You Only Live Twice (film) declined the offer to direct, but accepted after producer Albert R. Broccoli called him saying: "You can't give up this job. It's the largest audience in the world." Peter R. Hunt, who edited the first five Bond films, believed that Gilbert had been contracted by the producers for other work but they found they had to use him. Gilbert, producers Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, production designer Ken Adam and director of photography Freddie Young then went to Japan, spending three weeks searching for locations. SPECTRE's shore fortress headquarters was changed to an extinct volcano after the team learned that the
James Bond uncollected and other miscellaneous short stories space reasons. The first Bond story published by Benson, "Blast from the Past" is a direct sequel to Fleming's "You Only Live Twice" and appears to exist outside the timeline of either Benson's or John Gardner's other Bond stories. Bond receives a message, apparently from his son James Suzuki (Suzuki's mother is Kissy Suzuki from "You Only Live Twice", now dead from ovarian cancer) asking him to come to New York City on an urgent matter. When Bond arrives, he finds his son murdered. With the aid of an SIS agent, he learns that James was killed in revenge by