Roommates

One of my young relatives is about to start college. She has to choose between a single room or having a roommate. Everyone has told her to get a single, except me. I attended several state universities in the 1950s. There were no single rooms. I had roommates:

Dennis, who went on to become an editorial cartoonist for a newspaper chain.

Mike, who helped found the biology department at a state college.

Sam, who later played professional football in Canada. He was the first black person I met.

Jack, a baseball pitcher who, like me, became an English professor.

Makoto, a much older student from Japan who had volunteered as a kamikaze pilot during World War II. In formation before take-off, he'd been pulled back--because he was the only surviving son in his family. 

In Westwood, Makoto obsessively watched "Victory at Sea," an American TV documentary on the Pacific war.  During the war he'd seen only propaganda. He'd been certain Japan was winning.