Ichiro Tachimi

Biography
Ichiro Tachimi (Japanese: 立見一郎, Tachimi Ichirō) (October 31, 1925 - January 3, 2014) was a Japanese WWII veteran and the maternal grandfather of Maria Tachimi who died in 1989 at the age of eight.

Appearance
During the war, he has dark hair, brown eyes, and wore an IJA uniform, underneath, he has a six inch scar on his abdomen, he keeps this as a ghost and he has a surgical scar after staying with the Kimmings,

As per Kimmings-Tachimi tradition, he has the Roman numerals for 5 (V) marked on upper arm

In the 80's, he wore a red coat, a blue shirt underneath, and his hair slightly grey from age,

As a ghost, his throat now has marks on it due to his death.

History
Ichiro was born in Tokyo in 1925 to Aiko, a homemaker, and Kenta Tachimi, an Imperial Japanese Army officer, he fell ill after birth and the doctors found his liver didn't develop properly, and they said he would die before his fifth birthday, when he was four, his younger sister, Sachiko was born, due to Kenta's genes, she was born with ALCAPA, which connects the left coronary artery to the pulnamory artery and her parents didn't notice.

When he was 7, and Sachiko was just 3, his family moved to America in hopes for a better education and lived in the Protestant majority neighbourhood, called The Docks, Ichiro had undiagnosed autism that wasn't diagnosed until his later years, and he stayed in America until 1937 when he was 12, where he moved back to Japan due to rising Anti-Japanese sentiment tensions.

He had a good relationship with his parents and sister.

WWII
During WWII after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he was drafted into the army despite the urgings of his family and even his own father, but his temperament made him unsuited for military combat and his ill health, and was drafted into a POW camp, but fought in a few battles, one battle where he met an orphaned female fox, which he named "Maria", which his officers let him keep due to his love of small animals and his inability to handle long times without his family, his time working in the POW camps had taken its toll on him, his weight plummeted due to the poor rations that was given to him once in every few days and his inability to survive well.

According to one POW, he said he sometimes forgot Ichiro was a guard because he could see his ribs poking through the 17-year old's chest if he wasn't wearing tunic and undershirt.

One incident involving the poor health-plagued guard was when he accidentally decapitated a British POW who was told to get water and Mikey had set off Ichiro, causing him to snatch a sword out of an officer's hands and accidentally decapitate the POW with it when he banged into him, causing him to lose control of the sword and slice the man’s neck.

Ichiro was made to move to Omori soon after.

Jung-il worked in the camp and his violent behavior disturbed Ichiro, causing Ichiro to develop a mild fear of Jung-il or Shoichi for the rest of his life, He even won't sit next to him.

Kenta described it as "If Shoichi appeared, Ichiro just froze, He just stayed away from the guy, Sachiko hated him too."

Sachiko, his younger sister described Jung-il/Shoichi as a "loud-mouthed brat who threw temper tantrums like a three-year old if things didn't go his way"

After WWII
After WWII, Tokyo was destroyed and Ichiro was homeless, starving, and lost, his family died weeks earlier in the Hiroshima bombing, he was left roaming for two days until he was found by two US GIs, who put him in a small prison cell for his role in POW torture, after his release, he was sent to live in his old neighborhood of The Docks, and Mikey's aunt and uncle happily accepted him as their nephew

During his time when he arrived, Ichiro weighed only 84 pounds and his liver became malignant.

He was honourably discharged and gave up his uniform.

1950's
Ichiro could not get enlisted to fight in Korea alongside Mikey because of both suffering malnourishment and Ichiro's surgery, he always brought newspapers and read them with Mikey, which slightly improved their relations a little.

When America's occupation of Japan ended, Ichiro and Matsuko got married.

1960's
In 1961, Matsuko gave birth to a girl when she and him moved back to Japan, Ichiro was almost scared as most girls in his family died young, then they had a boy a few years later named Yuu.

1970's
In 1973, they moved to America for a better education, Satsuki spoke no English as her parents and brother mostly used Japanese in their old home

Back to Japan
Ichiro traveled back to Japan without any of his late family members by his side, he was struck with depression, had suicidal thoughts, and tried to kill himself at least three times, and he became hidden and no one ever saw him again.

He stayed in a apartment in Minato, Tokyo and only left the house to buy groceries and pay the bills.

If he saved enough money, he would buy JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure manga to remember his daughter and Transformers ro remember Maria.

