination if you don’t know which one to use.

The reason for the Tokyo maze is that the giant city started

out as separate “towns” created because from the 1630s to 1867

the country’s 200-plus clan lords were required by the Shoguns

to maintain mansions in Yedo / Tokyo [the shogunate capital],

keep their families there are all times and themselves spend

every other year in Yedo in attendance at the Shogun’s Court.

All of these mansion estates developed into small towns

populated by the lords’ retainers and the tradesmen who served

them. Following the end of the shogunate system of government

in1867 almost nothing was done or has been done to integrate

the streets, alley ways and byways of the former towns into the

now huge city of Tokyo.

In early 1996 I resolved to help alleviate this problem by

putting together a comprehensive list of the major destinations

in the city linked with the subway line or lines, the closest

disembarkation stations and the best exits, and putting the list in

an easy-to-use book form.

My agent in Tokyo, Kiyoshi Asano of the Asano Literary

Agency, sold the guide idea to a quasi-publishing company,

getting me a $25,000 advance [the largest advance I have ever

received from a publisher!]. But the publisher defaulted on the

contract and I got the rights to the guide back…and legally kept

the money.

My good friend and fellow author Fred T. Perry then

arranged for the guide to be published by Shoeido Co. Ltd. [as

the Subway Exit Guide to Tokyo] Altogether the book provided

precise guidelines for the subway line, station and exit to over

1,000 key destinations in the city.

Updated several times over the years it was later re-issued by

the Tuttle Publishing Company and has since morphed into a

guidebook with area maps under the title GETTING AROUND

TOKYO, with the subtitle: Tokyo Atlas.


185

Demise of Charlie Tuttle

And the Rise of Periplus Editions

Charlie Tuttle, the founder-publisher of the Chares E. Tuttle

Publishing Company in Tokyo in 1948 and one of my first pub-

lishers, died in 1993. Charlie was a drinker and a gambler but

he was also a smart publisher. Shortly after his death the com-

pany was bought out by Eric Oey, his Japanese wife’s cousin,

who had founded Periplus Editions in California in 1988 and

later added a number of additional imprints including Berkeley

Books and Java Books. Oey merged Periplus and Tuttle in

1996,

Incorporated in Hong Kong, Periplus-Tuttle is headquartered

in Singapore, has major units in Tokyo and in Rutland, Vermont

[the ancestral home of the Tuttle family]. The company is the

leading publisher of books on Asian, and is my primary pub-

lisher, with over 20 of my titles, several of which have foreign

language editions, including Croatian, French, German, He-

brew, Indonesian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Rus-

sian.

Although I have been published by over half a dozen Japan-

ese companies, none of the books caused more than a small

ripple. Two of the bi-lingual titles I co-authored with author

Michihiro Matsumoto, published by Kodansha International,

made Japan’s Amazon.com bestseller list for a few days before

dropping out-of-sight. They did, however, gain me some benefit

from the contacts that resulted from the mention of my name in

Japanese publications.

Losing Brother L

And Becoming a Victim

In 1999 my youngest brother L came down with what was di-

agnosed as colon cancer. He was operated on but the operation

was not a success and soon thereafter he was informed that the

affliction was fatal. He died within a matter of weeks.

L had been the tallest, strongest and most physically active

of my three brothers. After serving in the U.S. Air Force in

Europe he founded his own small construction company, and in


186

his free time became an avid hunter [with some kills that made

the record books], a Colorado River rafter, and an outdoorsman

who roamed the White Mountains of northwestern Arizona.

As a result of this tragedy my family insisted that I go in for

a colonoscopy. When the procedure was performed Margaret

was staying nights at a resort hotel in northeast Scottsdale,

working at a convention.

In the afternoon of the day following the procedure I began to

experience twinges of pain in my lower abdomen. When the

twinges became more frequent and pronounced I call the clinic

where the procedure had been done and was told that the

twinges should go away and that I shouldn’t worry about it.

