Look and Listen

Biography

I am the co-author of "Silent Voices of World War II: When Sons of the Land of Enchantment Met Sons of the Land of the Rising Sun," co-written with the late Professor Everett M. Rogers, Communications professor at University of New Mexico. I am the past President of the Los Alamos Historical Society (www.LosAlamoshistory.org)and a historian, politician, environmental and health activist, amateur photographer, and long-time community leader of Los Alamos, New Mexico where I have lived with my husband John for 46 years and our children John and Jennifer were born. In 1969, I and my husband John co-founded New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air & Water, Inc., which led the fight to clean up air emissions of huge coal-burning power plants in the Four Corners region and copper smelters in the southwestern part of the state. Our continued efforts help to preserve the turquoise skies of New Mexico. Beginning in the 1970s I served for 12 years on the National American Lung Association Board and served for many years on the state board and as its President. In the 1980s I was elected to the city/county council for six years, including serving as its Chairman (mayor) for one year. After earning my B.A. in history from Smith College thirteen years after the end of WWII, I taught for two years at a private girls academy in Sendai, Japan. On my way back to the States, I completed global travel by taking the time to stop off in 17 countries. I later toured parts of Europe, including Bastogne, Belgium near the Battle of the Bulge, the gravesite of Winston Churchill, London’s Parliament, and Tower. My unique understanding of the Japanese people led to further exploration of cross-cultural perspectives. I returned to Japan four times with family to research Japanese war/peace museums and monuments while my husband worked on mutual scientific research with Japanese scientists. My ultimate mission is to create a human link between a country that was once the archenemy and the place that created the weapons that caused its surrender.

Inspiration

I live in an area that offered so many factors that led to the winning of the war in the Pacific—the Bataan March, hundreds of New Mexicans, Navajo Code Talkers, who created a military code never broken by the Japanese military, the Internment Camp in Santa Fe that supposedly held the most dangerous aliens in the war (mostly the intelligencia of the 1940s Japanese community), and live in the town that built, tested, and used the 20th century's ultimate weapon.