In all the memories recorded about the nuclear technologies and the disasters of our time the fate of humans exposed to radiation comes last. That was the leading concept of a Fukushima/Chernobyl anniversary talk by Norma Field. She hopes to rescue humans and other living things from oblivion and from the real harm inflicted upon them now and into the future.
Some argue that Norma Field risked her academic standing as professor of East Asian studies at the University of Chicago by not only teaching Premodern Japanese Poetry and Prose, and Women Studies, but also by being public and vocal in her indictment of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.
Born in Tokyo in 1947 to a Japanese mother and American serviceman father she was in a unique position to understand each one of her cultures with curiosity as well as distance.
Norma Field is the author of many books, among them: In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: A Portrait of Japan at Century’s End (1993) and From My Grandmother’s Bedside: Sketches of Postwar Tokyo (1997).
She was recorded by Dale Lehman, WZRD, on March 20, 2016 at De Paul University, Chicago.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)