By 9 p.m. I was feeling bad enough that I went to bed. I woke

up around midnight because of serious stabs of pain in my

abdomen. The pain subsided and I dozed off. About an hour

later the painful stabs returned and were so bad I began having

short fainting spells. I finally acknowledged something was

seriously wrong and managed to call 911 and ask for an am-

bulance.

I told the 911 operator that I would open the garage door and

the back door, and for the ambulance staff to come through the

garage door and look for me. I was able to get dressed and lie

down on the couch in the living room.

I vaguely remember the ambulance crew arriving, being put

on a gurney and wheeled outside. My memory of the ambulance

ride to John C. Lincoln Hospital and being rushed inside are

vague. The only thing I seem to recall is that once in the hall-

way of the hospital the gurney was being pushed so fast I could

feel a breeze.

The next thing I became aware of was waking up in a bed

with a man sitting in a chair close to the bed, leaning toward

me.

The man identified himself as Dr. Charles Matlin. He then

folded the bedcover back off of my stomach, revealing that a

long incision had been made in the center of my abdomen.

There were two holes in the right side of my stomach and one in

the left side. Plastic bags were attached over two of the holes.


187

Dr. Matlin explained that my colon had been perforated and

that the excrement that should have been expelled the normal

way had poured into my stomach. He said that he had first used

suction and then pumped water into my stomach to flush out the

remainder of the excrement but since there was no way he could

be sure he was able to get all of it he had cut a section out of my

colon and attached the “working end” to the larger hole in my

stomach in order for me to expel excrement into the largest of

the plastic bags. He added that I had had no more than 90

minutes to live when he began the operation.

I went back to sleep. The next time I woke the female doctor

who had performed the colonoscopy on me was sitting by my

bedside. She asked me why I had called 911 instead of her. I

finally managed to say, “It was the only thing I could think of.”

She was silent. I was barely conscious and closed my eyes, at

which point she apparently got up and left without saying any-

thing else.

On the second day after the operation, with a nurse’s help, I

had to get out of bed and walk around the corridor, pulling all

the tubes and wires attached to me on a wheeled device. That

was a painful experience.

I ate only a few bites over the next few days and did not

expel any excrement into the plastic bag. I was allowed to go

home on the fifth day after arrangements were made to have a

nurse visit me each day for the next few weeks. Emptying and

cleaning the excrement-bag was a daily unpleasant chore that I

had to do myself.

Some two weeks later I went to Dr. Matlin’s office for a

checkup. The long incision in the center of my stomach was

oozing pus. He poked a drainage tube into it and instructed his

intern to use a suction device to pump the pus out and inject an

antibiotic into the hole. Thereafter the visiting nurse took over

the pumping and anti-biotic treatment chores, which went on for

an additional three weeks.

I was a virtual basket case for several more weeks but finally

got to the point that I could leave the house. My brother-in-law

Dwight Steiner took me to a law office to see if one of the


188

attorneys would represent me in bringing a suit against the

doctor who had perforated my colon.

The attorney we talked to asked me if I was prepared to pay a

substantial fee up front, and warned me that doctors have

powerful law firms to represent them in malpractice suits and

that it could go on for months. I let it go.

By this time I was able to work at the computer for a couple

of hours each day, and I attended a family picnic. My strongest

memory of that event was that daughter Demetra drove me to

the picnic grounds and the normal jostling in the car hurt my

stomach and made me nauseous. I managed to get to one of the

toilets in the picnic area before vomiting.

Some four months later, after several more visits to Dr.

Matlin’s office, he asked me if I was ready to have my cut colon

rejoined so I could get rid of what I was inclined to call the “shit

bag.” I said yes.

That operation was another major affair. Among other things

Dr. Matlin had to cut through a lot of scar tissue. When I woke

up Margaret was there. I was in such pain and felt and looked so

bad I asked her to leave and not come back for about three days

because I didn’t like for her to see me in that condition.

I did not have a bowel movement until the fifth day after the

operation—a painful and noisy process because my colon was

filled with gas. On two occasions after I was released from the

hospital I was back in the hospital for additional operations to

remove things from my stomach area that apparently were

supposed to have dissolved but didn’t, making a total of four

operations resulting from the colon examination.

