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OVER THE YEARS Japan has become a home to the visiting serviceman.  He has come to understand and to love the people and the ways of Nippon.  He has lived a new life, and the new life has made him, the American, Asiatic.

With a misty eye he packs his bag and says his sayonaras.  He boards a ship and as it pulls away from the Far Eastern shore his heart is heavy.  But a part of him, he knows, will always be in the little country.

After a stay in Japan, the States can never ever be the same.  It will be strange to hear everyone conversing in English.  It will be strange to wander among gigantic buildings and down crowded streets where no one will bow and say ohaiyo gozaimasu.  It will be strange to be back home in America.

The serveman's wife or family will undoubtedly sense this and understand.  His wife will sympathize with him, console him, try to make him forget.  She will notice that he has changed, that he is not quite the same person she kissed goodbye many long years ago.  And she will figure that, before it is too late, for his sake and for hers, she had better lay down the social law.

Sweetly and tenderly, she does.  But - as sure as there is snow on top of Fuji-san - her words of warning will wander aimlessly.  Because for the serviceman, for now and for always, the Asiatic die has been cast.

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