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Japan was taut last week with its longstanding Army-Navy tug of war and peace.
"Around Washington, Very Nice." Japan's conscientious fire extinguisher has overcome many personal difficulties in his 63 years; hence his continuing optimism.
Kichisaburo was the son of a samurai—a warrior knight. But the father was a sickly samurai, and after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, which abolished the samurai, the family went broke. Little Kichisaburo had to be satisfied with lowly sweet potatoes instead of more expensive rice in his school lunchbox, and he earned a few coppers as a fishmonger's delivery boy.
Kichisaburo's first fight, it happens, was in defense of the West. The day he wore his first pair of Occidental shoes the school bully razzed him. Nomura pulled off one shoe, beat the bully with it until the shoe was unwearable. But his thrifty mother had declared that the shoes must last six months, so for six months Kichisaburo clumped around in one western shoe, one Japanese clog.
At 19 he entered Edajima Naval Academy. He worked hard enough to graduate second in his class, for which the Emperor gave him a pair of binoculars. His first cruise was to the U.S. His first gaff was in the Russo-Japanese War, when he joined the cruiser Saiyen as navigating officer and a few days later navigated her, despite the Imperial spyglasses, onto a mine. She sank, and most of the officers and crew with her. Nomura says of his survival: "Ship she go down; me I come up." The Navy made Navigator Nomura a diplomat. He served in Vienna and Berlin for a time, and during World War I was stationed in Washington as Naval Attache. There he made the acquaintance of Under Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt and many a naval comer; it is this period which gave him his reputation as a man of good will.
His most exciting active duty was in the Shanghai hostilities of 1932, in which he commanded the Japanese forces. Here he lost his right eye, but not in battle. At a review in celebration of the Emperor's birthday a Korean patriot tossed a bomb into the grandstand. The grandstand blew up. Admiral Nomura was pocked but still alive. His first glass eye was presented to him by the Empress.
Five years later he retired to a quietude as head of the Peers' School in Tokyo. "I am old man," he says of this happy period, "I am enjoy my retire life in Japan." But he was called back to work—as Foreign Minister in the brief Abe Cabinet of 1939, and as Ambassador to Washington this year.
Washington was hostile, but he made himself like the life. In the summer Washington was hot, but he made light of it. "Here house built of bricks," he would say. "In such place where I was born, inside very hot." He kept himself working hard, allowed himself no vacation.
Every morning Ambassador Nomura gets up at seven and washes the glass eye he plans to wear that day. Then he reads the papers, studies reports, receives guests, often goes out to lunch, makes any necessary diplomatic calls, then indulges in his favorite pastime: "I am old man. I enjoy only driving. Around Washington, very nice. I think everywhere park. I went several times to Gettysburg. I go often to Mount Vernon, not only number one road, but here, there, and suburbs also."