<Begin Segment 22>

MN: Well, let me ask you about, you know Kanto just had, the Kanto region just had a huge earthquake and there's nuclear plants there, power plants, nuclear power plants there. Japan gets thirty percent of their power from atomic energy.

JD: That's right.

MN: What are your thoughts about that?

JD: Well, all countries have it now, Germany, the United States have it, too. They have nuclear plants and so forth, and whenever those things are built you always worry about the accident that's gonna happen from the, the element from the, of the generators' fuel, and there's no way, no way escaping it. They, they try to say, "We built it so that nothing, no accident will happen, no injury will happen," but it still will carry because a human, it's something created by the human knowledge. And I hope that, well, today we are experiencing the, Sendai's earthquake and the nuclear plant exploding, and that radiation's eventually gonna get here, some way, one way or another, because we learned that from the Chernobyl experience, Seattle had radiation reading, so there's no way of escaping it. We just hope that we don't have it. Even from the tidal, tsunami that we experienced at the Galapagos Islands, this morning's paper, to Santa Cruz port that ships were damaged and Crescent City damaged by the tsunami 5,000 miles across the ocean. You could feel that radiation eventually gonna reach here. Might not be much, but still you might experience it then. I don't know how you're gonna try to escape from it. We'll have to do protective covering or stay indoors like we try to escape from the smog and so forth, but it's really a new type of life, lifestyle that we fear. We don't have all the answers for it. Even the nuclear arsenal we have, we don't know what's gonna happen to it when it deteriorates and eventually start to harm us. There's a scholar named, I think Richard Rhode, came out with an article in the Chronicle December that, that we're so ignorant in the United States that we even think that we don't have the weapon anymore, but we have it and we don't know where it is sometime and we don't know how to dispose of it. And his, he's praising people that... so far, since 1945 we have remained not to use the weapon, somehow we escaped using it, but there's always a threat like Pakistan, India threatening themselves to use nuclear weapons. Now we have North Korea saying that they're gonna launch a missile to United States, they have a missile they could, it would travel 7,000 miles that would go, hit Seattle, San Francisco, L.A., and Hawaii, so forth. And so we are really at that age of frightening situation. We just hope that the humanity stays intelligent enough to not to kill each other, eliminate the earth itself. That's what we will talk about to people always want to hear about my experience. I'm always invited to speak at the (San Francisco State University) philosophy class, once a semester, Professor has invited me every semester to speak and speak to class of, humanity class or sociology class given by Steven Nakajo in San Francisco. I've been invited to speak there. I just spoke about, I think beginning of this month, I was there speaking.

MN: So in your opinion, should we not build any more nuclear power plants? There's a, there's a group of people saying fossil fuel is dirty and nuclear energy is clean.

JD: Yeah, well, wish we could do that. We're getting to the point of solar energy and wind energy and so forth, and then we try to even consider from the, wave energy from the ocean to create energy, any kind of power plant, and try to not to have the nuclear energy. Of course, when it, when an accident occurs it becomes very dangerous, so we could do that, so we are, hope to get away from the nuclear energy factor. Thermal, thermal energy another one that's available to us that could, then becoming hydrogen energy, we could, they're talking about developing, so there's always research done to do something about, besides using nuclear plants. I think nuclear plant's become a very dangerous item in our life.

MN: Anything else you want to add?

JD: No, I think, just I just hope the people become, well, knowledgeable about, from the past experience and don't repeat our error again that we had done. And we constantly fish for the error every day, around the world. Middle East, Eastern area, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq area, it's always threatening, and we are, last part is that North Korea. Just hope they stay wise enough that they won't use such a weapon. Yeah. Thank you.

MN: Thank you.

[Interruption]

JD: [Holding up an article] The title says "Sakata," even though we, I was very, had a difficult time, very difficult time in my life because of that injury and to recover from the injury, and she wanted to express to people what the atomic bomb had done to her, telling about her experience in this article. And like I mentioned, half of her body, fifty percent, the way was she faced the sound, when she heard that aircraft coming above she turned around and poof, went off, so truly half, just half, just like the sun ray hits it, just perfectly, just one side. The left side's okay; the right side was totally injured. And again, she married, remained married and raised three children, and they all went to university, so they're very intelligent children. But she did a great deal of work in Japan to, to strive for peace in the world, and she really moves me, too. I'd write to her constantly, and she has only communicated with me -- of course, I could write in Japanese and she can't write English -- so I write to her always, about once a month we write to each other and how she was doing. Now she's troubled with the arthritis and so forth, which is common, but she's still well. Her hearing's getting bad, so I don't want to talk to her on the phone, be yelling at each other. [Laughs]

MN: Does she have thyroid problems?

JD: Not that she mentioned. No, she never mentioned. Arthritic is the main, major problem and the movement of hand. Pain in her body, of course. And she often mentioned about she cooked a special sushi for, once a year to distribute to the neighborhood, and I think there's a neighborhood in her village where she lives, so she really appreciated that. A very, very active person community wise.

MN: What is your aunt's name?

JD: Her name, Abe. Shizuko Abe, renamed Dairiki, of course. Shizuko Abe. Eighty-five right now, she's five years older than I am.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.