Cross-cultural communication （165）　

165) Memories of the Carter Administration Revived by the News of His Death
At the end of 2024, news broke of the death of former US President Jimmy Carter. When I arrived in the United States in 1980 and began my residency at a hospital in Brooklyn, Carter was president. He had been governor of Georgia before becoming president, was relatively unknown, and had no notable achievements during his presidency. In fact, during his presidency, the U.S. Embassy in Iran was attacked during the Iranian Revolution, and embassy staff were taken hostage?an unprecedented event. The military operation to rescue the hostages ended in failure, causing Carter's popularity to plummet. In 1981, Ronald Reagan won a landslide victory and replaced Carter as president. I still remember how I followed the news of the presidential transition from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party with great interest, even during my busy life as a resident physician.

Now, despite the Iran hostage crisis, which was a major negative factor in former President Carter's political career, there was one achievement that stands out. It was the successful rescue of six U.S. embassy staff members who escaped on the first day of the hostage crisis and fled to the Canadian ambassador's residence. This operation was devised by CIA agents specializing in rescuing compatriots abroad. It was made into a movie in 2012, which I watched in theaters and was deeply moved by. A few years later, I watched it again on a video streaming service, and recently, feeling nostalgic, I watched it for the third time on Amazon Prime. The title is “Argo.” It was a high-stakes operation where failure meant certain death for all involved. The plan involved disguising a Canadian science fiction film crew, navigating numerous obstacles, and narrowly escaping on a Swiss Air flight. It's an almost entirely non-fiction film that I highly recommend. Please give it a watch.

Incidentally, it also reminded me of the financial situation in the United States in the early 1980s. At the time, I was doing a residency on a government scholarship from the Ministry of Health and Welfare. As a result, I was quite well-off financially, especially in the first year, when I had to do on-call every three days, so I barely had any opportunities to spend money, and my bank account balance kept growing. However, the rate at which it grew was somehow beyond my imagination. No wonder?it was due to the inflation-fighting measures implemented as part of President Reagan's economic policy (known as “Reaganomics”), which had replaced President Carter's administration, resulting in interest rates reaching an unprecedented high of 8?10%.

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