This is the story of an American teenager who was, incredibly, caught up in the events of the Second World War in Asia following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This book is based on a true story, but it has been fictionalized because the author does not know the actual details of the man's daily experiences, just the core of his nearly inconceivable story. However, every effort was made to accurately report the actual events of the war and the names of the real people who experienced those events. The details of the USS Nevada's heroic and successful dash to escape being sunk in Pearl Harbor are real as are the names of the officers and crewmembers who battled so bravely to save their stricken ship on that infamous morning in the Territory of Hawaii. The names and activities of the Japanese High Command and the brutalities they endorsed are all accurate. The unheralded, dramatic and world-altering inspiration that General Douglas MacArthur had when he persuaded the Emperor to publicly renounce his divinity was, the author believes, the most important diplomatic declaration of the Twentieth Century. This work can best be described as an historic novel, telling the extraordinary story of a young American who was forced to join, and fight for, the army of his enemy, even though at the time he wasn't able to speak more than a few words of the Japanese language. Imagine: alone, thousands of miles from your home, your family and your friends and suddenly you are stripped of your own identity and forced, at gunpoint, to fight for your enemy. That is actually what happened to Kenji Kasamatsu. The fact that he survived the war is miracle enough, but when you consider that he lived a long, productive life after the war is truly amazing. Enter now a Japanese garden on the Island of Oahu and listen as an old man tells his curious granddaughter the story of fish heads & dirty rice.