Yokohama Street Life: The Precarious Career of a Japanese Day Laborer is a one-man ethnography, tracing the career of a single Japanese day laborer called Kimitsu, from his wartime childhood in the southern island of Kyushu through a brief military career to a lifetime spent working on the docks and construction sites of Tokyo, Osaka and Yokohama. Kimitsu emerges as a unique voice from the Japanese ghetto, a self-educated philosopher whose thoughts on life in the slums, on post-war Japanese society and on more abstract intellectual concerns are conveyed in a series of conversations with British anthropologist Tom Gill, whose friendship with Kimitsu spans more than two decades. For Kimitsu, as for many of his fellow day laborers at the bottom of Japanese society, offers none of the comforting distractions of marriage, family life, or a long-term career in a settled workplace. It leads him through existential philosophy towards Buddhist mysticism as he fills the time between days of hard manual labor with visits to second-hand bookshops in search of enlightenment. The book also portrays Kimitsu's living environment, a Yokohama slum district called Kotobuki. Kotobuki is a 'doya-gai'-a slum inhabited mainly by men, somewhat similar to the skid row districts that used to be common in American cities. Traditionally these men have earned a basic living by working as day laborers, but the decline in employment opportunities has forced many of them into welfare dependence or homelessness. Kimitsu's life and thought are framed by an account of the changing way of life in Kotobuki, a place that has gradually been transformed from a casual laboring market to a large, shambolical welfare center. In Kotobuki the national Japanese issues of an aging workforce and economic decline set in much earlier than elsewhere, leading to a dramatic illustration of the challenges facing the Japanese welfare state.

Yokohama Street Life: The Precarious Career of a Japanese Day Laborer is a one-man ethnography, tracing the career of a single Japanese day laborer called Kimitsu, from his wartime childhood in the southern island of Kyushu through a brief military career to a lifetime spent working on the docks and construction sites of Tokyo, Osaka and Yokohama. Kimitsu emerges as a unique voice from the Japanese ghetto, a self-educated philosopher whose thoughts on life in the slums, on post-war Japanese society and on more abstract intellectual concerns are conveyed in a series of conversations with British anthropologist Tom Gill, whose friendship with Kimitsu spans more than two decades. For Kimitsu, as for many of his fellow day laborers at the bottom of Japanese society, offers none of the comforting distractions of marriage, family life, or a long-term career in a settled workplace. It leads him through existential philosophy towards Buddhist mysticism as he fills the time between days of hard manual labor with visits to second-hand bookshops in search of enlightenment. The book also portrays Kimitsu's living environment, a Yokohama slum district called Kotobuki. Kotobuki is a 'doya-gai'-a slum inhabited mainly by men, somewhat similar to the skid row districts that used to be common in American cities. Traditionally these men have earned a basic living by working as day laborers, but the decline in employment opportunities has forced many of them into welfare dependence or homelessness. Kimitsu's life and thought are framed by an account of the changing way of life in Kotobuki, a place that has gradually been transformed from a casual laboring market to a large, shambolical welfare center. In Kotobuki the national Japanese issues of an aging workforce and economic decline set in much earlier than elsewhere, leading to a dramatic illustration of the challenges facing the Japanese welfare state.

'The way I look at it is this...When you're behind the line and get yourself into trouble, you've got to get your bloody self out irrespective of anybody else. That's why I like it.' Scottish-born but a Queenslander to the bone, Jock McLaren was a true Australian hero. As a prisoner he escaped twice, first from Changi and later from the infamous Sandakan POW camp in Borneo. After paddling a dugout canoe across open sea, he fought for two years with American-led Filipino guerrillas, his exploits so audacious the Japanese put a price on his head. At the helm of his 26-foot whaleboat, the Bastard, McLaren sailed brazenly into enemy-held harbours, wreaking havoc with his mortar and machine guns before heading back out to sea. In early 1945 he joined Australia's secretive Z Special Unit, parachuting into Borneo to carry out reconnaissance and organise anti-Japanese resistance ahead of Allied landings. He cheated death on numerous occasions and saved his own life by removing his appendix without anaesthetic, using 'two large dessert spoons' and a razor blade. Drawing on Allied and Japanese wartime documents, Bastard Behind the Lines brings the story of a courageous digger vividly to life and throws light on a rarely explored aspect of Australia's Pacific war.

'Donald Mackay was not just an innocent victim tragically struck down by a criminal act. He was a casualty of the actual fight against organised crime ... killed on active service, as it were ... His name should never be forgotten, his passing must not be allowed to be in vain.' The assassination of Donald Mackay was meant to solve a problem for the mafia. Instead it roused the law-abiding citizens of Griffith to fight against the powerful criminal elements who had made their town synonymous with drugs and murder. Drawing on the personal diaries and memories of Terry Jones - who, as the editor of the local newspaper, knew everyone and heard everything - The Griffith Wars reveals startling new evidence about one of Australia's most notorious unsolved murders. It also powerfully recounts the struggle for the soul of a country town still battling to shake off its criminal past.

