To all well wishers,
Sincere thanks from me, and from my wife Sri, we just drove the 300 miles home this evening, arriving at 11pm. It was a truly harrowing day, beginning with the final viewing at 9am, then the funeral at 12:30. It was a very large funeral, 216 people signed the book.
My brother and I delivered eulogies; mine the formal obituary, his the personal, intimate observations, and it went very well, with most people completely unaware of Pa's full history. He walked the ruins of Hiroshima three weeks after the dawn of nuclear weapons; he was attacked by agents of the Yakuza with a friend in Kobe in 1946, and survived; he was aggressively pursued by Japanese soldiers behind enemy lines on a tiny Pacific Island airstrip and eventually escaped by rendezvous with an Allied submarine two miles off the coast; he pioneered flood irrigation in his farming district in the early sixties, using an ancient German Lanz single cylinder diesel tractor engine as power plant; he bought the first Toyota Land Cruiser in his district, when other returned soldiers were too prejudiced to ever buy a single Japanese product; he established a manufacturing company at age 62 which today commands 75% of the farming windmill market - the list is impressive. He was tough, ruthless, scrupulously fair, and incredibly energetic, left me for dead in his sixties. He loved animals, could walk into a field, and horses and placid cattle would walk up to him for no apparent reason. He was a Depression kid, never finished his college schooling (really mistrusted academics, this was a bone of contention for both of us!!), disliked money, loved business success, hated waste .....
Sri and I are off to the Gold Coast tomorrow for three days respite, we return on Tuesday when I will resume orders with renewed vigor. Again, I'm very sorry about this delay.
I am bowled over by the condolences, thank you very sincerely, one and all - this all redoubles my resolve to continue working at what I love, just like my Pa, until I drop. He suffered his last heart attack at work - at 84!
Sincerely,
Hugh
