Journal bearings, which are used in all kinds of rotating machinery, do not only support static loads, such as the weight of rotors and load caused by transmitted torque of reduction gears, but are, in addition almost the only machine element that is able to suppress various exciting forces acting on the rotating shaft. As rotating machines have become large and multi-staged, while compactness, high speed, and high output have also been realized in recent years, not only has the bearing load increased, but also the magnitude and variety of exciting forces. Therefore, the role and importance of journal bearings have increased tremendous ly. In particular, for the design of rotating machines with low vibration levels and high reliability, knowledge of the exact characteristic data of bearings, and especial ly of the stiffness or spring coefficients and the damping coefficients of oil films in bearings, is essential. However, the amount of reliable data now applicable to practical design is limited. Through the activity of the Research Subcommittee on Dynamic Charac teristics of Journal Bearings and Their Applications (designated as PSC 28), estab lished and organized in June 1979 through May 1982 within the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME), these coefficients, together with static characteris tics, have been calculated and also measured on a number of new test rigs.

Toyiochi Tanaka, Mitsuhiro Shibayama, "Phase Transitions and related Phenomena of Polymer Gels", Akira Onuki "Theory of Phase Transition in Polymer Gels", Alexei Khokhlov, Sergei Starodybtzev, Valentina Vasilevskaya "Conformational Transitions in Polymer Gels: Theory and Experiment", Michal Ilavsky " Effect on Phase Transition on Swellingand Mechanical Behavior of Synthetic Hydrogels", Shozaburo Saito , M. Konno, H. Inomata "Volume Phase Transition of N-Alkylacrylamide Gels", Ronald Siegel "Hydrophobic Weak Polyelectrolyte Gels: Studies of Swelling Equilibria and Kinetics".

It is a great challenge in chemistry to clarify every detail of reaction processes. In older days chemists mixed starting materials in a flask and took the resul tants out of it after a while, leaving all the intermediate steps uncleared as a sort of black box. One had to be content with only changing temperature and pressure to accelerate or decelerate chemical reactions, and there was almost no hope of initiating new reactions. However, a number of new techniques and new methods have been introduced and have provided us with a clue to the examination of the black box of chemical reaction. Flash photolysis, which was invented in the 1950s, is such an example; this method has been combined with high-resolution electronic spectroscopy with photographic recording of the spectra to provide a large amount of precise and detailed data on transient molecules which occur as intermediates during the course of chemical reac tions. In 1960 a fundamentally new light source was devised, i. e., the laser. When the present author and coworkers started high-resolution spectroscopic stud ies of transient molecules at a new research institute, the Institute for Molecu lar Science in Okazaki in 1975, the time was right to exploit this new light source and its microwave precursor in order to shed light on the black box."

These stories were written primarily for my nephews and nieces and other members of the family because they have no clue about what our history and what had happen during the second world war. There are 120,000 different stories from 120,000 of Japanese Americans who were put in the concentration camp and my story is just one of many. Many have suppressed the past and forgot about them. I feel the story must be told. This is just my story and how I remembered the past. Others have experienced a different life some good some bad. My parents really had a positive outlook on life and that is why I have no bitterness on what has happened plus I was a pre-adolescent child who wanted to enjoy playing outdoors.