Death
In 2014, after a long bout of depression for losing his family and friends and weeks after Yuu's death from a pulnamory embolism from DVT after surgery to remove a tumor from his pancreas, Ichiro had killed himself at the age of 88 by silting his throat multiple times with a shin gunto, destroying most of his vocal organs, and his body was undiscovered for three days, with a suicide note saying "F*** this world, and my life, I hate it, my sister, father, mother, my friends, my son, my daughter, my son-in-law, my fox and my granddaughter is dead, F*** THIS!" (Japanese: この世界、そして私の人生をファック、私は嫌い、それ、私の妹、父、母、私の友人、私の息子、娘、私の義理の息子-、私のキツネと私の孫娘が死んでいる、これをファック！)

His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered all over Maria's shrine.

Quotes
I think POWs thought I was autistic because I rarely spoke, was socially awkward, had vocal quirks, and a preoccupation with only beating Mikey and not any other POW, I was bought to a doctor's office and he diagnosed me with mid-functioning autism, I was disinterested in POWs and even my own commanding officers except, they saw I attacked Mikey more, they thought it was just a sign of adolescence, As I was 17-20 during my army service, But I had my own reason, I hated him, When I moved in to Florida, My religion was a polytheism religion and he was from a monotheism religion, he saw my religion as a complete sin because he saw it as pagan and there was one time he stabbed me in the stomach when taking a shower, It was 1937, and stabbed me with a knife, I was taking a shower, my otosan rushed me to the hospital, I got stitches, his parents apologized many times, and his sectarian and racist bullying towards me, caused me to hate him in WWII, but after that, I decided to forgive him,

I will never forgive those girls, for kidnapping and killing my granddaughter, my pet fox and now her, I will never forgive them, I hate them, she was only 8, an 8 year old child!

After my Maria died, her close friend and next door neighbor Joseph fell into depression, believing it was his fault his best friend died. Unable to cope with the loss, the boy tried to kill himself by hanging himself in his room with a Christmas necktie. However, his mother rushed in his room and stopped him.

Imperial Japanese Army rules were quite strict, If you didn't kill anyone, you were beaten for six months, or, forced to kill yourself, POWs were beaten, I was the only soldier that beaten up Mikey, as he was called Kitsune Emono, meaning Fox Prey in Japanese, I spoke perfect English, I only spoke Japanese when I was beating him or when communicating with other guards, Since I was only 18 at the time, during that time, I was shy, young, and not very good speaking, I was very soft-spoken, even when speaking Japanese, instead of a harsh-tone, But, I was like a mine, according to some guards and didn't like getting disturbed, like, when I was looking at a couple of flowers I found, Mikey stepped on them and destroyed then in front of me, Other POWs yelled "RUN LIKE H***!", and I attacked him, then one of the guards said "It's okay Tachimi, we'll get you some new flowers", and I was like "Flowers? I don't want flowers, I WANT HIM DEAD!", and I beaten him up again, I think I broke his arm doing that.

I was called the "Witch" by POWs because I was very passive and wanted to sit alone in private, I was mostly seen sitting in a near some blocks, playing with Maria the Kitsune, Other guards didn't mind, They called me "Changi Mine" as I was like a mine and didn't want other people disturbing me.

I was one of the youngest guards, and very young and also very naïve-natured, and I preferred reading, nature, drawing and calligraphy than torturing POWs, I was also very sickly, I couldn’t even beat a POW bigger than me.

My parents were killed in the Hiroshima bombing, my father died from his injuries a week later, Mikey's parents died in 1946 and 1944, his mother died in 1946 due to cancer and his dad was killed by a robber, I had to tell him, So, we were put under the same house, he refused to eat with me, or even go near me, I still attacked him during my time as a POW, We left when we were 23, I went back to Japan and met my wife, Matsuko, who was my age, we met in 1946, and he met Annie, I had 2 children, Satsuki born in 1961 and Yuu born in 1965, and Mikey had Martin and Sheena, Yuu married a Japanese woman named Atsuko in 1983, and he had two boys, Hideki and Kuyo, Hideki in 1990 and Kuyo in 1984, but Kuyo doesn't really remember Maria too well, and I heard Kuyo now has another child, Setsuko, born in 2010, but, I never saw her, and I died before I could meet her, or his family.

When my parents died, I spent days crying in my bedroom, 1942, was the last time I ever saw them, and they died in Hiroshima in 1945 and I never got to say goodbye.

My parents promised my commanding officers I don't rape anyone, they promised and they kept it.

My granddaughter loved Transformers, I would play with her, I would get VHS tapes and watch it with her. ~ Ichiro on Transformers.

