Return to Memory.

In this stream-of-consciousness novel a man who had experienced combat in the South Pacific "theater-of-operations" during World War II and then served as an officer in the United States Army of Occupation in Japan decides, a lifetime later, to return to that memorable country.

Visiting the now-aged Japanese woman who had been his lover, the nether world of senso otoshigo - "war baby" - comes into focus. Our once indomitable protagonist is now old from the passage of time, but more acutely aged by his occupational hazard of so often viewing death in life's differing arenas. He hears the words Okaeri-nasai! and remembers the phrase means "Welcome home!" Each chapter title of this book is predicated upon Shakespeares "Stages of Life." Our protagonist's sans everything is brought into focus as he becomes a yoking victim near Keoko's home.

Each pull of the assailant's garrote brings forth playbacks of the victim's varied past. From the first foreign words learned, the Filipino Tagalog of Megunda danlaga; iniebeba gita ("Pretty girl; I love you.") - to the final foreign words heard as an intonation to the benediction of his life, this microcosmic man who had believed, as his generation had been taught, that "East is East, and West is West, and never the Twain shall meet," lives to see that change is the progeny of life.

He has taken life and given life; even employed cyrogenics so that his loved one could avoid the grave. As death befalls this doomed man, the book's moral unfolds. The surprise ending brings the entire narration into focus. The author has coined the word "generacide," and avers "... each generation, by the changes it has wrought, exterminates its predecessor."

- Excerpted from the publisher's web site synopsis.


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