It was not until the spring of 2,000 that I felt strong enough

to make another trip to Tokyo. Somewhat to my surprise my

reconnected colon has stayed connected. However, as a result of

this near catastrophic incident I vowed to never again bend over

in front of a doctor.

John Banta & the Sheraton Miyako Hotel Story

By this time I had made over 100 trips to Japan—many times

going on to Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and other South-


189

east Asian destinations. On a few of these occasions I managed

to arrange for complimentary nights at various hotels to help

defray the expenses of traveling, Most major hotels traditionally

grant free stays of up to three nights for recognized travel

writers.

In 2002 John Erskine Banta, a professional hotelier and then

general manager and director of the Sheraton Miyako Hotel in

Tokyo [a branch of the famous Miyako in Kyoto], invited me in

for a much longer stay—I believe it was for 10 days. He had

read a number of my books and credited them with providing

him with insights in dealing with the Japanese owners of the

hotel and the Japanese staff, and said it would be a special

pleasure to accommodate me.

Our first meeting quickly morphed into a relationship in

which I was authorized to stay at the Miyako twice a year for up

to 20 or 21 days on each trip. In exchange for this very valuable

largess I began arranging for noted authors and businesspeople

to speak at the Miyako Hotel on topics of special interest, and

helping to promote these events through the news media and

Internet. The program was designed to attract more Tokyoites to

make use of the hotel’s restaurants and recreational facilities—a

major source of income for upscale Japanese hotels.

I also began publishing a monthly web-based newsletter

entitled AMAZING JAPAN [Miwaku no Nihon] – Fascin-ating

Facts & Features, on which the Miyako Hotel was prominently

featured as the sponsor, and for which I wrote a special front-

page column in John’s name.

My Amazing Japan staff included daughter Demetra as the

associate editor & graphics designer; and old friends Sandra

[Sandy] Martine-Mori and Glenn Davis as contributing editors

in Tokyo.

Three of the special features in the monthly newsletter were

Haiku-of-the-Month, Travel-Word-of-the-Month and Business

Word-of-the-Month. It also included a selection of Japan Links

on the Internet.

I sent monthly email announcements about each new edition

to over 3,000 travel agents around the world, and all evidence

indicated that the newsletter was well-read. But there was no


190

direct way to measure its influence, if any, on the guest count at

the Miyako.

Despite strenuous ongoing criticism about the news-letter

from the senior Japanese sales staff at the Miyako—because my

monthly fee came out of their sales budget—John hung in with

me for some three years. He finally had to acquiesce to the sales

department’s demands and terminated the agreement. I had no

grounds for objecting.

The senior Japanese managers had also done everything in

their power to sabotage the Speakers Program that I had ini-

tiated to promote local traffic to the hotel’s facilities, finally

resulting in John firing the top Japanese executive who led the

campaign against my involvement with the hotel.

But the relationship had been a boon to me and I will forever

be grateful to John Banta the hotel man for his goodwill and

support. The reaction of the senior Japanese staff of the hotel

was once again a good example of the tension that invariably

existed in Japanese companies in which there were foreign

managers—a cultural syndrome that still has not disappeared

from the typical Japanese mindset.

The Japan Information Network Story

In the spring of 2005 year I received an email from my Tokyo

Journal colleague and friend Glenn Davis who asked me if I

would like to come to Tokyo and get involved in a new enter-

prise called Japan Information Network [JIN], which was to be

both a web-based site that lived up to this name and a broad-

casting company providing news about Japan in several lan-

guages.

I said yes, of course, and some two weeks later arrived in

Tokyo where I was introduced to the president of the new

enterprise, Makoto [“Mike”] Asabuki, who had been connected

with the Japanese Foreign Office for many years, running a

government-sponsored news network.

I agreed to spearhead the accumulation of tourism-oriented

cultural and travel information on Japan, and was put on a

monthly retainer. I returned to my home and began organizing


191

scads of information I had already accumulated, and trans-

mitting it to Tokyo.