Me and Mikey GOT TO LIVE IN THE SAME HOUSE after the war, we were under the care of Mikey's uncle, who was 45, and died at the age of 90 in 1990, His uncle, really liked me and saw me just like an adoptive nephew, I was considered the "shy and gentle" type by him and I moved back to Japan after my fox died because his yard reminded me when she got shot and died in my arms, but I was given a stuffed toy fox before I went back to Japan, I was in university in the US, had an exchange and got permanent residence in Japan then went to America in 1974, where my daughter married Mikey's son in 1981, and had one child, a girl Maria, who would die aged 8.

When I saw my fox again, I found out it's tail has split into 7, the animal keeper told me it's from age of death, It was still like a normal fox.

Mikey made fun of my accent and bullied me in the US, Ironically enough, he almost died in a POW camp, mostly by me beating the c*** out of him, And oh, another irony, our kids married each other.

When it was Christmas Time, I got kanji flash cards so I could practice calligraphy.

When I saw the Anti-Japanese cartoons, I thought it was hilarious, Mikey made me watch them, but he was surprised I was laughing instead of getting offended, I thought some Anti-Japanese propaganda cartoons were pretty funny, unless it featured Showa Tenno, that's when I when I got offended.

Mikey, Mikey gave me my scar, He got a kitchen knife, I was 12, I was taking a shower, and he picked me up by my leg, and he stabbed the knife around at least 3-5 times, And I got sent to the hospital, and I've hated him since, but, after WWII, I’ve kind of forgiven him, as I found out Mikey destroyed the knife used.

What I have eaten during my years as a POW camp guard? the answers is Red Cross boxes that was meant for POWs, and sometimes, nothing, I often went days without food, and none of the POWs liked it when I was hungry, I usually tried hard to fall asleep and I wasn't a cannibal, my father visited the camps I worked in once a week, no wonder I was so thin, I even got mistaken for a Chinese prisoner, When I was questioned about the camp, I told them many people died and it smelled like piss and vomit.

Not only did Maria love Transformers, but she also loved He-Man: Masters of the Universe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, Dragon Ball, G.I. Joe, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Gremlins, ThunderCats, Ghost Busters, The A-Team, Duck Tales, Inspector Gadget, and My Pet Monster.

My sister Sachiko-chan was 15. Sa-chan to her family, I was a very loving older brother and I've seen her and my parents a couple of times, she was more strong-willed, but calm-natured, she was a bit like my father, while I was a bit like my mother in personality.

I was very popular in university, students asked me what Japan was like, I told them we had wooden houses, had beautiful gardens, streets, and sakura blossoms, But, one teacher knew I was a Japanese soldier, he was fighting in the Pacific, but, he was very shocked by my personality, shy and very gentle, US soldiers had to visit me alot because the starvation had permanently damaged my liver, making me unable to drink alcohol without being sick, resulting in poor alcohol tolerance, I was treated at a US military hospital, they had to perform a lobectomy and had to replace a new liver, when I looked at my old liver, they told all the cells which handle alcohol all died and they couldn't recover, I liked my classmates, they were so cool. ~ Ichiro on university

After the war, parents and sister dead, homeless in Tokyo, had no money for food, not even food rations, Two days, Maria mostly lived off dog food she stole from homes, I was found by US soldiers, I was put in prison for a week, given rations consisted of fruits and bread, which didn't do much, but it tasted nicer than the Red Cross Boxes, I was given to Mikey's family, his aunt thought I was cute and thought Maria-chan was cute, She had a dog bed, she told me her dog Henry died at the age of 15 after suffering Crohn's Disease, which causes parts of the digestive system to become inflamed.

One time, my father had to be deported and sent back to Japan because when he was captured in Iwo Jima after he pleaded them because he had to make sure I was okay since I worked in a camp that was heavily diseased and the fact he was ill from starvation.

