Longevity, Etc

     Today the Discovery Health Channel ran a program on the process of aging and factors that prolong life.   Prominent in the program were Okinawans, the inhabitants of the tropical island near China and Taiwan that, however, belongs to the Japanese, though less than 200 years ago it didn't.
     I have been been very interested in Okinawa for many years.   Thanks to the Air Force, I was stationed there in 1954.   I was only there for seven months and nothing of an especially striking nature happened, yet the place made an impression on me that has lasted to this very day, and in fact  I nearly re-enlisted just so  I could go back there.   Surely going to the Airmen's Club and getting soused on Whiskey Sours every night while ogling the cute little Okinawan waitresses couldn't have been the cause of all that, could it?
     Possibly!   Because that period on Okinawa was by far the most carefree period of my entire life.   I truly didn't have a worry in the world.
     The relaxed air must be endemic to that island.   It was one of the reasons that the Health Channel program gave for the fact that Okinawans tend to live longer than any other Japanese, and they have quite a large number of centenarians. 
     These are the ones who survived the truly terrible experience of being sandwiched by the American and Japanese forces in a very small space, and whose contemporaries and family members consequently died by the tens of thousands during the three months of ferocious fighting that followed the American landing, on April Fool's Day, 1945, which was also Easter Sunday that year -- the last great battle of the Pacific Campaign of WW2.
     Other factors for the greater longevity of today's Okinawans besides that kind of sheer luck in warfare and their relaxed lifestyle include getting plenty of exercise and eating small amounts of nutritious food.
     The program showed some Okinawan ladies fixing a stew that included fish cakes, tofu ...and pigsfeet.
     Over here pigsfeet are regarded as being practically pure, jellied cholesterol, but there it was.   I have absolutely no use for tofu or bean curd, but I love pigsfeet, though I have only had them to eat on the average of once every 10 years.   The idea of that stew greatly intrigues me, and I will have to look up the recipe on the Internet. 
     I have always been interested in what a person who becomes a centenarian makes of it, especially how it happened and whether they think it's a great accomplishment.
     On another TV program, containing the evening news of a long time ago, I saw a brash, young newscaster ask a woman how she had managed to reach age 100.
      I had heard other centenarians, grateful at being asked, give all sorts of answers to this question, most of them having to do with peace of mind and their diet.
       I loved this woman's answer, because, by comparison, it was such a towering example of bluntness, simplicity, and truth.
       "I don't know," she said.