Andrew Marshall, an Englishman living in the United States, is one of the very few best friends in my life. Before that, he was a former journalist, which too was the same as my used-to profession, and now he is working for the Atlantic Council in Washington DC. In our previous place, I was in Tokyo and he in London but moving to New York of the company HQs. It was not until year 2011 when we met in person after both of us respectively leaving the business, that he celebrated his marriage in Maine, US, with her wife. I remember that the outside wedding was rather a bit chilly even though midsummer. The grand banquet attracted over 300 people to the venue.

The painting above was drawn by his 6-year-old daughter, Alice, in early February this year. To be exact, it seems that she drew it with Andrew the father, posted on his SNS with the caption, saying, "I am really enjoying painting with my daughter". You can see Alice playful during painting in a playful way with Andrew. 

At sight on his SNS post, the drawing bestowed me with many things, one of which was that it struck me of a thing in my days last year at Narita hospital for two months. Then, I asked him whether he would be comfortable with me uploading the painting. Thankfully, Andrew gave me a go with his words, "I would be honored!!!" He even gave the approval to identify him and his daughter in this blog.  

Why it struck me? It really resembles the poor sketch I had drawn on September 10th, one day before I was discharged from the hospital (below photo, attached to No. 20 on November 20, 2020). The horizon divides Blue sky and Green land: only thing different was my sketch was with a plane landing the nearby airport. 

Looking back our shared memories, I am appreciating many encountering with him. Among them, I still remember our reunion in Tokyo in 2015. His story then was striking: when he had opened his father's relics, which the father had left behind at his pass-away, a long time after the WW II and fought against Japanese Imperial Army in Burma ("Myanmar") back in 1944, Andrew found a Japanese flag in the box with many signatures on it, which no one but Japanese could understand. He asked me (and a few others) a help and was able to find out the bereaved family in Japan. So, it was "wow" moment when we met again in Asakusa, Tokyo in 2015: he travelled from US, and I from Singapore. By his account, the flag was possibly one of pick-ups by his father together with British Army colleagues out of the battle grounds with corpses piled up everywhere. 

The bereaved family named "Mr. Handa" lived in Tochigi prefecture, a Northern part of Kanto region in Japan. On the way there, seated in a Shinkansen bullet train, I asked him sitting next to me, "is the flag in there?", pointing out to the black bag on his laps. He, with a serious expression with a slight smile on his face, slammed the bag twice. 

The details of our trip and happenings of the visit were reported in newspapers and television at that time.

The memory and memories do not change and more and more get colorful. However, my thoughts to it/them changed drastically. At that time in 2015, I was doing my best for Andrew's emotion and seriousness, but now when I am keenly aware of my life having a clear line at somewhere, whether it is long or short from now, I compare it with Kohima's "Bleached Bones Avenue (白骨街道)" of 1944 mounted with numerous bones of both Japanese and some British. It really hurts me. 

What did these people fight for? Did anyone see off the deads? What did the bereaved family think of them dying on a place far away from their home country? Myanmar (Burma at that time) is still shaken by a coup d'etat.

By the way, a Japanese film director Mr. Akio Fujimoto (藤元明緒) is a film director, who has produced one title "Passage of Life" (2018) and a short one "Bleached Bones Avenue (白骨街道, 2020), both of which are pictured with Myanmar people living in Japan. I did not know about Akio-san until I looked to Internet for writing this blog, and I'm just ashamed of still huge areas left for my unknowns.

For Andrew, he's definitely the one I can call "best friend." In my life anyway, I have very few of those whom I can call as best friends. There are two more people to come up to mind, but that story will be written in next blogs.

(To be continued.)