"It cost three cigarettes if you wanted someone to break your arm for you. So you could have a few days off." The shaky voice of an American POW from a World War II Japanese internment camp.
The audience listened with rapt attention, hoping to know, hoping to reconcile the Japan of then with the Japan of now. These young Americans were looking for the pieces of the puzzle that linked the everyday life they enjoyed in modern Tokyo — the bars, the friendships, the opportunity to work and study — with the harshness of these camps. The starvation. The forced labor. The outright cruelty.
Nobody mentioned these things, an awkward attempt to protect the POWs who had made this emotional trip back to the place of their interment, or a desire not to know. Not to rehash. Not to dampen the enthusiasm of today.