POW concentration camp #55

I'd have to say I was quite pissed off after finishing a hard days work, catching the train back to Hiroshima, only to find my bike wasn't where I'd parked it. A good hard look in the area was fruitless. Other bikes were standing there, staring at me like an idiot. It was no use:

• stolen... maybe;
• or perhaps the rumoured bike Nazis had cleared off with it.

In the unlikley case of a true theft, you'll never get your bike back. If the parking police have cruised the area and picked up your bike, it may take a journey, a few thousand yen, and a few curse words, but you can get your bike back.

After half a week of asking around for any intelligence on the location of the bike prisoner camp, a liberation mission came to light. I paid the ransom to the crusty gate-keeper and filed the paper work with the crusty key-master. "Gimme me bike back, you bastards!"

Free again, I rode off down the city streets, with the wind in my ¥1,000 cut hair. Even without a helmet, I ride safe in the knowledge that no vehicle driver would ever nail a cyclist.

The Geneva Convention was an agreement among the nations of the world directing countries in the proper treatment of Prisoners of War.

Japan never signed this agreement.