JAPAN VISIT

Twenty six years ago this month I headed up a delegation of engineers that visited Japan. Our purpose was to learn as much as we could about a technology they had perfected in the treatment of their wastewater. Land in Japan is scarce so they were forced to figure a way to make maximum use of what was available. We had a similar situation on Deer Island and we were in our planning and design phase. I had to make arrangements through the State Department as we could not enter Japan without proper credentials. Once we got there we were treated royally. The Japanese Government assigned a young man fluent in English to stay with us throughout our 10 day stay. As a child growing up during WWII my impression of the Japanese was of a race bent on torturing and killing Americans. What I experienced was totally different. In our conferences they couldn’t do enough to meet our requests for information. More important they treated us with utmost regard. The Japanese were also very courteous to one another. Without fail they bowed to each other upon meeting. These were certainly not the “Japs” I had been taught to hate. I wondered how did this race of warmongerers turn things around. I left Japan with a totally different perspective than the one I was accustomed to hearing about during the war.