In addition to myself and Glenn, who was to be in charge of

the broadcasting unit, Asabuki brought in several other in-

dividuals, including one man who [I learned later] had helped

finance the concept and turned out to have purely political

motives. The design company that had been engaged to create

the website also appeared to have some authority over the

content.

To further complicate matters, the New York public relations

firm hired to promote the project was headed by a man who was

a friend of the above politically oriented investor. There was

some kind of row between the two that was delaying the

project. I referred to the stalemate as a hissy fight. The man in

New York accused me of inferring that he was a homosexual,

and turned his hissy vocabulary on me. Asabuki stayed quiet.

On a follow-up occasion when I was in Tokyo JIN had a tiny

window-space in a bar-restaurant in Roppongi that was being

used as their broadcast studio. I met the secondary investor

there, but got no straight answers about what was going on. He

seemed to be working on something entirely different from the

original JIN concept.

Within three months I had submitted some 300,000 words of

copy, none of which was incorporated into the website. I sub-

mitted my resignation to Asabuki. Glenn hung in for a while

longer before opting out. A short time later Glenn moved back

to his home state of Texas where he became a lecturer at a

number of universities and began working on several of books.

My Amazon.com “Shorts”

In the spring of 2006 Amazon.com announced a new program

designed to feature short articles [up to 3,000 words] in its

Books section, and price them at 69 cents each. It was assumed

that a collection of such articles by published authors would sell

well, provide a new cash-flow, and make everybody happy.

I had some 20-plus important [I thought] more-or-less time-

less essays and articles I had done for various English language

publications in Japan, and immediately uploaded them to


192

Amazon’s new Shorts feature. I don’t know how other authors

made out but my sales have been minimal.

The New Print-on-Demand

Publishing Connection

In the summer of 2006 I approached a small publishing house

and distributor in Phoenix about the possibility of them

distributing some of the Phoenix Books titles I still had on hand.

They declined but recommended that I check out a company

called Lightning Source, Inc. [LSI], a wholly-owned subsidiary

of the Ingram Book Company, the largest book distributor in

the U.S., which offered a computer-based automated book

printing program, and had distributor tie-ins with its parent

company and with Ama-zon.com.

I subsequently signed a contract with LSI and uploaded 10 of

my Phoenix Books titles to their Print-on-Demand and ebook

data base. Sales began to go up, quickly reaching around $300 a

month—which was not bad because it was totally automated…I

didn’t have to do a thing.

The LSI connection was looking good until Amazon decided

to jump onto the new Print-on-Demand band-wagon in early

2009 by buying out a company called Create-Space.com [CSC].

The immediate effect of this new Amazon move was that my

LSI sales dropped down to 10 or 15 copies a month. Amazon

quickly became the top POD and ebook seller in the country, so

it turned out to be a plus for me. My challenge since has been

trying to figure out how to use social media to promote my

books.

Knocking a Rib Cage Askew

I had not begun to feel old and have age-related health issues

until I was approaching 80. One major incident contributed to

this decline. A large tree in our front yard had begun to die.

Margaret used a hand-held electric powered chain saw to cut the

tree down and cut the limbs and trunk into liftable pieces.

I loaded the first batch of the heavier pieces of the trunk into

our large wheeled trash can. When I tilted the can forward to


193

engage the back wheels and roll it out to the street for the

garbage truck to pick up, I was standing too close to the can. It

fell forward, knocking me down and landing on my chest. I

couldn’t move but I managed to call out to Margaret to help me.

She rushed to my aid, lifting the forward end of the can up

several inches, allowing me to wiggle out from under it. She

then drove me to our family doctor’s office about five minutes

away. The heavy trash can had obviously caused some damage

to my chest area.

An x-ray revealed that the impact of the can had dislodged

my left rib cage, shoving it down and out about half an inch at

the bottom. The doctor had no idea about how to get it back up

where it belonged, and suggested I wear a tight stretchable band

around by chest and wait to see if the position of my rib cage

had any serious side-effects.

My chest was sore for several weeks and when I leaned to

the left, bringing downward pressure on the rib cage, it hurt—

and still does. But I was not about to undergo any kind of

surgical operation to put it back in place.

