Dear Celia,

Thanks for your message sent as a beautiful e-card. Yes, we find errors of a much more global nature in the decisions of political leaders than our typos. Last evening Japan's defense agency formally ordered the dispatch of 600 troops to Iraq. I'm quite nervous about Japan's position in the international world in the near future.

From January 4 to 16, my wife and I joined a group travel to New Zealand organized by JTB (Japan Travel Bureau) West. The group consisted of a tour conductor and only seven participants. So it was like a family trip. At the first destination of Christchurch, the son, named Lee, of an American friend of mine kindly came to see us. Lee works at the University of Canterbury. He said, "The government of New Zealand had defied making port of American nuclear submarines. So my mother nation and this country are not in good relation." (Lee has come to work there, because his wife is a New Zealander.) I envy the Government of New Zealand.

Lee also told us that the New Zealand 100 dollar banknote has the portrait of Earnest Rutherford ( see the image of the banknote; read about Rutherford's legacy and the banknote). I didn't get a chance of having a 100-dollar bill, but a receptionist at a hotel near Mt. Cook kindly showed us one. This is one of the things a physicist traveler liked to see best as well as wonderful nature of New Zealand.

You wish to be one of the first volunteer voyagers to Mars. It's a wonderful idea, and you're quite a brave person. More than twenty years ago I attended a domestic academic symposium and listened to a young scientist's presentation. I was quite attracted by him and had this thought for the first time in my research career: I want such an able person for my coworker. He soon became Japan's first scientist astronaut joining the Endeavor crew. He was Dr. Mamoru Mohri. So you, a good e-mail friend of mine I've gotten, will also be on a spaceship soon and reach the Mars.

Have a good flight!
Tatsu

US President George Bush told an audience on May 24, 2004, at the Army War College in Pennsylvania that Abu Ghraib prison, notorious for prisoner abuse and torture, would be destroyed "as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning."

Bush seems to want to erase the inhuman deeds of US Army like a child who wants to wipe his mischief away or who steals something and runs away hiding it at his back while being watched from the back. This is just to carry a caricature into actual practice. History cannot be crossed out.

Reviewing hundreds of articles written during prelude to war in Iraq and into early stages of occupation, the editors of the New York Times reported as follows:

We have found a number of instances of coverage that was not rigorous enough. Many problematic articles depended in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change," whose credibility has come under increasing public debate. The accounts of these exiles were often eagerly said to be true by United States officials convinced of need to invade Iraq. Editors at several levels share responsibility with reporters. (Summarized from the article "The Times and Iraq" in the New York Times dated May 26, 2004.)