Word: banzais
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...known as Blank Monday in the surfing world, the $4.5 billion industry's core snapped like a board caught in the Banzai Pipeline. Reason? The closure of Gordon (Grubby) Clark's four-decade virtual monopoly on polyurethane blanks, the raw material for most surfboards. (Shapers then customize them for surfers.) Clark's Laguna Niguel, Calif., company produced 80% of blanks worldwide, and his sudden exit (encircled by rumors of pressure by environmental regulators) left surfers treading water as board prices doubled and deliveries were cut off. One man's wipeout, though, could be another's dream wave. Harold Walker...
...breaststroke race last week, Japan's finest swimmer wasn't about to let a few centimeters of European torso or American leg stop him. Tagging the end of the pool in a speedy display somewhat slowed by brisk winds, the 1.78-m Kitajima raised his arms in a banzai cheer and threw back his head as a strange wail swirled through the stadium and skittered across the surface of the pool. Delivered in a high-pitched tone perhaps best detected by dogs, the shrieks were the unmistakable call of the teenage Japanese girl. "Ko-chan, congratulations," the girls screamed...
...After the war, the public turned against the kamikazes. "The world thought they were crazy fanatics who died shouting banzai for the Emperor," says Hatsuyo Torihama, who is married to another of Tome's grandchildren. Tome waged a one-woman battle to untaint their memory, showing the soldiers' photos to customers and collecting donations for the town to put up a statue of the goddess of mercy in 1955. "But no one came," says Hatsuyo. "Not a soul...
...victory over Tunisia. They climbed lampposts, darted in and out of traffic and leaped off car roofs. About 100 people, including salarymen, teenagers, and one buck-naked man with a Japanese flag tied around his neck like a cape, jumped into the green, murky waters of the Dotombori River. "Banzai!" the caped crusader yelled...
...picture of the superhuman, subhuman foe - propaganda at its most lurid. As Bruce Jackson, who had been a World War II marine, wrote ironically in 1995: "Japs, as we learned from the newsreels that accompanied the double features, were fanatics who jumped up and down waving swords while screaming 'Banzai!' Japs gleefully died for Emperor Hirohito in suicidal charges against American troops or in kamikaze raids...