We have a black & white picture: a lewdly smiling
young almost Ronald Reagan in uniform in a Japanese
whorehouse with two unnamed, bug-eyed boys.
“That’s why I’ve always associated tea with sex,”
he’d explain. He’d joined up after his older brother
Wayne’s plane crashed taking out kamikaze. They’d
buried Wayne in France where his hard-scrabble
mother could never afford to visit. “At least that way
I got to see the grave,” Dad said. “They wanted me
to be an officer, but I just wanted to go home.” The war
ended for my father on a ship halfway to the Pacific
Theater. With a belly full of cheap bourbon,
he’d talk about trading KP or guard duty
for others’ beer allotment. Once, after a friend passed,
he mentioned how a bunch of them had hopped
a truck to see what Fat Man left of Nagasaki.
“I’m probably the only one left that saw it,” he said.
Photo By: Nomadic Lass