Who was ‘The Man from Taured’?
In 1954, Tokyo’s International airport (also called Haneda airport), would receive hundreds of flights per week, which included a few international flights per day. Once the plane landed, the passengers were required to go through customs, and show identification.
One passenger, a middle-aged well-dressed white man, with a large beard and mustache, waited for his turn to speak to customs officials. The man told the airport staff, that he had travelled to Japan on a business trip. He also mentioned that this was his third trip to Japan in one year, as he travelled frequently. Everything was going fine, until the customs officer asked the man where he had travelled from. The man told him that he was a citizen of ‘Taured’. He said that Taured was a small country between France, and Spain. This information confused the customs officials, as they had never heard of the small country.
The traveller was a well-spoken man, who mostly spoke in French. He knew some Japanese, and also spoke in a few other languages. He had currency from a few other countries in his possession. When asked to show identification, the officer was amazed when the unusual man pulled out his passport, and showed him that his nationality, was listed as ‘Taured Citizen’.
Aside from the passport listing his nationality as ‘Taured Citizen’, the man’s passport looked…
