[00:00.00]From VOA Learning English,
[00:02.69]this is the Agriculture Report in Special English.
[00:07.15]Last Friday was the anniversary of the Japanese
[00:11.16]attack on the American naval base
[00:13.72]at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.
[00:19.78]The surprise attack killed 2,400 Americans
[00:24.19]and pushed the United States into World War Two.
[00:28.86]The following year, the government ordered
[00:32.38]more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry
[00:36.89]into 10 camps to live during the war.
[00:40.89]Gordon Sato was born in Los Angeles and was a teenager
[00:46.58]at the beginning of the war.
[00:48.59]He and his Japanese-American family were forced
[00:52.96]to live in the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California.
[00:58.33]He learned to make corn grow in the dry, dusty soil.
[01:03.30]He later became a cell biologist.
[01:07.02]He earned many honors for his research.
[01:10.37]But he never forgot his experience in the camp.
[01:14.88]In 1985 he went to Eritrea for the first time.
[01:20.26]He wanted to see what he could do to help the people
[01:24.67]in their struggle for independence from Ethiopia.
[01:28.33]He noticed that camels were eating
[01:31.39]the leaves of mangrove trees growing along the coast.
[01:35.60]He planted more mangroves
[01:37.95]so they could be used to feed livestock.
[01:41.58]But at first all the new trees died.
[01:45.04]Then Gordon Sato observed that mangrove trees only grew naturally
[01:50.66]where there was fresh water some of the time.
[01:54.18]The fresh water provided minerals that salt water lacked.
[01:59.29]"I went to the area where I planted trees before and they all died,
[02:03.71]and planted a few thousand more
[02:08.83]by providing nitrogen, phosphorous and iron.
[02:11.95]They all grew beautifully
[02:14.46]and they've been growing for over 10 years.
[02:17.62]They are huge trees now."
[02:19.47]Gordon Sato found a way to provide these minerals
[02:23.23]by putting nitrogen, phosphorous and iron
[02:26.58]into small plastic bags at the base of each tree.
[02:31.10]Each plastic bag had a tiny hole that was very carefully sized.
[02:36.93]The women in the village of Hargigo
[02:40.48]started to feed the leaves of the mangroves
[02:43.69]to their sheep and goats.
[02:46.05]But the animals were not producing enough milk for their babies.
[02:50.92]Gordon Sato asked the villagers to grind the remains of fish
[02:56.43]they had eaten and spread this fish paste on the leaves.
[03:00.98]This provided protein for the sheep and goats
[03:05.00]so they could produce more milk.
[03:08.17]Gordon Sato called his work in Eritrea the Manzanar Project
[03:13.12]to honor the memory of the Japanese-Americans in the relocation camp.
[03:19.05]Today there are more than one million mangrove trees around the village.
[03:24.27]Gordon Sato has also started a large garden in Mauritania
[03:28.92]to grow more mangrove trees.
[03:31.63]December 17th will be his 85th birthday,
[03:36.04]and he is always looking for new projects and new ways to pay for them.
[03:41.55]"You don't have to be brilliant to do useful work.
[03:46.20]All you have to have is moderate intelligence and determination,
[03:51.98]and you can make a contribution to this world."