The right-hand corner of my left rig cage still protrudes out

about half an inch further than my right rib cage but there is

usually no pain as long as I avoid leaning to the left. That does,

however, limit my movements.

The Heart Scare

Shortly after the trash can accident I began having symptoms

that appeared to be related to a heart problem, resulting in my

family insisting that I go to a doctor and have it checked out.

Our family doctor sent me to a heart specialist at a hospital.

Daughter Demetra, a respiratory therapist at a Mesa heart

hospital, accompanied me. The doctor began a series of tests,

including having me run on a treadmill until I collapsed. I was

sure I was going to die on the spot. I couldn’t breathe or talk,

resulting in some quick responses by the doctor that included

putting a nitroglycerine tablet under my tongue. Demetra

watched this with horror, but there was nothing she could do

about it.


194

The doctor then had me carted to another department of the

hospital where a team snaked a camera into a blood vein in my

right groin area and pushed it up into my heart—the whole

process taking over an hour. They found no blockages. The

doctor told Demetra that there was a slight blood leakage from

my heart but that such leaking was common in older people and

not serious, and she could take me home.

The procedure left me sore and sick as a dog, and so weak I

could barely walk. Instead of taking me directly home Demetra

took me to the hospital’s garden coffee shop where we stayed

for about an hour, waiting for me to get some of my strength

back. I told her I would rather have had a heart attack. My

groin area remained black and blue and sore as hell for about

three weeks, and is still tender.

An Honor that Didn’t Happen

In 2009 two of my Japanese friends, master tanka poet Mutsuo

Shukuya and Yoshio Karita, former protocol officer for the

Imperial Family, submitted my name for one of the awards

given each year by the Emperor to noted artists, authors, crafts-

men and scholars who have made substantial contributions to

Japan’s cultural and economic assets.

The annual presentations of the awards, held at the Imperial

Palace just after New Year’s, is one of Japan’s most notable

cultural and social events. Each year some-where between 200

and 300 individuals are so honored, out of more than a thousand

names submitted.

Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is generally responsible

for recommending foreign individuals for one of the awards,

which come in six different classes beginning with the Order of

the Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers. The advance admin-

istration of the awarding ceremonies is handled by the Décor-

ation Bureau of the Office of the Prime Minister. Several hun-

dred other individuals receive awards that do not fall into these

special classes, and are not invited to the Palace event.

Among those in this category was my old friend Jack Se-

ward, another ex-member of the Occupation forces who had


195

become fluent in Japanese and wrote several books on the lan-

guage, as well as novels with Japanese themes.

Lecture in Beijing, China

In the spring of 2009 I received an email from the executive

director of the International Air Transport Association [IATA]

in Geneva, Switzerland, asking if I would be interested in being

the featured speaker at their forth-coming IATA conference in

Beijing.

The IATA branch office in Singapore had come across my

book, Chinese Etiquette & Ethics in Business, and sent a copy

to the association’s Executive Office in Geneva. Naturally, I

said yes.

The director came back with a request for me to go to an

office in downtown, Phoenix, Arizona that provided video

conferencing services. He wanted a face-to-face meeting with

me before making a final decision. I passed the test. A fee was

agreed upon and arrangements were made for me to fly directly

to Beijing, with a stopover in Tokyo on my way home.

It was also agreed that the theme of my lecture would be the

importance of having in-depth knowledge of other cultures in

the conduct of international business.

The audience was made up of IATA agents from countries

around the world, so the level of expertise was high and I didn’t

get by without a lot of adlibbing and some sharp questions from

some of the more vocal participants.

I stayed in Beijing for three days, and used the extra time to

travel around the city and marvel at all of the construction going

on. In some of the shopping and restaurant sections I could have

been in any large Western city—an incredible change from the

China of the late 1950s when I first became involved with the

country.

My two-week stopover in Tokyo was mostly devoted to

spending time with old friends at the Foreign Correspondents

Club of Japan, walking around the many districts I knew so

well, visiting a number of the restaurants I had frequented over

the decades—especially Tonki [Tone-kee] in Meguro, which is


196

internationally famous for its tonkatsu tone-kot-sue] breaded

deep-friend port cutlets.

