 After completing his postgraduate work at Columbia, Murayama moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked at the Armed Forces Medical Library from 1952 to 1956, before moving to San Francisco.While still at Columbia, he completed the first draft of his first novel, "All I Asking for Is My Body".A story ("I'll Crack Your Head Kotsun") that became the first chapter of the novel was published in the "Arizona Quarterly" in 1959.