Indie Alaska

When you watch the aurora it's usually quietly sitting in the sky, but becomes suddenly very bright and the active can cover the whole sky in 5 minutes.

Still fascinates me.

My name is Syun-ichi akasofu I study the Aurora.

When you see the aurora in Fairbanks, gas from the sun hitting the earth around and that caused the gigantic electrical discharge that surrounds the earth.

When you look down and see earth way above you can see the ring around the North Pole.

And if you're standing in one location, you can see only this much.

It's a very large scale phenomenon I think, Dr. Akasofu was driven to deal with the Auroras, but beyond his expertise in that academic in that very narrow field, he always goes a little bit beyond what is expected.

He had the opportunity to bring visitors to Fairbanks and connecting that with science, putting Fairbanks on the map in a way.

I was a born in the small town in Central Highland of Japan.

My mother, had a very favorite song and it started, something like should I go ahead or go back to Japan I'm singing under the aurora That's the first time I heard of the aurora.

Those days, people didn't know exactly what the auroras were.

I was really curious.

I went to Library and found a scientific paper written by Sydney Chapman, but I tried to read it It was so difficult all the mathematics.

Sydney Chapman was probably one of the foremost mathematicians working in or esoteric sciences in England, and for many years he was an advisor to the Geophysical Institute here in Fairbanks during the winter months because he loved it here for the Aurora Research.

Well, Dr. Akasofu was very much interested in some of the things that they had in common.

So he wrote a letter to Sydney Chapman and Chapman responded.

He said, If you want to understand those questions, come to Alaska and the work under me.

He like Akasofu acknowledged that there were young people who had questions and what he wanted to do was to help this young person.

Who wrote him from Japan and his offer was, Why don't you come to Fairbanks?

We'll figure it out so that maybe they could take things to another level.

That's the way my Alaskan life began.

Over time, he was fascinated with the auroras and the fact that he would write these very simple books, explaining what your words were and how much time he spent getting Japan Airlines to create those special tours from Japan to Fairbanks.

And then he would meet these tourists as they would come and welcome them and talk to them so that they could understand what it was that they were seeing.

People in the visitor industry saw that that was really something very important.

And so it's become pretty much an Arctic phenomenon now.

You go to Rovaniemi, you go to places in Canada, and there are charter flights now coming just to see the works.

I became the director of the Geophysical Institute during this period.

I thought we needed a place young people come to from different countries and work together.

He saw a need for an institute that emphasizes on Arctic research.

And also at the time, the Geophysical Institute was running out of space to be able to house the researchers.

Not many people were on his side in the funding was not there.

He had to go to D.C. a lot and even with that appointment he would go and just wait maybe for a ten minute appointment.

He wait all morning just to get a chance to see Ted Stevens.

I can only imagine what it was like when you're working outside your own bureaucracy and you're working between governments and you're working with international currency issues and you're trying to find a way to bring all of those bits and pieces of economics, of scientific research, of nationalism, of foreign exchange and a vision to put something together that can unify those.

It took ten years to build this.

International Arctic Research Center is established to study climate change because one nation cannot do it alone.

And the real value of that is just starting to come now, because we get researchers from all over the world who are here.

It's that combination of scholars, of researchers.

And that's the key, is when you can broaden your focus to show that everyone has a common goal.

It's now become more and more important in many ways.

And the hopfully this institute can help.