A guilt Trip (Age 10). Did I mention that I was a rather odious child? In ’48 the Ginza in Tokyo was mainly canvas street stalls amidst rubble fields. One day I stopped at a stall with lots of neat rubber spiders and insects for sale. I decided I wanted one, but I had spent all my money on firecrackers to throw out of bus windows. So, I decided to simply steal it. I had a package, and I sat it down on the target spider while I made a show of looking at other things. Then I picked up the package, while holding the spider under the package with my hand. As I turned to move on, I glanced at the old woman tending the stall. She gave a look that said she knew exactly what I was doing but couldn’t do anything about it because I was an Occupation Brat. That was the last time I ever stole anything, although I did do a very good job on the other nine Commandments.
Discovering Empathy (Age 11). I initially attended the US Army school in Tokyo, as did the kids of almost any who had anything to do with the Occupation, regardless of national origin. I have no recollection of the context anymore, but I remember being in a dance class. (A dance class in a US Army school? My mind still boggles.) There was a girl there with brown skin, probably from India, and none of the white boys would dance with her. I can still remember the look on her face clearly as she had her first brush with bigotry. A major regret of my life is that I did not have the guts to dance with her.
Expulsion (age 13). One has to work to be expelled from public school. When the Chinese entered the Korean War, there was general panic in Tokyo, so my parents sent me to Phoenix, AZ to live with my idiot uncle, who had moved there from Florida. I was not exactly a model citizen in the 8th grade. One night a buddy “borrowed” a jeep for a joy ride and three of us went to take some target practice at the windows in the local high school. When the cops showed up we drove across the athletic field, got out, and scaled a six-foot cyclone fence. The cops were not inclined to go over the fence because the wires had been cut off like sharp pickets across the top of the fence. As we stood on the other side giving the cops the finger, I wondered how we had gotten over that fence. It remains one of life’s little mysteries. Historical footnote: One of the participants later became a US Senator who, appropriately enough, had to resign because of his involvement in a savings and loan scandal thirty years later.