Neo Sino-Japanese War & Joe Cartwright

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His name was Joe, Joe Cartwright, and his wife was named Hitomi. They’d been living in Kobe for a few years, were both private English teachers, and then got evacuated to Shikoku when the neo-sino-Japanese war broke out, which was why they survived when the war went briefly and disastrously nuclear and Kobe and Osaka took a Chinese warhead.

They’d learned to work the rice fields, since that was the only work to be had in a country spiraling down toward bare subsistence. Still, even after the huge losses from the war, Japan still had far more people than its farmland would support, and eventually they got a polite letter from the government telling them their food rations would be discontinued the next ‘Golden Week’ and they should make other arrangements.

So they quit their farmhand jobs, and hitch-hiked their way to The Northern Road, or Hokkaido, in an attempt to island hop to the Kuril islands, where Russian fishermen were arranging their boats for refugees (In a new human trafficking trade.)

When they arrived the Russians were still taking passengers, so they bartered their remaining ration coupons for rice and a few other foodstuffs for the voyage, jumped onboard, and put themselves in the hands of the Russians and the winds and currents. Destination: Alaska. The voyage had been lucky; they’d had rain enough to keep the water tanks from running dry, good strong winds, and they hadn’t run out of food until close to the end. But they made it. Alaska. And another journey was just beginning.