The marines on the First Fleet refused to sail without it. Convicts risked their necks to get hold of it. Rum built a hospital and sparked a revolution, made fortunes and ruined lives. In a society with few luxuries, liquor was power. It played a crucial role, not just in the lives of individuals like James Squire - the London chicken thief who became Australia's first brewer - but in the transformation of a starving penal outpost into a prosperous trading port. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary sources, Grog offers an intoxicating look at the first decades of European settlement and explores the origins of Australia's fraught love affair with the hard stuff.

Growing up as a child of a sharecropper family in South Georgia paints an image of hard times but my memories are just the opposite. We ate three good meals every day and slept in a comfortable bed at night. My parents loved me and taught me a code of conduct that I still strive to live by. I was taught; don't lie, cheat, say ugly words or talk bad about your neighbors. Go to Sunday school on Sunday and stay for church. Say yes sir and no sir to your elders and do not talk with food in your mouth. I was also taught to look people in the eye when talking to them. Daddy said that people with shifty eyes were not trustworthy. When I was assigned to the White House Communications Agency as a Staff Officer during my military career, my upbringing became a source of strength that saw me though some demanding situations. I learned at a very early age that God loved me. When I became a Christian at the age of fifteen, Jesus made sure my very own angel was there to lift me out of numerous deep holes I dug for myself. This book is memories of growing up in the mid forties and fifties and my twenty-three years in the U. S Army. These were challenging times for America and I consider myself fortunate to have lived through the period. World War II was over and millions of military men and women were returning home to pick back up their lives with the same energy and determination that won the war. The world today has changed dramatically from the world I grew up in. We have improved our standard of living with technologic advancements we only dreamed about. However, the world appears to have lost its ethical compass and is digressing back to the moral decay of the Roman Empire period of time. My prayer is that America will once again find its bearing and be a principled compass for the world to follow.

Tom Gill grew up on a small farm in South Georgia near the city Blackshear. His father was a sharecropper. Like most tenant farmers, his family moved frequently to other farms throughout the county, trying to make improvements in their daily life, and standard of living. Although poor in material possessions, he was raised by Christian parents who showed him love and taught him a strong code of ethics that served him well at home and the twenty-three years in the U. S. Army. After graduating from High School in 1956, Gill immediately joined the U.S. Army where he discovered that there was a better way of earning a living then cropping tobacco in the hot sun in the summer time. He was assigned to a communications school as an enlisted soldier and later received a direct appointment to Warrant Officer. His military assignments included tours of duty in Korea, Philippines, and Germany. When he returned to Georgia after his tour of duty with the lst Cavalry Division in Vietnam was completed, he was selected for assignment to the White House Communications Agency. He served as a Communications Officer during four presidential administrations; Lyndon Johnson, Rickard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. During his tour of duty at the White House, Tom Gill worked in numerous positions in the Agency which included traveling in advance of presidential trips establishing presidential communications for the president. His assignment at the White House included overseas trips to France, Germany, Russia, Japan, Vietnam, Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina. He served in this capacity for four presidents; Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. Growing up Rich in South Georgia is his story of how he grew up in the mid forties and fifties, and includes his twenty-three years of service in the U.S. Army. The years covered are from his birth in September, 1937, until November 30, 1978 when he retired from the Army.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

This is a new release of the original 1945 edition.

Growing up as a child of a sharecropper family in South Georgia paints an image of hard times but my memories are just the opposite. We ate three good meals every day and slept in a comfortable bed at night. My parents loved me and taught me a code of conduct that I still strive to live by. I was taught; don't lie, cheat, say ugly words or talk bad about your neighbors. Go to Sunday school on Sunday and stay for church. Say yes sir and no sir to your elders and do not talk with food in your mouth. I was also taught to look people in the eye when talking to them. Daddy said that people with shifty eyes were not trustworthy. When I was assigned to the White House Communications Agency as a Staff Officer during my military career, my upbringing became a source of strength that saw me though some demanding situations. I learned at a very early age that God loved me. When I became a Christian at the age of fifteen, Jesus made sure my very own angel was there to lift me out of numerous deep holes I dug for myself. This book is memories of growing up in the mid forties and fifties and my twenty-three years in the U. S Army. These were challenging times for America and I consider myself fortunate to have lived through the period. World War II was over and millions of military men and women were returning home to pick back up their lives with the same energy and determination that won the war. The world today has changed dramatically from the world I grew up in. We have improved our standard of living with technologic advancements we only dreamed about. However, the world appears to have lost its ethical compass and is digressing back to the moral decay of the Roman Empire period of time. My prayer is that America will once again find its bearing and be a principled compass for the world to follow.

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!