Stories of Japan

     In my book Snap Shots, there are essentially five stories that are set in Japan and Okinawa.  You will have to bear with me for separating Japan and Okinawa, but because Okinawa was not part of Japan when I was there, I prefer to keep the two apart.  However, those five stories in Snap Shots are not the only ones that I wrote and published about Japan and Okinawa.  I first published a literary essay on a Japanese novelist back in 1972.  Since then, I have written numerous articles and stories about Japan in a variety of publications.  I am telling you about my previous writings not to boast but to show that Japan and Okinawa had been, and still are, very fertile grounds for story material!  Even with my modest experience and knowledge, I could spend a lifetime writing on various topics involving that part of the world.  Invariably, the most interesting topics always involved people, interesting characters!
     In the five hunting stories in the Snap Shots, I do not mention anything about the acquisition of hunting licenses.  The reason was because it varied so dramatically from one era to the next, from Okinawa to Tokyo.  On Okinawa (before the reversion!) it was a pretty simple affair to get a hunting license.  It cost all of $1 in the 1950s and the price was increased to $2 in the 1960s.  You only had to go to Naha main police station and pay the fee to get the license. There was no test or any complicated process.  In Japan it was a bit different.  In the 1950s it was relatively simple, more or less like on Okinawa, a simple matter of going to the nearest police station and filling out a form and paying a small fee, more than on Okinawa, but still fairly modest.  By the 1960s this process became a bit more complicated and cost more.  By the time I got back to Tokyo in 1979 to work at the embassy, the process became mind-boggling and cost a small fortune!
     I arrived in Tokyo in May of 1979.  In September I decided to check on the process of getting a hunting license since the season began on the 1st of November.  I discovered that it was an incredibly complicated and long process, that was expensive to boot!  You  first had to take a lengthy written exam and also a visual game recognition test, all of which took an entire day.  The following day you had to go out to a firing range and demonstrate your knowledge of safe gun handling, which also included shooting at clay targets.  You had to hit at least 50% of your targets or you flunked!  If you passed all of that, you were issued an elaborate certificate (like a diploma) for which you had to pay about $250 (this was in 1979, it is much more now!).  This was a National Hunting Certificate.
     This National Hunting Certificate was good for 3 years, but it did not allow you to go hunting, it only allowed you to apply for permission to hunt at a prefecture (Japan does not have states or counties, instead the country is divided into prefectures, which are more or less like counties here in the U.S.).  In other words, you had to apply for each prefecture separately where you wished to hunt for an annual permit.  Being a small country, in order to have any luck hunting, you would have to secure permits for a number of prefectures, at least three or four!  It would also cost you for each permit!  Each prefectural permit cost around $100!
     I managed to survive the two day exam and paid my $250 fee and had the fancy National Hunting Certificate in hand.  But now, I had to apply for the prefectural permits.  I was complaining to a friend one day about the expense and the difficulty in getting set up for hunting in Japan.  My friend had been at the embassy for several years already and knew everyone.  He suggested that I seek out the help of Nukazawa-san, the most senior Japanese employee at the American Embassy.  It seems that Nukazawa-san worked in the Consular Section and headed the Protocol Office as well.  My friend told me that Nukazawa-san knew everything there was to know about navigating the complicated Japanese bureaucracy!  So, I sought out Nukazawa-san and found myself facing an impressive looking gentleman in his late 50s or early 60s.
     He was tall for a Japanese, about 6 feet and with a ramrod straight posture.  I told him I needed help in securing prefectural hunting permits and he simply asked to which prefectures I wanted to apply.  I was surprised at his perfect American English, no accent what so ever.  I gave him the names of the three prefectures surrounding Tokyo, and to my surprise, he suggested three more, saying that if I got a permit for Chiba-ken, I should also get one for Ibaraki, and so forth.  I agreed, I wasn't going to argue with him.  He had such a commanding presence about him that it seemed foolhardy to go against whatever he said!  I gave him all of my documentation, my diplomatic ID, etc.  He made copies of all, then returned them to me and said that he would take care of everything.  
