Tsunami Lessons in 1964 and 2004 for Reconciliation
On March 28, 1964, an earthquake occurred in Alaska. It caused a Pacific-wide tsunami that took the lives of more than 122 people. In May of the year, PLO was founded in Palestine; in August, the Ton Kin Gulf incident occurred in North Vietnam; and the summer Olympic Games were held in Tokyo, Japan.
In a sense, the tsunami in 1964 looks like having given a special sign of the age.
Apart from the cold war against the Soviet Union, the U.S. had had to take on three major international issues for decades since then: the Middle East issue, the Viet Nam War, and the competition against emerging Japanese economy.
All these tree elements of the challenge the U.S. would have had to face had emerged clearly after the tsunami in Alaska.
Now, Chairman Arafat was gone, the unified Viet Nam was trying to be friendly, and Japan is well cooperating with the U.S. in the war on terror proceeding in the oil-rich Middle East.
In October of 1964, as Tokyo Olympic games started, a new super-express train “Shinkansen” was commercially introduced in Japan. It ran at 200Km/h then, though nowadays it runs at 300Km/h or 187 miles per hour.
To operate this then-most-advanced railroad system, they needed not only hardware but also software which should run on an IBM general-purpose computer available in that age.
U.S. engineers in those days did not expect Japanese engineers to write codes, by their own ability, necessary to control the bullet train. But, they succeeded in making programs, which put U.S. engineers on alert. And, in America, one technical periodical featured an article titled “Tsunami” in which they discussed how threatening the ability of Japanese engineers was in terms of computer technology competition.
Though two countries are still severely competing in the field of supercomputers, neither Japan-originated OS nor Japanese-originated processors have become a mainstream of the global industry just like its language.
In 2004, the great tsunami occurred near Sumatra Island in the Indian Ocean.
However, I have not heard of any article, with a title of “Tsunami,” being issued in these days, to my and Indian’s relief.
But, it is interesting to know that Indians are now making big success in computer-related jobs in the U.S. They account for 30 percent of NASA engineers, 40 percent of Microsoft Company engineers, 28 percent of IBM engineers, 17 percent of Intel engineers, and 13 percent of Xerox engineers.
The U.S. might learn a lesson from the tsunami in 1964, and they might be handling the similar case more conciliatorily in 2004 and up to this day.
This is an example of tsunami lessons. But still we may have to argue about earthquake lessons as well as hurricane lessons, if God wishes.
“JESUS CALLS FOUR FISHERMEN.”