When we lived in Tokyo Margaret came to like Tonki’s

tonkatsu so much that after we moved back to the U.S. and I

went to Tokyo on my own I would sometimes stop at Tonki on

my way to the airport to bring tonkatsu to her.

While in Tokyo on that trip I spent my last two nights at the

guest house of my old friend tanka poet and professor Mutsuo

Shukuya, who was set to retire the following year.

A Farewell Trip to Tokyo

In the spring of 2010 I decided that it was time for me to make

what might be my last trip to Tokyo—which by that time

numbered well over 130. I had no business reason for going; it

was motivated strictly by nostalgia and a powerful desire to re-

experience the sights, sounds, tastes, places and people who had

meant so much to me throughout my adult life.

Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way. While waiting in

San Francisco for my plane to Tokyo I ate a boxed sandwich

that had mayonnaise on it. I arrived at the new Tokyo branch of

Hong Kong’s famous Peninsula Hotel at 8 p.m. and after

checking in I walked to the Yurakucho Denki Building next

door to visit the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan on the

20th floor, and see old friends.

Over the next hour I became increasingly nauseous and went

back to the hotel. By 9 p.m. I had a killer combination of vomit-

ing and diarrhea. I called the Front Desk and had some medi-

cine for stomach poisoning brought up.

The treatment didn’t work. Around 11 p.m. I caught a taxi in

front of the hotel and went to the Emergency Room of St.

Luke’s Hospital in the Tsukiji district. I spent the rest of that

night and two more days in the hospital.

Back at the hotel I called my friend Mutsuo Shukuya, check-

ed out, wheeled my baggage outside, and signaled one of the

taxis lined up in front of the hotel. When the driver saw I was

having problems handling my baggage he got out of the car,

loaded the bags for me, then took me to my destination—a

subway station only about three blocks from the hotel. The


197

station connected to a network of subways and surface trains

that would take me to Chiba, a short taxi or bus ride from friend

Mutsuo’s guest house, just across a narrow street from his own

home.

Because of the taxi driver’s kindness and the less than two

minutes I had been in his cab I handed him a ¥500 tip. He

handed it back to me, saying “Kekko desu.” Which can be

translated as: “It’s fine! The regular fare is enough.” Tra-

ditionally, Japanese taxi drivers had never expected or taken

tips, unless the circumstances were extraordinary.

Mutsuo met me at the Chiba train station where I had to go

directly to a toilet to vomit again. After I came out of the toilet

he took me to his guest house where our mutual friend, Michi-

hiro Matsumoto, was also staying at that time.

The following day I felt well enough to keep an appoint-

ment at the Foreign Ministry with Mutsuo and Yoshio Karita.

They had previously submitted my name to the Foreign Mini-

stry department responsible for selecting people to receive an

award from the Emperor—a major annual early January event.

The appointment was to encourage the Foreign Ministry offi-

cials to approve of my selection.

Three days after the meeting at the Foreign Ministry I still

felt sick, weak and listless. I called my airline and booked

passage home. Mutsuo escorted me to Narita Airport and stayed

with me until my flight was called.

A few weeks later Mutsuo informed me that I had failed to

make the Foreign Office cut, apparently because I did not

have—and have not had—any ongoing relationship with a gov-

ernment entity, a university, or a widely recognized cultural or

professional association. Then again I may have failed to make

the grade because some of my books looked at the darker side

of Japanese culture. Another factor may have been that my

writing and teaching career had not been entirely focused on

Japan.

Margaret’s Quadruple Bypass Heart Surgery

On May 11, 2011 on the advice of our family doctor Margaret

went to the Banner Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix for


198

what was expected to be a routine heart examination, expecting

to be home within three or four hours. Demetra accompanied us

to the hospital.

After the examination a doctor came out to the Waiting

Room and told Demetra and I that that Margaret needed a

quadruple heart bypass without delay and that the operation

would be performed the next day just after noon—something

that was incredibly shocking to us because she had not had any

symptoms and because she routinely did seriously heavy yard

work that included cutting down and cutting up large trees and

digging the stumps and roots out…and had spent some seven

hours working in our backyard the day before she went in for

the examination.

