Born in 1913 on the little island of Maui, Tasaki recollects his boyhood as "shrouded in a mist of romanticism . . . days of running barefooted along the beach, torch fishing, hunting for shells, playing with children of every race imaginable in an atmosphere of total understanding and friendship." Later the Tasakis moved to Honolulu where Hanama's schooling wound up at the University of Hawaii-with an intervening year of "nostalgia and home-sickness" at Oberlin College in Ohio.In 1936 Tasaki went to Japan "intending to throw myself bodily into the progressive movement," but before long was conscripted into the Imperial Army. After three years' service in China, he returned to Japan, became a newspaper reporter and, at the outbreak of World War II, went to the South Pacific for the Domel News Agency. Again conscripted into the Army in 1942, he served till the war's end.