And of course in the Philippines there were so many thousands of Americans that were captured by the Japanese and held and who were rescued by Filipino Americans or Filipinos I should say and by U.S. troops near the close of the war.

I'm old enough to remember the end of World War II. On Aug. 14 1946 a year after the Japanese were defeated most newspapers and magazines had single articles commemorating the end of the war.

My mother lived in Holland and during World War II was incarcerated in a Japanese camp for three years.

I had just turned 10-years-old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and plunged America into World War II.

Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war I would have been tried as a war criminal.

Working in Hollywood it's clear the more money you have the more technology you can get. So you can build a whole Japanese set. Only in Hollywood!

With millions of family wage manufacturing jobs lost since 2001 we need an energy bill that takes bold action to tap into American ingenuity in order to lead the world in new clean energy technology rather than playing catch-up to the Japanese Danish and Germans.

I didn't read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature I just wanted to do something else.

Since I have come to America I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come but while living in America I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

Math and science fields are not the only areas where we see the United States lagging behind. Less than 1 percent of American high school students study the critical foreign languages of Arabic Chinese Japanese Korean or Russian combined.

English is necessary as at present original works of science are in English. I believe that in two decades times original works of science will start coming out in our languages. Then we can move over like the Japanese.

I had to trick people into giving me money for my first film. Making a romantic comedy is easier and more expected from a woman than it is to make a drama about a Japanese warrior.

I'd had a relationship with a French girl a Japanese girl an American girl a Filippina and she was there all the time - a Lancashire girl. I thought: 'It's a Lancashire girl I was looking for. Why didn't I realize it?'

But in Japanese there's actually not much of a relationship between the music and the words.

Many Japanese painters and calligraphers would change their names intentionally to keep their relationship to the art always fresh. This way others' expectations can be avoided.

As I grew up I was continually to suffer hardships in different realms of life - in my family in my relationship to Japanese society and in my way of living at large in the latter half of the twentieth century.

And they said if we help with the crisis they would do a lot of positive acts. After we helped in those crises they showed negative acts and the Japanese and Turks were ashamed.

I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry.

It is true that short forms of poetry have been cultivated in the Far East more than in modern Europe but in all European literature short forms of poetry are to be found - indeed quite as short as anything in Japanese.

Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones gut this is only in part true.

The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry.

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.

All through the years since World War II the Japanese people have I am convinced made strenuous efforts to preserve and promote world peace contributing to the progress and prosperity of mankind.

Sometimes I miss out the morning's painting session and instead study my Japanese books in the open.