My mother has a friend, Shingane Sakura.  It's a totally cool name that means Tough-As-Steel Cherry Blossom in Japanese.  If Sakura San is anything, he is tough as steel. 

My mother met him while she was in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War when she was married to my father who was in the American air force. 

My father was stationed on an island in the Philippines, and by chance, Sakura San was stationed on the same island, but he was in the Japanese army.  Elvis Prewitt wrote a story, Stragglers, about how my mother met Sakura San.  After my cousin Sara McName read the story, she wrote a story, Requisition, about how Sakura San met my mother. 

After Sakura San got to know my cousin, he told her about his  girlfriend, Sanko, whom he knew before World War Two; and my cousin wrote Divine Wind about when Sanko was a girl in Japan before the war.


Stragglers       Requisition       Divine Wind

THATSAFACT                                                             DARING VENTURES   
 

Stories Copyright 1999
by Steve Gastineau
Update 10/31/99   

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