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
Hermann Helms their well-respected 1995 book "The Bobby Fischer I Knew And Other Stories" (p. 329), which is the major source for this article. Helms assisted Bobby Fischer in 1951 with his move into organized chess, when he responded to a letter from Bobby's mother Regina Fischer, who was seeking opponents in Brooklyn for her eight-year-old son. Helms encouraged and stimulated the young Fischer, who would develop very rapidly, and become U.S. Champion by age 14 in 1957, later going on to win the World Chess Championship in 1972. There is a small file of ten of his games at chessgames.com. This