In the final year of his incarceration, JD was sent to a Mitsubishi copper mine in northern Japan. There the old mine's conditions had deterioated so badly, they made the physical site of the miracle-like, but happily-avoided mine disaster in Chile pale in comparision.
There, because of Merritt's uncooperative attitude, he was put to work on a detail led by the toughest Hancho in the mine, a sumo-sized Japanese giant named Fukuda. To "correct" JD's B.A., (bad attitude) he was made to work alone in a basho no batsu. (an old, abandoned lateral nearing collapse} When Fukuda accosted him one morning, JD's Irish temper overcame his good sense and he roughly cursed The Monster in fluent Japanese.
Dumfounded by JD's blasphemy, Fukuda screamed "Yattsukeru omae no horyo." (roughly, "I'll kill you, slave.") Then the man-mountain charged Merritt, his ridiculously short legs churning his body forward as his long, gorilla-like arms swung like blades on a windmill. When JD glimpsed his ham-like hands clenching, grasping and reaching, he knew this was a battle to the death - no quarter given or expected. Read the miracle-like ending in "Adapt Or Die."
