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Show 62 CHAPTER V The day after he took Kimiko home, Sergeant Koontz could hardly work, for his mind kept sliding aside, playing over the events like a movie. Actually (Arkansas would not disappear) it had been more like a falling of blinkers, for suddenly so much came clear, chiefly the deadness of his earlier state. He had not been enjoying Japan: the cold, crowded cities, the scurrying hordes; in Oji the sense of strangeness beyond the post. Nor had the Army offersd much more than a bunk, chow, the casual companionship of Larson, Perkins and Bragg. He had, he saw, been a part of a generation to whom the war had been both catastrophe and release - - many it had destroyed, either on the battlefield or the psychological beachheads of uprooting or alienation; but for others it had been a freeing from the boredom of their hometowns into the excitement of new cities, islands, adventures, So great a release, in fact, that when it ended, vast numbers felt a sort of let-down, and wandered aimlessly, their |