I left the 5th floor Waiting Room and walked down a hall-

way to an upper level floor of the parking garage to phone

daughter Dawn. But I was so shocked by the news that while

making the call I collapsed onto a bench in the garage. Demetra

found me and had me checked into the hospital on an emer-

gency basis. My problem turned out to be a severe anxiety

attack that left me unable to breathe effectively and unable to

speak. However, after a thorough examination and three hours

of observation I was released and went home.

The following day daughter Dawn and Margaret’s sisters

Marie and Lelia joined Demetra and I at the hospital, and were

briefed by the doctor on the procedure he was going to perform.

He went into far more detail than any of us liked to hear.

Margaret was operated on in the late evening of May 12, fol-

lowing which she had a number of problems, including mal-

functioning kidneys and low blood count that required a blood

transfusion and intensive care beyond what was expected. The

suffering she endured during the first six days she was in the

hospital was terrible to see. Most patients who undergo heart

bypass surgery are released from hospital in about seven days.

She was not released until the 11th day...three days before her

75th birthday.

She was told that she wouldn’t be back to normal for at least

six months. But within three weeks she was doing all of the

cooking and housework in a very big house. Within five weeks


199

she was driving…and within two months she was back at her

part-time job as a travel coordinator for convention planners and

conventions…work that frequently started as early as 5 a.m. and

lasted until midnight.

The only significant change in her freelance work was that

she gave up accepting jobs that required traveling out-of-state.

In addition to going back to her convention and travel guide

work she also went back to doing house and yard chores for

daughters Dawn and Demetra.

In the spring of 2012, before the first anniversary of her

operation, she painted the entire outside of our very large house

by herself, including the woodwork around the edges of the roof

and on top of the house. This involved moving and using large

heavy metal ladders.

The Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me

Although my life has ranged from unusual to extraordinary,

even incredible, meeting and marrying Margaret Warren in

1958 was the best thing that ever happened to me. She is the

most practical, the most rational and the most diligent person

I’ve ever met…in addition to being a paragon of goodwill, kind-

ness and generosity.

She has managed all of our home and financial affairs, in-

cluding serving as the family carpenter, landscaper, painter,

plumber and general all-around handy person, and allowed me

to do my thing as a writer who was often gone on long trips to

Asia…and when I was home to spend up to 10 hours a day six

to seven days a week holed-up in my home office.

Five Writers in the Family

There must have been something unusual in my life and in the

lives of my surviving eight brothers and sisters, since all of us

had unforeseen careers and five of us turned out to be writers.

Brother Doyle Laverne, my second younger brother, flowered

early, becoming an accomplished poet while still in high school.

After one hitch in the U.S. army he began writing children’s

books that in my judgment are superior to some of the old


200

classics. They are now available from Amazon.com’s Kindle

ebook division. To see a list of his titles put his name [Doyle

Laverne DeMent] into Amazon’s Books Search Box.

My older sister Winnie became an editor in mid-life and

spent time in Iran working for a U.S. government agency. And

as recounted earlier sister Fernie had a long career as a public

relations specialists, and then as a prolific columnist, essayist

and author of inspirational and self-help books based on her

own incredible life experiences. Two of her book titles: The

Heart Knows the Way, and Tea with Elizabeth.

Younger sister Rebecca worked as an editor at PHOE-NIX

Magazine and then as an editor at Arizona Highways, nationally

and internationally known for its superb articles and photo-

graphs on the state of Arizona.

That’s five writers in one family—not bad given the fact that

our father had a fourth grade education and our mother had an

eighth grade education, and that we were born in the backwoods

of the Ozark Hills of southeast Missouri and spent our early

years in virtual isolation from the rest of the world.

How it happened that five out of nine children became

writers despite the fact that when young we were deprived of

most of the things that are now taken for granted is surprising to

me. It has been said that adversity builds character and con-

tributes to success. There must be something else involved.

