takeshi21

By all accounts, grandad was a helluva man. Born into a poor Japanese family, he only had one older brother and his mother died while he was still in grade school. This of course meant that his father worked twice as hard to raise a family, leaving the boys too much time for mischief.

Even at a young age, grandad was the gang leader. When he was 9, he rounded up a posse of kids and instructed them to throw rocks through the window of the cranky old man in the neighborhood. He was caught and punished, but it only succeeded in teaching him to be smarter when causing mayhem.

Growing up in Japan during the 1920's was a time of tremendous excitement and upheaval. Only one generation earlier, Japan began opening its ports to foreigners. From the earliest days of Chinese settlement of the islands, Japan remained a sovereign state for many centuries. It successfully warded off attacks from many foreign countries and remained both fiercely proud and independent.

But its independence also prohibited the Japanese from sharing knowledge and technology with the outside world. Only a handful of Japanese were permitted off of the islands and even fewer foreigners had ever been permitted into the country. Outside knowledge of the land was scarce, at best.

When the Americans first landed in Edo (now known as Tokyo) in 1853, the Japanese had never seen a steam locomotive, much less the heavily armed, massive steam ships that sailed into the harbor. It was still a feudal country, ruled by shogun warriors whose allegiance lay only to the Emperor, a man descended of the gods.

It was in the aftermath of the collapse of the feudal system that grandad grew up. His childhood coincided with a period of unbelievable growth in technology and wealth and military might that catapulted Japan onto the world's stage, culminating into the events of the Second World War.

And this is where his story begins.