>> You want some more reading?
I'm going to talk.
I've got some more.
I'm going to read something from Korean love songs.
This --
-- thing that I'll read for you, I have to give you some context.
This is just a narrative prose poem and it's about the lives and times of four Texas Mexicans
from the Rio Grande Valley, where I was born, in peacetime Japan and then in wartime Korea.
And at the very beginning of the war, at least the first hard nine months and wounded a couple
of times. Now he's back and because he had lived with his friends in peacetime Japan
for about five months, that some Japanese friends.
You can imagine what 18, 19 year-old GIs, irrespective of nationality,
the type of people they will be befriended by.
And this is called Old Friends.
This takes about seven minutes, maybe less.
In Honshu, the bigger island, the southern Japanese businessmen call their
whorehouses Emporiums.
Off Baron Otsuki Boulevard, in Southeast Kobe, are five emporia, all in a row.
The nominal owner of Shirley's Temple of Pleasure Emporium is middle-aged Tomiko Sambe
and she prefers to be called Shirley.
And when she says it, it doesn't sound anything like that.
Here, on an earlier medical R&R, Tomiko replaced my lost dress army shoes, for a week or two,
with black navy shoes of proper fit.
My good acquaintance here is Mosako Fukuda
and she has a brother named Hideo who's a medical student in Nagoya.
Mosako is native to the Kobe-Kyoto-Osaka Triangle and she visits her parents in Nara,
every ten days or oftener, and always when the cycle comes and lays her low.
There's no pretense here: Her parents know where she works, And I,
learning the ways of the world, do not add insult to their injury by visiting their home.
I know of them and of Hideo through her and, like the popular song now,
She's never been to Tokyo, Hokkaido is out of the question.
She's been once to Kyushu, but never to Shikoku.
She loves to walk, and she loves the parks.
We go and stay until the familiar shimbun, the newspaper.
And then enough, she says enough, and we walk back to Shirley's.
And now, midday of the sixth day of R&R, and despite what Dr. Berman claimed,
the shoulder's stiffened up again, thus making this just one more of Mosako's love duties.
And, as she starts on the shoulder, she hums and sighs,
and when she tickles me, she laughs, and I laugh, too.
And after this, the usual bath and mat and bath again.
We're a likely pair, we are, and I'm certainly no Pinkerton
to her Butterfly, but I have come to say goodbye.
Later tonight, we'll go shopping and then I'll leave with nine days left on my R&R.
Early next morning, the World War II veterans sweep the Temple of Pleasure Emporium,
while we enjoy a quiet breakfast of pastry and tea.
Tomiko, who prefers to be called Shirley, comes in and we shake hands, Western style.
After her tea, we take long, full bows just like the old friends that we are,
And Mosako will walk me to the [? Keiyo ?] Railway, less than three blocks away.
She holds my pass, my ticket, and the money and she puts them
in my pocket, in a flowered envelope.
And then I surprise her with yet another fan which she needs like another hole.
But she takes it, and her eyes close when she smiles.
Then her eyes and mine open wide when the train surprises us, and we watch the rushing crowds.
Gently, with her fan, she pushes me away, and again her eyes close when she smiles
and she turns, walks away, carefully opening and studiously closing the fan
and as the train rears back before moving on.
I look for a familiar patch or face, and finding none, I remove my cap in time
to catch the last faint smell of the tea and pastry, prepared by my old friend.
Thank you.