There is something anti-dramatic about this lovely little novel. The narrator, son of a Louisiana tugboat captain, goes off to World War II as, of all things, a typist during MacArthur's overseeing of the rehabilitation of Japan. One of the rare enlisted men to room with a member of MacArthur's Honor Guard, the typist, Van, is brought to Bunny's (as the commander is known) attention by his roommate, Clifford. Invited to view a months-old Army-Navy game with a privileged group at Bunny's, Van encounters the General's 8-year-old son and, days later, is inspired to send the lonely boy a birthday gift of tin samurai soldiers.
This sets some of the plot into motion, as MacArthur, interested by the gesture, engages Van to "play" with his son. Meanwhile Clifford, the roommate, in love with a Japanese dance hall girl, generates grievous complications. And Van's girl back home, married apparently on a whim shortly before he shipped out, completes the narrative picture. Throughout, the typist is a quietly eloquent observer, deeply touched but not directly involved in much of what he tells. When he brings his observations to bear on his own story, the effect is oddly distant but satisfying, a very credible measure of the space between the operatic and the more realistic portrayal of life's true dramas.
