Bobby Fischer light of day during that period, and that the staff had ignored his complaints about constant tobacco smoke in his cell. Tokyo-based Canadian journalist and consultant John Bosnitch set up the "Committee to Free Bobby Fischer" after meeting Fischer at Narita Airport and offering to assist him. Boris Spassky wrote a letter to US President George W. Bush, asking "For mercy, charity", and, if that was not possible, "to put [him] in the same cell with Bobby Fischer" and "to give [them] a chess set". It was reported that Fischer and Miyoko Watai, the President of the Japanese Chess Association
Dick Schaap Around 1955, Schaap befriended Bobby Fischer, who was at the time a twelve-year-old chess prodigy, and would later become a world chess champion. In 2005, prompted by questions posed by Schaap's son, Jeremy Schaap, Fischer acknowledged that the relationship was significant and that the elder Schaap had been a "father figure" to him. Fischer was still resentful that Dick Schaap had later written, among many other comments, that Fischer "did not have a sane bone left in his body". The Sports Emmy division of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences renamed their writing category "The Dick Schaap Outstanding