Pre-emptive Love
How a Hiroshima Man's Story Might Save Hong Kong
by
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If anyone asked Joe Weaver whether he preferred to be called "Joe Weaver" or "Joe Orimura," he would answer, "Just call me Joe." Then with a straight face he’d add, "If you’re sending me a check, make it out to ‘Joe Weaver.’ " That was his birth name, the one on his U.S. passport. Joe prided himself that the Japanese in Hiroshima had given him the name of Orimura and that the famous haiku poet Teijo Nakamura had praised it as an excellent pen name for doing haiku poetry. Japanese rarely honored foreigners that way, so he had gradually considered Japan his adopted homeland. Whenever he and his wife Anita left California for Japan, he’d tell his neighbors, "We're going home to Japan." That Japanese home was a rustic summer cabin atop a hill overlooking Lake Nojiri in the mountains of Nagano, 160 miles northwest of Tokyo. In 1996 on the night of August 5, Joe was seated inside the cabin listening to the NHK classical music program. At 8:59 the announcer broke in to remind listeners that on the next day the nation would be observing the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. At the 9 o’clock station break, Joe switched to shortwave in order to hear the English news over the BBC. Static made reception terrible, but he did catch the tail end of the news, something about rising tensions over Hong Kong’s reverting to China. A month earlier one of Joe’s Chinese friends from Hong Kong had confided to him: "After the honeymoon with China, what then? Who can trust China’s promises?" Joe hadn’t recalled those words until tonight, but why tonight? Hong Kong had been off Joe’s radar screen until he’d heard that barely decipherable news. His Chinese friend had been predicting a brief honeymoon – a rosy grace period – five years, maybe seven. Then the euphoria of the post-wedding years would fade away. The marriage between Hong Kong, the wealthy freedom-loving debutante, and the Beijing lover would turn sour. During Joe’s forty years in the Orient he had learned the hard way that a Westerner could never be 100 percent certain what the Japanese or Chinese really meant. Removing Debussy’s "Afternoon of a Faun" from its portable CD-case, Joe set the disk on to play. He turned the volume down for his sleeping wife’s sake, then flopped onto the sofa, hoping the musical images of a deer grazing in a forest would quiet his nerves. Around 9:30 he said to himself, Why does the Hong Kong situation haunt me? From experience he knew that events or people far away had a way of mysteriously linking with his own life. Anita had told him that Jung called it "Synchronicity."
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About the Book
The choice between an easy road of cowardice and a perilous one of bravery confronts everyone at some time. Pre-emptive Love begins in the summer of 1996 with the arrival in Tokyo of a British television producer who disrupts Joe Weaver=s vacation at Lake Nojiri. From that moment, circumstances converge to cause a seventeen-year old American and a beautiful Chinese journalist to join them in a venture to head off a crackdown on freedom expected after Hong Kong=s honeymoon period with China ends. The team resurrects the story of Weaver=s former co-worker in Hiroshima, Kiyoshi Watanabe, a Gettysburg-educated Christian pastor. The Japanese army conscripted him in 1942 to serve as an interpreter in the Shamshuipo P.O.W. Camp in Hong Kong. There he faced a terrifying dilemma: either obey his Emperor=s commanders or obey God by smuggling in medicines and vitamins to the dying prisoners. In working through the Watanabe story, the four team members soon discover how different each has interpreted past events dealing with Western imperialism, the Chinese Communist Revolution and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. They also have to thwart the machinations of a Christian Judas and loose-cannon Maoists who try to derail the TV mini-series scheduled to be aired on the eve of Hong Kong=s return to the Peoples= Republic of China.
About the Author
George Olson is a native of Gary, Indiana. In 1950, the Lutheran Church sent him and his wife Miriam to serve as missionaries in Hiroshima, Japan, where later he headed the Lutheran Hour radio ministry in that area. The Lutheran World Federation Broadcasting Service called him in 1965 to establish a new media liaison and research office in Tokyo. From that base he worked in Japan and Asia as a consultant for church media activities. This included being ecumenical Coordinator for Television Awareness Training in Asia, editor of the Japan Christian Quarterly and a founder of the Chinese broadcasting ministry called Kairos Communication Service International. In 1982, the Alumni Association of Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, honored him with their Outstanding Service Award. The Olsons now reside at Pilgrim Place in Claremont, California, but they return every summer to their rustic cabin near Nagano City, Japan, from where the story of Pre-emptive Love begins.