Encounters
A Lifetime Spent Crossing Cultural Frontiers
by Nancy Keeney Forster
ISBN: 978-0-615-31889-9
Trade paperback: $15.95
A carefree child of expatriate parents at age ten, a prisoner of the Japanese at seventeen, a valued source of intelligence to the U.S. military at nineteen, and a fervent advocate of public diplomacy throughout his long career as a Foreign Service officer, Clifton Forster spent his life crossing and recrossing frontiers, determined to use dialogue, not conflict, to solve differences between peoples and nations.
In 2007, a year after her husband’s death, Nancy Forster began to sort through the wealth of papers Cliff had tucked away in a Japanese tea chest, and to reexamine her own memories and writings from more than half a century of shared adventures. The result is Encounters, a poignant interplay of two intelligent voices, and a story that could serve as a blueprint for a U.S. government newly dedicated to building bridges across cultural frontiers.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Encounter on Sado Island
- 2. Made in Asia
- 3. A Philippine Childhood
- 4. “Conscience of a Nation”
- 5. Eve of Conflict
- 6. Death of a City
- 7. Under Japan’s “Benevolent Custody”
- 8. “Cheer Up, Everything’s Going To Be Lousy”
- 9. A Brief Reunion
- 10. Memorized Code
- 11. “We Cherish Life More than Ever Before”
- 12. Seaman First Class Forster
- 13. The Final Battle for Manila
- 14. Victory!
- 15. Two Lives Converge
- 16. “Mabuhay”
- 17. Davao—A Frontier City
- 18. Mindanao and Sulu
- 19. Japanese Immersion
- 20. Matsuyama Summer
- 21.Heartland of the Rising Sun
- 22. The Kansai
- 23. “Getting There Is Half the Fun”
- 24. In the Land of Golden Pagodas
- 25. A Taste of Camelot
- 26. Japan, from Olympics to Expo
- 27. Americanization
- 28. Past and Present in Israel
- 29. Washington Encore
- 30. “Tap ’Er Light”
- 31. “We Have Friends All over the World”
- 32. The General’s Daughter
- 33. From the Desk of the Director
- 34. The Emeritus Years: Closing the Circle
- 35. L’Envoi