The Incredible Power of Serendipity! Highlights Of an Uncommon Life! —A Very Personal Memoir— A VERY PERSONAL MEMOIR Photo by Scott Holland Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. —George Bernard Shaw— II A VERY PERSONAL MEMOIR The Incredible Power of Serendipity! Highlights Of an Uncommon Life! —A Very Personal Memoir— Boyé Lafayette De Mente Phoenix Books / Publishers Copyright © 2012 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente All Rights Reserved III A VERY PERSONAL MEMOIR CONTENTS Publisher’s Preface My Jack-Off Uncle Again Introduction Impaled on a Log HIGHLIGHTS OF AN Moving to Redford UNCOMMON LIFE Pell Pirtle’s Hole Cutting Winnie’s Tongue! Sex Education 101 & 102 Doorway Squirrel Shoot! Avoiding Sunday School Killing a Pig The Death of Uncle Bill Shattering an Elbow My First Movie Deer Hunting & The Poisonous Snake Bite Rattlesnakes Going into Business Running Over Winnie Holy Roller Entertainment Moving to Sawmill Shack On the Dole An Untimely Death Struck by Lightning Killing a Chicken Sex Ed 103 Fern & the Hornet Attack Logging with Dad School & Golden Cory Working in a Sawdust Pit My Nose in a Circle Dad’s Copper SS Card Almost Losing Fern The Move to St. Louis Dad Loses a Thumb Clinton-Peabody School Coon Hunting Pearl Harbor 1941 Moving up the Valley & Becoming a Paperboy L’s Arrival My First Boxing Match The Shack that Dad Built Visiting Mother Evans Living on Potatoes Hawking Stolen Goods My Jack-Off Uncle Starting High School Flying off the Truck Working at the Lennox Hanging a Dog Hotel Chopping Down a Tree Discovering an Allergy Hitting Don with an Ax Learning about Life Moving Again My Second Boxing Match The Bologna & Cracker The Arizona Connection Treat The New Mexico Adventure Freezing for Pine Nuts The End of World War II The Chicken Pox Escapade Joining the State Guard Curling Wagon Wheel Hub Sailing on the Mississippi Rings Joining the Navy Losing a Toe Nail Getting to San Diego IV A VERY PERSONAL MEMOIR The Boot Camp Experience Service. The Hard-On Show-Off My Year at Thunderbird Shipping Out and Falling The Zǒri Story The Shooting Fiasco Going Back to Japan The Life Changing Letter More Serendipity Kicks In Living Next to Lincoln & End of the Zǒri Story Jefferson Attending Jōchi University A Close Encounter with The Japan Travel Bureau Admiral Nimitz Looking Up my Hatsu-Koi Becoming a Writer Becoming Editor of My Biggest Embarrassment PREVIEW Magazine Out of the Navy Appearing in Japanese The Search for Work Movies Joining the Army Security The End of PREVIEW Agency Magazine Meeting Brother Don Turned Down by Tuttle Assignment in Japan Teaming Up with a “White Arriving in Tokyo Russian” Fixing Up the 1st Tokyo The KEMBUN Episode Arsenal Getting My Degree from The Ernie Pyle Theater Jǒchi University Encounter with a Sumo Japan Will Never Amount to Meeting my Hatsu-Koi Anything! Hamburger & Milk Shake Encounters with the CIA The Mobile Whorehouse Creating TODAY’S JAPAN The Incredible Black Market The Incredible Amphibious Meeting the Imperial Hotel’s Jeep [“Half-Safe”] Story Famous Tetsuzo Inumaru Jumping Jeep in Alaska My First Book / 1950 Valley National Bank Story Seeing the American Meeting Margaret Warren Caesar The ORIENTAL AMERICA The Korean War - IMPORTER Saga Brother Don’s Ordeal The Amazing Sony Story Truman’s Year Margaret Arrives with a Starting a Newspaper Typhoon A Visit from my Hatsu-Koi The IMPORTER Magazine Losing my Security Success Story Clearance First Business Book A Serendipitous Meeting Some Wonderful News and Creating the Bender the Shocking Aftermath Bulletin Japan’s Amazing “Water Leaving Japan and the Business” V A VERY PERSONAL MEMOIR Seeing John Glenn Circling The U.S. Discovers Japan the Earth Naming NEW TIMES Leaving Salaried Employ- The Gordon & Roberta ment Story The Tokyo Guide Cards The Arizona Trading Post A Visit Home Gamble Reuniting with Jim Walker The Apple [Japan] The Voyage Home Connection Niki Woodside Dies Arizona Authors Add to the Half-Safe Jeep Association Story Shoot-Out at Dawn Demetra Arrives Prentice-Hall Comes Thru Moving to Honolulu Margaret’s Travels ONCE A FOOL published The Meiji Memorial Story Meeting John Wilcock The National Textbook Visiting the IMPORTER Connection Phone Call that Changed Japanization of America the World Episode Daughter Dawn in Charge The Code Word Approach Some Prefer Geisha to Understanding The Bachelor’s BEAT story Cultures The Amazing Larry Flynt Daughter Dawn’s Wedding Saga The Tokyo and Japan The Nude Jackie Kennedy Journal Episode Photos The Mike Ohshima Story Following Hugh Hefner The Michi Matsumoto Story Face-Reading for Fun & The Kata Factor Book Story Profit The