Hi possible-san. Thank you for your posts. Since you are in Japan, and as a Japanese XJW your input is much more valuable than mine. My observation was based solely on what I was told by men in the Writing Dept. who had been at Bethel from before Lloyd came from Japan to be a GB member. Barry was the overseer of Writing and was close to his "boys," as he called them. He had been their overseer for around seven years when I came into the department so I assumed that what was said about him and the Japanese was said out of knowledge.
For what it's worth, I remember how at breakfast Lloyd spoke of his fondness for the Japanese people, how zealous they were for the "truth," not lazy like Westerners. Whenever new publisher peaks or pioneer numbers were way up in Japan, we would hear about it.
Lloyd Barry was my overseer and I came to know him as a friend. He spoke Japanese and I know from our conversation that he worked closely with the Japanese branch. He loved it when busloads of Japanese came to Brooklyn Bethel on tour. Not that they always were from Japan, but sometimes from California. He usually came down from his office to meet with them in the office lobby and chat. At the time when I was at Bethel, I know that the Japanese Branch was quite wealthy for they financed the building of other branches around the world such as the one in Columbia, S. America and Lloyd was so proud of this. Remember, he was in Japan when there weren't many JWs, so he was like a proud pappa when he saw the growth. Lloyd Barry was a good man and a really sincere believer in the fantasy world of JWs. I remember him with fondness.
possible-san, if any of the things I'm saying here were not the reality in Japan, please tell me. I write only about what I observed or what I was told. I worked with so many people in Bethel from so many different departments that my head is full of lots of things that were said to me about the people we all knew at Bethel and elsewhere. We were a family and like all families, we talked about each other, but mostly in a good way. At Bethel, life is very much a closed community so what else would interest us but the people there and the work we were doing for the Witnesses around the world.
It's interesting to hear how the JW world is changing with the times. I remember discussing the Internet with a member of the Writing Dept in 1996. I was living here in Tennessee and doing outside research for the department. I wonder if that man even remembers what I said about the Internet, that it would destroy the organization if we didn't truthfully address JW issues that were being discussed on the web. He asked me if I was becoming "apostate" and I assured him I was not. He assured me that the Writing Dept. would address those issues so I was not to worry. Here it is 13 years later and I'm an "apostate" and the name JWs is being met with ridicule in advanced countries mainly because of revelations about the Witness org. on the Internet. And who would have thought back then that there would be a decrease in the numbers of super-loyal JWs in Japan because of their discoveries about the organization on the Internet. Certainly not me!
