
Watanave Hidenori is working on a project to track war damage in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion through digital maps that utilize satellite images. He talks about the power of digital tools.
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"Direct Talk"
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Our guest today is Watanave Hidenori,
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a professor at the University of Tokyo.
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He's an information design specialist
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who's created the "Satellite Images Map of Ukraine."
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Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022,
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he's been mapping out the war damage for all the world to see.
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He takes the images you won't see on the news
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and reproduces them in 3D on a digital map, which is updated daily.
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Watanave is exploring how we can use digital tools
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to keep the memories of disaster and war from fading.
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He hopes his work will help bring about peace.
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Our memory of a disaster fades over time.
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This is true for war as well as natural disasters.
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Each time a new one occurs, it overwrites our memories.
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In order to prevent this from happening,
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each generation revives memories of past wars and disasters
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using whatever method of expression will resonate with their contemporaries.
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Society continues to repeat this process.
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Watanave compiles open-source satellite images
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and 3D images captured by people on the ground
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in order to show the world the reality of what's going on in Ukraine.
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Here's a satellite image of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant,
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which is currently under Russian control.
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Watanave says this view of the location reveals many things.
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You can see damage caused by shelling on this roof,
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which is about 140 meters from the nuclear reactor.
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If Ukraine were to launch an attack and ended up causing a meltdown,
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a wide area around the plant would be contaminated.
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This is about 400 kilometers from Kyiv. It's not that far away.
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Russia claims that Ukraine has been attacking the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
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But there's no reason Ukraine would launch shells so close to this area
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or do something that might cause a fire.
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When you zoom into the image,
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we can see there are Russian army vehicles hidden,
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stationed under this bridge.
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The fact that these vehicles are positioned in such an orderly fashion
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implies the plant is under their complete control.
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If they were preparing to be attacked, they wouldn't be hiding them.
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You'd expect them to be scattered around the entire area.
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This suggests we should be skeptical of what the Russian side is claiming.
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This satellite image itself is not direct evidence,
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but it is very useful for helping us verify what is actually going on.
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Watanave has also created 3D images out of photos and footage
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captured by people on the ground using cameras and drones.
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It makes it possible to show the reality of a situation
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in a way that a satellite cannot.
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This is from the town of Bucha, which people now know because of the Bucha Massacre.
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A local artist painted sunflowers for peace
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on these cars destroyed by Russian troops.
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Sunflowers are the national flower of Ukraine.
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These are images of an elementary school in Chernihiv,
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a town that was under Russian control.
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Dozens of children, and even infants,
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were confined inside of this school for a long time.
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If you look at this hallway,
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you can see that the people were keeping track of the days after the Russians took control.
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The children were forced to live in this space for a long time
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with the fear of not knowing when they would be set free.
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In the end, the bodies of many children were discovered here.
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I have a daughter who's in kindergarten.
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I thought about how I would feel if this happened to her school,
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and I was at a total loss for words.
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This all took place in the basement of the school,
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so it doesn't show up in satellite images.
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Ukrainian civilians are rigorously documenting all of this
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because they want people to know that this place that is near and dear to them
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has been affected by war.
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They are putting their own lives on the line,
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as they're at risk of being attacked by Russian soldiers.
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And yet they're desperately documenting what's going on.
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It's because of their contributions that we can make an archive of images like this.
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Watanave searches the internet almost every day
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for images and footage that citizens have uploaded.
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After identifying the location, he publishes the images on a digital map.
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Whether it's a satellite image or 3D data,
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very rarely does it come with info that tells you the exact location
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and what direction the camera is facing.
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So all you'll know is that it was taken in Mariupol, for example.
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So what we have to do is find a location that matches the photo.
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We'll collect photos of the area taken from ground level and try to find it.
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Or we'll look at the angle of the sunlight and the shape of the shadows to figure it out.
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You have to get creative.
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The original images and 3D data are not enough
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to determine the location and positioning of buildings.
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So Watanave contacts the original posters
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and asks them where the images were taken.
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He then explores the area on a digital map, looking for similar building shapes.
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When he finds a match,
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he adjusts the angle and size of the image as he maps it to the location.
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It's a time-intensive, painstaking process.
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If it's a single building, you don't know anything about its surroundings.
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Figuring that out can take an hour or even half a day.
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I might post it to Twitter, asking if anyone knows the location.