     Next day I got a copy of the letter that he had written to accompany all of my documents and the applications to the several prefectural offices.  The letter was hand written in beautiful calligraphy, using very formal Japanese, requesting the permits and the waiver of fees!  A week later, I started to receive the prefectural permits, free!  A total of eight prefectural permits that would have cost me a small fortune, had it not been for Nukazawa-sans impressive, formal letter!  I went to his office and thanked him for his help, and he simply waived it off gruffly.  I couldn't resist asking him where he learned to speak English so perfectly, and to my surprise, he told me he was born in the U.S.A.!  His story was fascinating, as I was to learn.
     Nukazawa-san was born and raised in Seattle, Washington!  He graduated from university and earned a law degree.  Upon receiving his law degree, he decided to visit relatives in Japan before he buckled down and got into law practice.  This was just prior to the Pearl Harbor attack!  Like so many Japanese-Americans, he was stuck in Japan when the war started.  The Japanese government insisted that he, along with other Japanese-Americans who were in Japan either visiting or studying, were all Japanese and subject to Japanese laws.  He was drafted into Japanese military like most other male Japanese-Americans in Japan, in his case it was the Imperial Navy.  According to him, life was miserable for Imperial Navy recruits, especially if they were Nisei (Japanese-Americans)!  The NCOs used to beat them constantly with a baseball bat that had Yamato Damashi (Japanese Spirit) written on it!  Then one day, all of the Nisei recruits who were college graduates were called-in to the COs office and told that they were going to be sent to Officer's Training Program.  Their life would be much better as officers, explained the CO.  They would no longer be harassed and beaten as they were, almost daily.
     According to Nukazawa, most were only glad to get out of their miserable circumstances, himself included.  There were, however, a few who refused to accept commissions.  He said he doesn't know what happened to them, they just disappeared.  At the time, Nukazawa knew, as a lawyer, that accepting a commission in an enemy armed forces was considered an expatriating act and subject to loss of nationality. But he said that he was so miserable, that he didn't care, was only glad to get out of the terrible situation.  After receiving a commission, he was assigned to the Naval Headquarters in Tokyo (because of his English and knowledge of law!) but then, after a year assigned to the staff of Admiral Yamamoto!  He became Yamamoto's staff aid and accompanied the Admiral wherever he went, except for that one trip, the one that Yamamoto took when he was shot down!
     At the end of the war Nukazawa had reached the rank of Commander.  He had never seen any combat, was always in headquarters, in the rear area.  When the war ended, he was initially held by the U.S. forces, then released.  Shortly afterwards, when the American Embassy was reopened, he was notified that he had lost his U.S. citizenship because he had served with the enemy forces.  Nukazawa didn't fight it, being a lawyer he knew that he had committed an expatriating act according to U.S. laws.  Ironically, a few months after he had received his Certificate of Loss of Nationality, he received another letter asking him to come to the American Embassy for an interview.  When he went to the embassy, he was offered a job, as a Japanese national employee!  Good  jobs were almost impossible to find in those days, so Nukazawa was only thankful, and took the job without a thought!
     When I met him in 1979, he was the most senior Japanese employee of the American Embassy in Tokyo.  Our rules dictate that no one in an Embassy can have a salary that is greater than that of the Ambassador.  At that time, Mike Mansfield, former Majority Leader of the Senate was our Ambassador, one of the most senior Ambassadors that we had.  Nukazawa's salary was $1 less than that of Mike Mansfield's!  Nukazawa ultimately received a U.S. Immigrant Visa upon his retirement.  A faithful employee of a U.S. diplomatic mission, an embassy or consulate, can receive a Special Immigrant Visa as a reward for many years of faithful service.  Nukazawa certainly qualified for it so he received it, and five years later became a naturalized U.S. citizen!  I find that a bit odd....the U.S. government would have been better off not taking away his citizenship in the first place, if he was going to get it back later!  During the time he worked for the American Embassy, he travelled often back to the states with a Japanese passport with a tourist visa to visit friends and relatives back in the states!  What a world we live in!