You must remember, my dear Suzu, that all of history is a myth, a fable, simply the telling of a tale, and what is passed down always depends

on who is doing the telling.

"That's what the Colonel wrote in one of his letters. It was during the war, and he was at the front, in Burma. I didn't give his words much thought at the time. That's just the way the Colonel was. He was a very intelligent man, and he had his own peculiar way of doing and saying things. As I sit down to write this memoir, however- this history of my life- the Colonel's words have come back to me. Where to start? And how much to tell you, the reader? And how to tell you? And what to say about those whose lives crossed with my own?"