During the Pacific War, my aviator father was shot down and imprisoned in a POW camp near Ofuna, a small town south of Yokohama. Somehow, he survived the camp conditions, and after the war made many trips back to Japan, often taking my mother with him. I was too young to remember them leaving or returning, but I vividly remember our house being filled with many wondrous treasures they brought home from this distant and mystical place. A fragile wood and tin spirograph, that when you put a drop of ink on the needle and turned a small crank, would magically spin out curving geometric pictures onto a small piece of paper. A hand-built wooden model of a boat that smelled so richly of cedar, I would spend hours sticking my nose deep into the hull just inhaling the delicious smell of Japan into my soul. Ceramic bowls, covered with hand-painted writings and delicate scenes of ancient Japan, graceful temples and pagodas floating above a foreground of Cherry Blossoms. So fascinating and thrillingly beautiful, yet so frustratingly distant and indecipherable.