Kodansha International Appearing on What’s My Episode Line? In New York Take Down by Shintō Guru Girl-Watching in the Orient The Tanka Master Mutsuo Rest of the Merle Hinrichs Shukuya Story Story The Yoshio Karita Story The Richard Woodside The Japanese Brain Man Episode Story Watching the Moon The Subway Guide to Landing Tokyo Fernie’s Rise in the PR Demise of Charlie Tuttle World Losing Brother L and Teaching at Thunderbird Becoming a Basket Case The Insider Guides The John Banta & Sheraton I Like You Gringo—But! Miyako Hotel Story VI A VERY PERSONAL MEMOIR The Japan Info Network My Amazon “Shorts” Knocking a Rib Cage Askew The Heart Scare that was a False Alarm An Honor that Didn’t Happen Lecturing in Beijing Farewell Trip to Tokyo Margaret’s Heart Surgery The Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me Five Writers in the Family NOT THE END List of My Other Books VII A VERY PERSONAL MEMOIR PUBLISHER’S NOTE Cultural authority and author Boyé Lafayette De Mente credits serendipity for a remarkable career that encompassed a diversity of things no one could have imagined, given his early back- ground. This included playing a pioneer role in the rise of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China as economic super- powers; in the emergence of Thunderbird School of Global Management alumnae brother Merle Hinrichs as the largest trade magazine publisher in Asia, major financial donor to Thunderbird and a member of the board of directors of the school; and in the rise of go-go entrepreneur Larry Flynt to prominence and great wealth as the publisher of HUSTLER magazine and other publications and a powerful influence on American culture and civil rights. Then there were encounters he had with a wide variety of notables, including Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, one of Ame- rica’s top World War II Naval leaders, as well as relationships with Yoshio Karita, former protocol officer for Japan’s Imperial Family, and other famous people. Another memorable event in his career: he is in the Guinness Book of World Records for a 1957 four-month long journey he made from Japan to Alaska on an amphibious jeep named HALF-SAFE with the world-circling jeep’s Australian owner and “captain” Ben Carlin…a feat he later chronicled in a book entitled ONCE A FOOL! – From Japan to Alaska by Amph- ibious Jeep. According to De Mente, at no time in his long career did he think that what he was doing was remarkable or that it would have a fundamental influence on the lives of so many people or that it would contribute to the future of so many nations. A full list of books written by De Mente is included at the end of this memoir. *** 8 A VERY PERSONAL MEMOIR INTRODUCTION I was born the fourth of ten children and first son of Elza Lafayette Dement and Ruby Ila Bounds-Dement at 7:30 a.m. on 12 November 1928 in a tiny isolated valley known as Mayberry in the Ozark Hills of southeast Missouri, USA. “Just in time to start for school!” my mother is said to have quipped. Mayberry—which as of this writing has only one family—is about one-quarter to one-third of a mile wide and some four miles long. It was named after the first Anglo resident who arrived there in the early 1800s. My father Elza was born 2 October 1903 in the French- established community of Brunot near the Mississippi River in southeast Missouri. My mother, of English lineage, was born in the small township of Centerville, Missouri [the county seat], on Highway 21 several miles west of Mayberry, on 11 January 1907. She was 16 and my father was 20 when they married. Their first child, Velva, born in 1923, died of a child-hood ailment shortly before her second birthday and five months after the birth of their second daughter, Jessie. They were to have eight more children—spaced about 22 months apart. On the morning of my birth my mother named me Elza Lafayette after my father, but from Day One I became known as Boye, which everyone then pronounced as boy. I was born at home with no doctor in attendance. My birth was never officially recorded, and there is no record of my original first name [Elza] ever having been used by anyone. My mother, who had only an 8th grade education, was a closet romantic and far more intelligent and accomplished than most of her nine surviving children realized during her life. She was vague about where she came up with the name Boye (written without the macron over the “e” until the invention of devices that made it possible), later telling me that it was the word “boy” with an “e” added to give it a French look because I was the first son following a string of three daughters and my father’s ancestry was French.