"For a college kid in a provincial town in the early 50s, there were not many options for learning English. My teachers were Hollywood movies. I memorized a script and then sat in a movie theater all day, watching and listening to the same movie time and again."

That was the method that set Minoru Akimoto on his road to success. It shows the initiative he had as a youngster, and his desire early in life to move ahead.

Born in Fukuoka, he was only 15 in 1945. He said, "For a few years after the end of the war, American culture had a tremendous impact on Japan. Everything brought into Japan was new to us. English seemed to me to be a necessary tool. My exercise in going to the movies paid off handsomely."