The New Six - Shinroku Maruyama

At an Italian restaurant in Yokohama, it was my honor to present a commemorative plaque to Shinroku Maruyama for 48 years of loyal service selling Rust-Oleum products from 1966 - 2014. At the age of 82 he is going into semi-retirement. I have been traveling to Japan since 1989 and have had the pleasure of working with him over these many years. Maruyama-san is known among his work associates as Mr. 9100 for selling the majority of the Rust-Oleum 9100 System epoxy product to electric power plants, incinerators and truck terminals to mention a few.I know just enough of the Japanese language to be socially glib. Certainly not enough to discuss business but I do know that shin means new and roku is the number six. The Japanese tradition is to refer to others by there last name followed by the word san which means honorable. I have only known Maruyama-san by his last name since I met him in 1989. I requested his first name when I had to order his plaque. At the celebration dinner I commented that Shinroku "new six" was an interesting name and asked if it was a common name in Japan. None of the other Japanese staff had ever heard that name before. Maruyama-san explained that he was born in 1932 when his father Uichi was 66 years old and it was his father that made up the name Shinroku to commemorate his achievement. His mother Sae was 43 years old at the time and was his fathers third wife. Uichi Maruyama was born in 1866 and traveled to San Francisco in 1894 and opened a shoe repair business. After 13 years he returned to Japan in 1907. He ran his shoe repair business in Tokyo until he went out of business just after end of WW II. Shinroku was 9 years old when Lt. Colonel Jimmy Doolittle and his squadron of 16 B25's spent 30 seconds over Tokyo. He remembers hearing those first bombs dropped by allied forces. He also remembers meeting General McArthur near his headquarters and McArthur commented that he was a handsome boy. I added some details about the Tokyo raid at the end of this blog.At the age of 82 Maruyama-san has overcome two bouts with mouth cancer and had his face reconstructed. He is still active and full of energy and plans to hold the title Mr. 9100 for many years to come.The plaque that started it all.The Rust-Oleum Japan staff commentates Maruyama-sans great accomplishment.Kame-san, Itoh-San, Maruyama-san, Simons-san, Yamanaka-san and Haijima-sanCrew No. 1 in front of B-25 #40-2344 on the deck of USS Hornet, 18 April 1942. From left to right: (front row) Lt. Col. Doolittle, pilot; Lt. Richard E. Cole, copilot; (back row) Lt. Henry A. Potter, navigator; SSgt. Fred A. Braemer, bombardier; SSgt. Paul J. Leonard, flight engineer/gunner. (U.S. Air Force photo)The Doolittle Raid, also known as theTokyo Raid, on 18 April 1942, was anair raid by the United States on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on Honshu island during World War II, the first air raid to strike theJapanese Home Islands. It demonstrated that Japan itself was vulnerable to American air attack, served as retaliation for the Japaneseattack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, and provided an important boost to U.S. morale while damaging Japanese morale. The raid was planned and led by Lieutenant Colonel James "Jimmy" Doolittle, U.S. Army Air Forces.Sixteen U.S. Army Air Forces B-25B Mitchell medium bombers were launched without fighter escort from theU.S. Navy's aircraft carrier USS Hornetdeep in the Western Pacific Ocean, each with a crew of five men. The plan called for them to bomb military targets in Japan, and to continue westward to land in China—landing a medium bomber on Hornet was impossible. Fifteen of the aircraft reached China, and the other one landed in the Soviet Union. All but three of the crew survived, but all the aircraft were lost. Eight crewmen were captured by theJapanese Army in China; three of these were executed. The B-25 that landed in the Soviet Union at Vladivostok was confiscated and its crew interned for more than a year. Fourteen crews, except for one crewman, returned either to the United States or to American forces.[1][2]After the raid, the Japanese Imperial Army conducted a massive sweep through the eastern coastal provinces of China, in an operation now known as the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign, searching for the surviving American airmen and applying retribution on the Chinese who aided them, in an effort to prevent this part of China from being used again for an attack on Japan. An estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians were killed by the Japanese during this operation.[3][4]The raid caused negligible material damage to Japan, but it succeeded in its goal of raising American morale and casting doubt in Japan on the ability of its military leaders to defend their home islands. It also caused Japan to withdraw its powerful aircraft carrier force from the Indian Ocean to defend their Home Islands, and the raid contributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's decision to attack Midway Island in the Central Pacific—an attack that turned into a decisive strategic defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy(IJN) by the U.S. Navy in the Battle of Midway. Doolittle, who initially believed that loss of all his aircraft would lead to his being court-martialled, received theMedal of Honor and was promoted two steps to Brigadier General.