If you want to come, I say give it a try. I’ll ask Tanaka to help you. He’s a translator and a fixer for a little import/export company called Earnest Trading. Maybe you could be an import/export agent or something at the company, and from there establish your own business. Tanaka knows all about visas and stuff like that. Just let me know.

It’d be great to have you out here. There are opportunities. I think you’d like it. Be warned though, like I said.

Love from your cousin,

Izzy

164 Water Street

St. John’s, Newfoundland

April 29, 1937

Dear Iz,

Aren’t you selling out a little bit? Apologizing for the British like that after all the evil they done us? Brother Du Bois is leading the charge in America, protesting Jim Crow and insisting on our civil rights. Internationally, he advocates pan-Africanism. He says that China and Japan have to stop fighting and unite in self-defence. Now’s their chance to get free of those bloodsucking imperial tyrants. He says for sure there are philanthropists and reformers in Europe and America who care about all mankind, but they don’t rule. It’s those two-faced ghouls who do, and they want nothing more than Japan and China at each other’s throats so they can crush and exploit both. China and Japan got to get together, and seeing as how China doesn’t have the strength to drive the Europeans out, she better take Japan’s lead. That’s what my old pen pal Noma Kennosuke used to say—Lord, more than ten years ago now. I wonder whatever happened to him. Stopped answering my letters just before he entered military college.

Anyway, what those Europeans are doing in Asia is no different from what they’re doing in Africa and the South Seas. They just want to dominate the world, those bloodsuckers. As a Negro and as an Asian you have double the reason to want to kick them back to those icy lands that are their rightful home.

I understand, though, that a man’s got to live. Do you really think I could make a go of it in Hong Kong?

Love to you,

Morgan

119 Lai Chi Kok Road

Mong Kok, Hong Kong

May 22, 1937

Dear Morgan,