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Sometimes someone will be able to tell me where it is.
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Other times someone will correct me and suggest that it's actually another location.
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In that sense, this project is a collective effort.
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This is the Russian cruiser Moskva,
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the flagship that led the naval attack on Ukraine.
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On April 14th, 2022,
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Russia acknowledged that Moskva had sunk,
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attributing its fate to stormy seas.
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Ukraine, however, claimed that it had sunk the ship with cruise missiles.
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It wasn't immediately clear what had been the cause.
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The sky was overcast on the day in question,
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which meant satellite images were not of much help.
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So Watanave began analyzing images
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taken by Synthetic Aperture Radar or SAR,
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which is able to see through clouds to the water's surface.
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It allowed him to find inconsistencies in Russia's story.
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I was searching through SAR data and sure enough, it had captured images of Moskva.
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This is about 190 meters long, which is the size of the warship.
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There were no other objects that size.
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There's strong evidence that this is Moskva.
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This is a photo that they say was leaked from a Russian source.
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It shows the sinking ship, taken from another ship that was right in front of it.
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The SAR has also detected it.
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Here's the smaller ship right here.
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If it were stormy conditions,
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there's no way these two ships would be so close to each other.
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Russia continues to claim that it sunk in a storm.
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But this has been exposed as a lie thanks to SAR,
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which can penetrate the clouds and capture what's happening on the sea surface.
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Watanave's fascination with digital technology began with video games,
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which became popular in the 80s as he was growing up.
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I loved the type of games that put you in an imaginary world,
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where you went on quests and got into battles on your way to an end goal.
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There were rivers and roads and even deserts.
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The idea that there was this virtual world inside the console
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and that you could go on these journeys was so thrilling to me.
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For the longest time, I wanted to be someone who designed those worlds.
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Watanave enrolled in the architecture department at a university
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in order to study spatial design.
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While in school, he also worked for a major game developer.
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He designed cities and buildings for video games.
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After graduating, he started his own video game development company.
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But success evaded him.
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My skills were useful for designing backgrounds and spaces.
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But when you're making a video game,
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you have to think about ways to get the player immersed and playing for many hours.
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And I wasn't very good at that.
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That's a fatal flaw for a game developer.
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A video game company run by someone with little interest in entertainment
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isn't going to work out.
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So my business was unprofitable. It was not a success.
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Around that time, Watanave came across a call for university lecturers,
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and began his career as a teacher specializing in digital media.
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He started a project in which he took video testimonies
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of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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and archived them on a digital map.
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Through the power of digital technology,
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he hoped to pass on their stories to future generations.
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In the near future, the generation that experienced World War II directly
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will no longer be with us.
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There are many people out there who want to keep the memory of war alive
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for future generations.
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They just don't know exactly how they can do that.
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A-bomb survivors know their time is limited.
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But in their daily lives, they're not suddenly going to find themselves in a situation
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where they have to talk about their experience.
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Through creating digital archives like these,
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I feel like I've been able to show one example of how digital technology
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can be used for the betterment of society.
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In August 2022,
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the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference was being held in New York City.
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Watanave's research lab was in town exhibiting their digital archives nearby.
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They invited atomic bomb survivors
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to talk about the state of nuclear weapons and the need for peace.
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There was one graduate student
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who was studying nuclear disarmament at an American university.
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They were watching with great interest.
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It was their first time hearing from a survivor in person.
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They told me that the experience gave them an emotional understanding
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of the need for nuclear abolition.
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I was glad to hear that.
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Humankind has repeatedly, endlessly been at war.
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Human beings themselves do not want to die in a war.
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But regardless of who instigates it, the victims are ordinary citizens.
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To me, it's important to convey just how tragic these experiences were
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in as tangible a way as possible.
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So that people feel that they don't want it to happen to them.
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Or maybe they'll feel like they don't want it to happen to their family.
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To that end, we have to make as many people as we can fed up with war.
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(Do you have any words to live by?)
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"Connect the past to the present."
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The moment we feel like the past has nothing to do with our current lives, we forget.
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That's especially true of memories of disaster.
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To help ensure that people don't forget,
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as someone who specializes in designing spaces,
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I've tried to find ways to connect the events of the past to our present reality.
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By showing how the past borders on the present,
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by showing how they're contiguous, I want to prevent wars from happening in the future.
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That's the goal of my work.