Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

A story of a B-29 bomber pilot who time-travels from the war-time Tokyo to present-time.

 

Please read Chapter 1, first.

 

Jim woke up and found himself lying on the bed. Jim soon found he was in a room wearing some kind of pajama. He saw sunlight coming from the window. It was in the morning.

“Good mornng, are you awake?”

He heard a woman’s voice. He looked at her. She was sitting beside the bed. She was a Japanese woman, whom he saw in the burning house. She looked fine. Strangely she spoke English.

“Where am I? What am I doing here?” said Jim.

“You are in the hospital. You saved my life and then fell down on the road. Then we are taken here.”

A woman said delightedly smiling. She was a young pretty woman with long hair wearing western style shirts and skirt.

“Who are you? Why are you here with me?” said Jim.

“My name is Sayuri. I lived in the apartment which was burnt down last night. Actually this morning. You must be an American guy who was supposed to be living next door. I heard from the landlord that an American man was moving in last night. I was sleeping last night. But woke up by the fire. You were there and rescued me. Too bad the apartment that you were going to live burned down on the day you came there. The fire came from neighborhood. You were so unlucky but I was lucky that I was saved by you.”

Her English was excellent though he could notice slight Japanese accent. Jim wondered what she was. Yes, he remembered she was in the burning house. Her story confused him. He could not understand what she was talking about.

“Why do you speak such good English?”

Jim asked her to know what she was. He just thought she was an investigator for the military.

“Oh, thank you for the compliments. I am an interpreter. I used to study in a college in the United States” she replied. Then she asked him back “By the way, what is your name? What do you do? Are you a student or worker? How old are you?”

Jim felt caution. She spoke cheerfully but such questions would be usually given to prisoner of war.

He said “My name is Jim…”

But he stopped talking as soon as he saw a man in uniform coming into the room. His uniform was dark blue and looked like a military or police personnel.

A man in uniform said something which Jim could not understand. Sayuri responded to the man.

 

 

Then she said to Jim “The policeman wants to ask you some questions regarding the situation of the fire.” Jim felt frightened. It was the time investigation starts, including torturing. Jim knew he should be ready to such condition any time since he became a military person. But he was very scared and started to look pale in his face.

“Jim, are you alright?” said Sayuri.

“Sorry, I don’t remember anything. I don’t even know who I am. I just remember my name is Jim. That is all.”

He thought that was the only way to avoid the investigation and torture. But he knew it wouldn’t work because barbaric Japanese military would torture him to get information from him. They wouldn’t show any mercy.

Sayuri talked with the policeman again. After 10 minutes of talking, the policeman smiled and bowed to both Sayuri and Jim. Then he got out of the room.

Sayuri spoke to Jim again.

“The policeman says you can leave here if you want to. It seemed you lost the memory by the fire. Why don’t we see a doctor? If we can, why don’t we go to my family’s place?”

Jim was surprised by her kindness.

 

Jim got out of the bed and stood up. Sayuri guided him to get out of the room. Jim looked around the corridor. The building seemed modern. He heard most Japanese buildings were built in wood. But the building looked concrete built and very clean.

 

He passed the room where several patients were gathered. He heard the radio sound and looked at the direction such sound is coming from. He was shocked to see what the patients were looking at. Some kind of box, with screen on one side that shows the moving pictures with radio sound. The box itself was releasing the image. No projector here. It was not the theatre. The image was in color. How could it possibly happen? Color film images he knew were “Gone with the wind” and “Wizard of Oz” which he saw before the war with Japan. But the films were shown in theatre, not a place like this. He could not believe that Japan already had such advanced technology.

“What is that thing?”

Jim asked Sayuri pointing his finger to the box.

“Oh, my god, you seem to suffer serious memory loss. Don’t you know this is television?”

“Tele-vision? Oh, I see.”

He seemed to get the point. Yes, he heard something about it. Nazi-Germany has already made it for Berlin Olympic in 1936. But that was black and white. Japan imported that thing and made it into color image? He still couldn’t understand what was going on.

“Here, let’s see a doctor” said Sayuri.

 

A doctor and nurse were in the room. The doctor spoke to him through Sayuri’s interpretation. It was 5 minutes conversation and the doctor put stethoscope on his chest. 

  

The doctor told Sayuri that Jim was fine and permitted to leave the hospital though his memory loss was worrisome but that happened by the shocking incident and he would be recovering soon. He was advised that he should come back to the hospital when his condition would change.

Jim and Sayuri went back to the room. Jim was given new clothes, shirts, jeans, underwears, sweater and jacket. “Don’t worry, they were all my brother’s used clothes. Underwears are new. I bought them at this hospital. I’ll get out of the room. Please change the clothes.” “Hey, where is what I was wearing?” “Oh they dumped them because they got too many grimes on it. Mine, too.” She got out of the room. As he was changing the clothes, he was feeling very awkward. This should be enemy line. But people he met seemed so friendly to him. How could they be?

He changed the clothes and got out of the room. Sayuri was standing and smiling. She had a newspaper in her hand.

“This is for you. It is English newspaper in Japan. I hope it would help you recover memories somehow.”

Jim took the newspaper and read it. It was all written English and the title of the newspaper was “The Japan Times.” He was surprised that there was an English newspaper being published in Japan. But there was more surprising thing he saw on the paper. He saw the date of the paper.

 

“March 10, 2005”

 

Go on to the Chapter 3.