• My old man, Fred spent time in this land, Japan, between 1944 and 1945 after his stint as a co-opted worker on a transportation project for the Japanese Government (The Burma Railroad). His subsequent and quite promising career as a coal miner on mainland Japan was somewhat truncated when the know-it-all Americans decided to drop a couple of very large bombs on the civilian population to bring them to heel. In hindsight I suppose Fred hadn’t had the time to enjoy his travels in the Orient and to fully absorb the culture within these countries. Quite simply he was a touch too busy.