Nikkei Heritage
Issue Vol XI, Number 4, Fall 1999NASA Explorers
Living on the Ocean Floor:
The Adventures of NASA’s First Aquanaut
based on the reminiscences of Charles Chiharu Kubokawa
Ellison Onizuka: the First Nikkei Astronaut
by Kenji Murase, PhD
Dan Tani: NASA’s Newest Japanese American Astronaut
by Shizue Seigel
NJAHS News
July 24 Annual Meeting: Mitch Maki and Harry Kitano
Welcome New Board Members
New Members and Donations
Upcoming NJAHS programs
An Unexpected Adventure
by Susan Kitazawa, 1998 NJAHS Raffle Winner
Astronaut Ellison Onizuka once told a group of high school graduates, “Every generation has the obligation to free men’s minds for a look at new worlds... to look from a higher plateau than the last generation.... Many things which you take for granted were considered unrealistic dreams by previous generations.”
The Issei’s new world was literal – they established a new life in a new land. For many Nisei, the new world meant a good education and a worthy career. Although we now take such possibilities for granted, before World War II all too many Nisei found that even a Stanford honors degree didn’t lead to their career of choice. Later the war reduced the lives of most mainland Nikkei to two suitcases and a desert internment camp. Yet the search for higher plateaus has continued.
In this issue, we explore the progression of Nikkei dreams and possibilities through three NASA explorers: Nisei Charles Kubokawa, NASA’s first aquanaut, and from the Sansei generation: Ellison Onizuka, the first Nikkei astronaut, and Dan Tani, the newest Japanese American astronaut.
To the footsoldiers mired in the segregated battalions of 1943, the combat pilots flying overhead may have seemed like an unattainable dream, but by 1957, Charles “Chuck” Kubokawa was flying for the Air Force. In 1970, he became NASA’s first aquanaut. Through his sojourn deep under the ocean he contributed to the knowledge which enabled U.S. astronauts to reach high into space.
One beneficiary was Ellison Onizuka. When he stepped aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1985, he thrilled the hearts of thousands of Nikkei. He showed us that it was indeed possible for Japanese Americans to fly high. Risk accompanies reach, however, and his career was tragically cut short just two years later by the fiery explosion of the Challenger. The enduring legacy of Onizuka and his multi-cultural crewmates is the knowledge that boys and girls of every ethnicity can dream the most extravagant of American dreams and hope to attain them.
Although astronaut Dan Tani has yet to be assigned a mission, he is in the midst of a family journey which includes his parents’ incarceration at Tanforan and Topaz and which may well lead into space.
Although these Nikkei reached particularly dramatic plateaus, they are representative of thousands of others in less visible fields – in the sciences, education, social work, the arts – who continue to seek higher ground with the same adventuresome and persistent courage that the Issei first brought to America.
Shizue Seigel
Managing Editor
Feature Article
Living on the Ocean Floor
Based on the reminiscences of Charles Kubokawa, NASA's first official aquanaut
Charles Chiharu Kubokawa was born and raised in San Francisco and interned at Tanforan and at Topaz, UT, during WWII. He served in the U.S. Air Force for 5 1/2 years as a flying officer. He graduated from UCLA in 1957 and worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from 1963 to 1989.
Last May Kubokawa became the first Japanese American to be inducted into the National Space Foundation’s Space Technology Hall of Fame, as the co-inventor of Temper Foam, a highly resilient material developed at NASA Ames Research Center in the 1970s. “I was trying to develop seating for aerospace vehicles so that people could better survive crashes or impacts. We found that Temper Foam in combination with a special seat structure was good for 36 gs (36 times the force of gravity). The seat can out-survive the aircraft in a crash,” Kubokawa declares. The nonflammable, nontoxic foam is used in space shuttle seats as well as in commercial products like orthopedic seats, football helmets, special car seats, earplugs, and bed mattresses.
The article below describes another highlight of his career – he was the first official NASA aquanaut.
The Purpose of the Mission. In the late 1960s, NASA began development of Skylab, a manned space station which would circle the earth in permanent orbit. Needing to test equipment, food preferences, crew complement and procedures in conditions similar to those that might be encountered on long-term space missions, an undersea habitat replicating Skylab in size and shape was created by NASA in collaboration with the Department of the Interior, General Electric and the U.S. Navy. In 1970, Tektite II was placed 52 feet underwater in a remote corner of beautiful Great Lameshur Bay of St. John Island in the U. S. Virgin Islands. The project’s primary mission was to gather data on operations, living conditions and interpersonal relations in cramped quarters surrounded by a hostile environment. A practical understanding of these factors was crucial to long term space missions in order to plan for optimal crew motivation, morale and efficiency. Results from the Tektite project guided strategies for future lunar and space missions.
The Habitat. The five crew members were shoehorned into cramped quarters amounting to about 500 sq. ft. The structure consisted of two cylinders each 12-1/2 feet wide and 18 feet tall with two rooms in each cylinder.
Living in a Hostile Environment. Although 52 feet underwater doesn’t seem far compared to a trip into outer space, leaving the undersea domicile and returning to the surface on a whim was an impossibility. The atmospheric pressure inside the habitat was two-and-half times that of sea level and required a special nitrogen-rich breathing mixture. If a crew member were to return to the surface without a 20.5 hour decompression process, the oxygen and nitrogen in his bloodstream would have quickly formed bubbles, causing the bends, embolism and certain death. In space an astronaut would experience similar problems if exiting a pressurized space vehicle into the vacuum of space without the proper pressurized life support system.
Kubokawa recalls that a wooden broom chillingly illustrated the destructive power of sudden depressurization. “On the first day of our mission we happened to find a broom left by the cleanup crew. Having a vacuum cleaner, we didn’t need it, so a crew member floated it out of the entry trunk. Once it reached the surface, the broom handle started to fizzle like seltzer and exploded into many fine shreds of wood.”
The Daily Routine. Existence within the hostile environment complicated many routine tasks. Supply transfers via pressure-controlled canisters consumed an entire day every week, as well as the combined efforts of the entire underwater crew and several support divers from the surface. Even something as mundane as using the “head” (toilet) posed difficulties when the commode’s machiolator (grinder) malfunctioned. The crew had to resort to various complicated methods of disposing of human waste for what felt like a very long week before the support team was able to locate and purchase a replacement part from Hong Kong.
Research Projects. In addition to their “housekeeping” duties, the crew made one to three daily underwater explorations outside the habitat. Designed to simulate the EVA (extravehicular activities) operations of future space missions, the undersea excursions enabled the crew to gather scientific data on the marine environment, including the oxygen content of sea water under pressure, movements of marine organisms, identification of previously undiscovered marine species, and the effects of pollution on coral reefs.
Order a copy of Nikkei Heritage Vol. XI, #4 - Fall 1999 to read the rest of this article.