My liver removal, if that liver stayed in my body, the condition would become life-threatening as the skin where my liver would be could of developed gangrene, which proved fatal and would damage my other organs and cause multiple organ failure, because the liver is treated like if I have died and they needed to remove it, the doctors told me this was the reason for my extremely violent hunger pains, the inability to handle and process alcoholic drinks, before that, I did have an acute liver condition, which caused my liver not to function the way it normally should, it decreased my alcohol tolerance to the point that I could only drink a small pint and sometimes it caused extremely violent cramps, but the medical expertise I required just wasn't available in Imperial Japan back then and my family did not have enough money to travel abroad for treatment and due to an US law, Japanese immigrants travelling to the US were no longer allowed in the US and doctors refused to treat me because the surgery was so high-risk because they risked damage to other organs, during the days I have starved, my liver just died, it destroyed the tolerance for alcohol and hunger pains and cramps became stronger and more painful. ~ Ichiro about his liver condition

During the Burma Railway, I was given strict orders by my father and Hiro to stay away from non-Japanese IJA soldiers for my own safety, this included Shoichi-san and Huizong-san entirely, because they were even more violent than the Japanese guards themselves, and he had to be there the entire time, and he threw up a couple of times in a bush because the sight of the POWs and Asian labourers building that awful railway made his physically sick, but, he wasn't even allowed to touch them, but, the Kuro Unit sympathised with my dad, and Shoichi-San had to lead him away from the railway, to be honest, inside, I felt sorry for the men forced to build that railway.

My father took a more active part in the war because he was in the army for 23 years, but he refused to beat soldiers because he thought it was have negative effects on teenage soldiers, he trained me instead because he didn't want me to be associated with the brutalities going on, He was proud, but he wasn’t the most violent person.

After we saw the Transformers movie, Maria said she wanted to meet the guy that played Unicron, then I told her I'll tell her after the film, and when we got home, I bought a book called "I'll Miss You, Mr. Hooper" and told her the man that played him, Orson Welles, died a year before the film's release, and I read her the book, she gets the concept of death pretty easily, and and actually asked me who Mr. Hooper was, and I asked if she knew the man from Sesame Street that ran the shop, and she said yes, and I told her his was Will Lee, the actor, and that he died of a heart attack, and she seemed to get the concept.

That boy Joseph was Maria's whole world to her. I remember he had race car tracks, My Pet Monster plush, a talking Pee-Wee, die-cast cars, Transformers action figures, model jet planes, Indiana Jones action figures, Hot Wheels cars, an Atari, and Superman comic books when he first showed her his new bedroom. He was Maria's best friend, and they did everything together. They went trick-or-treating together, went to Miami beach together, went to the movies together, and went to school together.

My father was so badly injured in Hiroshima that he couldn't even stand up because a large piece of wood hit his bare foot and developed gangrene, which proved fatal, he actually didn't die on the day the bomb exploded, he died during the surrender and my sister and mother died on the day it exploded, he was found my Americans because he hopped miles to an IJA base, they couldn't save him because the medical team wasn't taught to treat gangrene, and when an American doctor visited him, he told me he would die from his injuries, my dad took his last breath during the night from the agony, he died in his sleep right after hearing the broadcast, I told the Americans it'a a tradition to cremate the dead, so when they found my sister's and mother's bodies, they cremated them and out their ashes with urns with their names on

Maria absolutely loves Yokai Watch, just like any other Japanese kid, Mikey doesn't because of his religious beliefs, when I got her Shinuchi, she played it non-stop, her favourite Yokai is Kyubi, which is a nine-tailed fox, she named it after me, again, she has a Japanese 3DS, so she can only play Japanese games, her second favourite is Orochi, which looks like a young boy with a dragon-headed scarf, her nickname for it "Yamato" no, not after Japan's old name, the warship, she names her Yokai after warships and famous samurai, true, true.

Back in ancient Japan, and until 1920's, the girls in my family usually died in infancy or before the age of 1-2, because of a birth defect called ALCAPA, which is anomalous left coronary artery from pulmonary artery, because it had no name, they called it Saeke-chan syndrome, which is named after the first baby girl in my family to die from the defect, which most girls born in my family had, and I discovered my ancestors had a gene that made girls having it 7 times more likely, it usually kills before they reached their first birthday, the defect is where the left coronary artery is connected to the pulmonary artery instead of the aorta, Satsuki didn't realise she had the defect until she suffered a heart attack, and she was got to hospital, and a Us doctor checked her, and she got an operation for a heart transplant, she survived.

Well, when me and Maria saw that Goodbye Mr. Hooper episode, like Big Bird, Maria wondered if Mr. Hooper moved to a retirement home because of his age, and I told him that Mr. Hooper died, and she wanted a reason, and I said, "the nice man that played him died a few months ago and when people die, they don't come back." And she said if they were anyone that died in my family, and I told her about great-grandpa Kenta-ojisan, who died of gangrene in his sleep after the Hiroshima bomb, great-aunt Sachiko-chan and great-grandma Aiko-okasan who died in the 1945 Hiroshima bombing.