NOT THE END

Life is a journey, not a destination!

—Ralph Waldo Emerson—

1803-1882


201

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

[Books on China] CHINA Understanding & Dealing with

the Chinese Way of Doing Business

The Chinese Mind—Understanding Traditional Chinese

Beliefs and Their Influence on Contemporary Culture

Chinese Etiquette & Ethics in Business

China’s Cultural Code Words [Key Chinese Terms that

Reveal the Culture and Mindset of the Chinese]

Chinese in Plain English

Survival Chinese / Instant Chinese

Etiquette Guide to China—Know the Rules that

Make the Difference

[Books on Japan]

Japanese Etiquette & Ethics in Business

JAPAN Understanding & Dealing with the New Japanese

Way of Doing Business

KATA—The Key to Understanding & Dealing

with the Japanese

Japan’s Cultural Code Words

The Japanese Have a Word for It!

EXOTIC JAPAN - The Sensual & Visual Pleasures

Business Guide to Japan / Japanese in Plain English

Survival Japanese & Instant Japanese

SPEAK JAPANESE TODAY! - A Little Language

Goes a Long Way!

JAPAN MADE EASY - All You Need to Know to Enjoy Japan

Dining Guide to Japan / Shopping Guide to Japan

ETIQUETTE GUIDE TO JAPAN - Know the Rules that

Make the Difference

THE JAPANESE SAMURAI CODE—Classic Strategies

for Success

JAPAN UNMASKED - The Character & Culture of the

Japanese


202

ELEMENTS OF JAPANESE DESIGN - Understanding &

Using Japan’s Classic Wabi-Sabi-Shibui Concepts

SAMURAI STRATEGIES - 42 Secret Martial Arts from

Musashi’s “Book of Five Rings”

Why the Japanese are a Superior People—The Advantages

of Using Both Sides of Your Brain!

AMAZING JAPAN - Why Japan is one of the World’s

Most Intriguing Countries

SABURO—The Saga of a Teenage Samurai in

17th Century Japan

[Books on Korea] Korean Business Etiquette

Korean in Plain English

Korea’s Business & Cultural Code Words

Etiquette Guide to Korea

Instant Korean & Survival Korean

[Books on Mexico]

Why Mexicans Think & Behave the Way They Do—

Cultural Factors that Created the Character & Personality

of the Mexican People

THE MEXICAN MIND – Understanding &

Appreciating Mexican Culture

Mexican Cultural Code Words [hard-cover]

There’s a Word for It in Mexico [paperback]

[Other Titles] Which Side of Your Brain Am I Talking To? – The

Advantages of Using Both Sides of Your Brain

How to Measure the Sexuality of Men & Women by

Their Facial Features

Samurai Principles & Practices that will Help Preteens &

Teens in School, Sports, Social Activities & Choosing Careers

ROMANTIC HAWAII—Sun, Sand, Surf & Sex

ROMANTIC MEXICO—The Image & the Realities

ASIAN FACE READING—Unlock the Secrets Hidden

in the Human Face


203

Why Ignorance, Stupidity and Violence Plague Mankind

MISTRESS-KEEPING IN JAPAN—The Pitfalls &

the Pleasures

Bridging Cultural Barriers in China, Japan, Korea & Mexico

EROS’ REVENGE - Brave New World of American Sex!

THE PLAGUE OF MALE DOMINANCE! – The Cause

& Cure!

ONCE A FOOL—From Japan to Alaska by Amphibious Jeep

[Books on Arizona] AMAZING ARIZONA—Fascinating Facts, Legends

& Tall Tales

Visitor’s Guide to Arizona’s Indian Reservations

THE GRAND CANYON ANSWER BOOK—Everything You

Might Want to Know and Then Some!

AMERICA’S FAMOUS HOPI INDIANS - Their

Spiritual Way of Life & Incredible Prophecies

THE LORDS OF THE LAND - The History, Heart, Traditional

Customs & Wisdom of the Navajos

Documents

THE INCREDIBLE POWER OF SERENDIPITY! - Highlights of an Uncommon Life