Bill Roam

Bill “Sunny Joe” Roam is a stunt performer who leaves the Sun On Jo reservation to build a life in Hollywood, then returns as his people face illness and decline. He becomes the biological father Remo Williams never knew and later the grandfather of Remo’s children. Remo is a former Newark police officer recruited by CURE and trained by Chiun in Sinanju.

When Remo first meets Bill on a Japanese film production in Yuma, Bill is coordinating stunts on land the Sun On Jo people have allowed the crew to use. He explains that Sunny Joe is his tribal name and Bill Roam his legal name. He had retired, but returned to work because the production needed a coordinator and the tribe had made his participation part of the arrangement.

Bill’s account of his earlier life begins with a search for his ancestral homeland. He left the reservation to seek the place called Sun On Jo and a wife who might help his people continue; when money ran out, he turned to stunt work, which let him travel between productions. In Japan he heard of Sinanju in North Korea and later joined the U.S. Army during the Korean War in hopes of reaching it. His unit fought near a place called Sinanju. Chiun tells a different part of that story: he says he drove the Chinese forces away from the village that night.

Bill’s father died while he was serving in Korea, and Bill returned to Hollywood believing he had failed to find the land of Sun On Jo. He doubled for actors, became a stunt coordinator and took acting roles, including parts in westerns, detective programs and science-fiction shows. Repeated falls left him with broken bones, and his height and frame led to creature roles. The revival of Muck Man eventually made the otherwise unrecognized actor a star; after years in rubber suits, he was ready to retire again.

The Sun On Jo family history links Bill’s people to an exiled Korean ancestor they call Ko Jong Oh. In Bill’s telling, Ko Jong Oh traveled from a cold northern land to the desert, married an Indigenous woman and had three sons. Bill distinguishes the tribal chief, who rules, from the Sunny Joe, who is trained to protect the tribe. Chiun identifies Ko Jong Oh with Kojong the Lost, one of Sinanju’s twins, and says Remo descends from him.

Bill explains that the Sun On Jo chief governs the tribe, while a Sunny Joe is trained in stealth and cunning and charged with protecting it. The protector is expected to use deception and strategy rather than kill when other means can defeat an opponent.

Bill’s wife, whom he had hoped would help continue the Sun On Jo line, died within a week of giving birth to their son. Grief and the demands of his traveling work left him unable to imagine raising the child alone. Because his wife had been raised Catholic, he chose a Catholic orphanage and left the infant there. Bill says his stage name was William S. Rome: he changed “Roam” to “Rome,” formed “Remo” from it, and used his own name to make “Remo Williams.”

Years later, Bill read that Newark police officer Remo Williams had been executed and realized he had waited too long to claim his only son. He admits he might never have returned for him. He says he wanted Remo to start with a clean slate, rather than be shaped by Hollywood or grow up without a culture on the reservation. Later, Remo finds a headstone marked Dawn Starr Roam and recognizes the name as his mother’s.

Bill finally comes home when illness is killing the few Sun On Jo people left. He calls it the Sun On Jo Disease and “death-hogan dust,” and believes the tribe has no future because births have dwindled and no women of childbearing age remain. Bill refuses to leave, even when told the healthy might escape; he says he is the last Sunny Joe and will die with his people.

Remo and Chiun find Bill gravely ill. Chiun gives him viper wine, then turns a fragment of dragon bone Remo has kept in his pocket into soup. Bill recovers. After Chiun identifies Bill as Remo’s father, the two men struggle toward an embrace. At a later Sun On Jo ceremony Bill presents Remo as his long-lost son, and Remo is named the next Sunny Joe, a protector lineage separate from his succession in Sinanju.

Remo spends months on the reservation with his father, but their values pull in different directions. Bill says the Sun On Jo way is peace and warns that Remo’s life of violence does not fit there. He urges Remo to return to the life he knows while making clear that he remains welcome; father and son ride out together when Remo leaves.

When Remo later brings Winston Smith to the reservation, he calls him his son but acknowledges that paternity has not been confirmed by DNA. Bill accepts Winston as a grandson and offers him the upbringing Remo missed, teaching him the reservation’s peaceful ways and how to ride. Winston chooses the name Winner.

After Jilda’s death, Remo brings Freya to Bill and asks him to shelter her. Bill welcomes his granddaughter. Three days later Freya is wrestling with Winner, and Remo decides to stay for a while and catch up with both children. The family buries Jilda near Red Ghost Butte.