Had it only been a year since the Americans stormed my dear country?
It was only dawn as I'd realized this, as a feeling of melochony came over me and a sadness filled my
heart as I recalled the first time that the Americans stormed into my father's fish shop, three Americans
loud and crude, making demands that neither I nor my parents could understand. At first they had
seemed to want fish commuicating with wild hand movments similar to the Italians I had seen
earlier before the axis was destoryed. but as I had later learned it was that Fat surly Major Johnson he
was in charge of looking over our large town and his two goons Private Smith and Hart. He had
stomped in and spit on the floor and pointed to my mother and said something in english to the
privates, making both men howl in laughter, my mother blush and run from the room not before
grabbing my hand and pulling me along. I'd had wanted to scream and scratch at them but I was raised
chaste and to obsevre the mood to then exacute the correct action the situation called for, so I settled
for peering around the doorway and watching, my father was quiet and only ever spoke up when
something that wasn't being said needed to be said or anything he'd feel strongly of and my mother
was something he felt very strongly about. It wasn't very hard to figure out my father was saying even
with the language barriers after yelling he'd run at them with the terror of a tiger, but there were three
military trained men and only one poor shopkeeper, it was easy to guess the out come. I'd watched
him be beaten from the doorway far too paraylzed in fear to move while my mother only sobbed silently
in the corner when the soldiers had stopped beating him they then stole twenty fish without
consicence, that night I'd sworn to myself that the soldiers reign could only last so long but these men
were made of iron they terrifed the whole town, myself included I'd seen what they'd done to my father
the fight had left him bed ridded for three days and a permanent limp and he wasn't even close to the
worst victim. After that I went out of my way to avoid the Americans even running from one when I'd
accidently made eye contact, I hated how much they controlled me but how was I supposed to
stand up to such dangerous men? with all these foul thoughts and memories swirling about my head I
didn't notice how hard I was scrubbing my delicate kimono which had begun to show signs of decay in
the silk fabric, grieving over my good kimono I hardly noticed a towering shadow fall over me until I felt
a tap on my shoulder and to my horror I turned around to find that beige american uniform covering the
arm that tapped me and the American that Arm belonged to...