I believed no one could compare to my Maria, and Miyako-chan actually aborted a baby because of it's gender, not for boys-carry-on-name, because I couldn't deal with another granddaughter that wasn't her, but, I didn’t want her to do that,

Nanking?, yeah, my dad told me stories about it, he never denied it, he wasn't a participant because he wasn't apart of the battalion that took part, because we just arrived back in Japan in a plane, I couldn't have been able, I was 12 when it happened, I am still pretty damn horrified, I've never been a right-winger, Zhiyu told me everything, She said there was no point blaming me because it wasn’t me who did it.

In the camp, It kind of felt like I was a POW, some POWs mistook me for a Chinese POW because I was so thin and the fact I was shirtless most of the time in the summer, It was only when I was fully clothed they noticed, but my ill health got even worse and I had to be taken out of the camp 5 months before Japan surrendered.

My father told me before he died “Please don’t hate the Americans for this, It isn’t worth it, even if Truman died, it won’t reverse what’s been done, do not give into hate or anger like our country did, Please live on.”

Quotes from Another vs. Normal Party: Abduction
I really loved my granddaughter, I would do anything for her, if only I could see her, I used to bring her to a toy store to buy Transformers toys, she was the apple of my eye, that's a saying, when she started school, some of the other pupil's grandparents despised me because I was fighting for Japan in WWI, either because they fought in the Pacific or were told of the war crimes, when she died, my world fell into a million pieces, when I died, I decided to use my 19-year old self because I looked like her so much when I was a child and adolescent. ~ Ichiro on his granddaughter

(Maria-chan?) ~ Ichiro in Japanese to his granddaughter.

I may had been a Japanese soldier, but, I didn't really beat up POWs very often, but I managed to kill a British POW, and when it happened, I screamed it was an accident, and I threw up and tried to kill myself, but Hiro stopped me, and tried to assure me it was only an accident and he said to another soldier that decapitated POWs that it was only an accident and didn't mean to do it, since he was annoyed at me for “taking his job”, he scolded that I “was just a guard and not an executioner“

My dad heard of Iggy, He said when he found out, he was horrified and felt like crying, I was his age and he felt like that could of been me, deaths from both sides traumatised him.

Hiro Tanaka, I’ve heard of him, he really fucking hated the Americans and the Kuro unit and my dad never knew why until we found out Hiro used to live in America and had a daughter called Winnie Yuki Tanaka, when he was captured in 1944, He tried to kill a GI that was the father of his daughter’s bully, one US soldier found out that this man who wanted to kill every American soldier he saw as a grieving father when he was shouting “YUKI TANAKA, HIROHITO TANAKA, DOES THAT NAME APPEAR FAMILIAR TO YOU?!”, He had to be shot in the head by a reluctant soldier, despite his hatred for the Americans, they decided to send his body back to Jennifer, his wife.

Personality
Unlike most POW guards, who were aggressive towards captors, he was gentle and not cut out for fighting, but was slightly-short tempered and could become extremely violent when angered, He had a love of nature and animals, he was timid, shy, and sometimes cocky, yet very sweet-natured.

Despite his sweet natured personality, he was nicknamed by POWs, "The Fox of Imperial Japan" due to him constantly beating only one POW and not any of the others.

Despite all this, He was still willing to forgive Mikey for the hardships aswell as himself, even telling him in his last letter “Mikey, I feel nothing but an odd warmth, farewell, Hermit.”

After Maria and her parents died, he became sullen, shy, and prone to murderous outbursts.

Since his only granddaughter died at the age of eight, Yuu's wife, Atsuko aborted a female baby because Ichiro couldn't bare to have a replacement granddaughter after Maria and believed no one could compare to her.

He also seems to admire Japanese-Americans who fought for the US Army, even saying to his brother-in-law “You....I like you....”

Trivia

 * His surname means "standing" in Japanese
 * His autism traits are derived from the creator Japanlover86.
 * He hates and fears Christian fundamentalists, due to his bad memories in Florida in a fundamentalist neighbourhood
 * His rank in the Imperial Japanese Army was Lance Corporal.
 * He is very fond of calligraphy.
 * His bad alcohol tolerance and his intense stomach cramps are a result of a uncommon acute liver condition and birth defect and that his liver needed to be replaced or his condition would become life-threatening.
 * Ichiro has nightmares of war, his granddaughter's death and the camp.
 * His favorite food is nikujaga (Japanese beef stew)
 * He and his son were survivors of the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attack, which permanently damaged his bronchi while Yuu almost died from poisoning.
 * His assigned tarot card was the Hierophant as par tradition in both his adopted and biological family.