Get rid of the cockroaches and all problems go away".
She described how the place was infested with rats and cockroaches, inmates were piled on top of one another, suicidal prisoners were left in chains (drinking disinfectant was one of the most common ways to try to kill yourself).
While the primary targets of the Japanese, like the Norwegians, are minke whales, so plentiful that they call them the cockroaches of the sea, (there may be up to 1.5 million minkes in the oceans), bowheads are rare, and with extraordinary lifetimes of up to 300 years, making them the longest living mammals.
Some cockroaches, though, do it all the time.Rebeca Rosengaus of Northeastern University, in Boston, thinks she knows why.
Which is where the termite connection comes in.Termites, a specialised group of social cockroaches, are one of entomology's puzzles.
It described a building housing outpatients: "Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses".
"They put a foot on the ground and the cockroaches start climbing over it," says Cristina Botella, who led the researchers.
His views, which are expressed remarkably like those of a Japan fisheries official, seem to imply that such whales are great cockroaches that need to be eradicated.On intelligence, I would like to set the daimyo straight.
(In wonderfully inflammatory language, one Japanese bureaucrat has called minkes the "cockroaches of the sea").
"The same thing you do about cockroaches or insects," he replied.
It not only poisoned the general atmosphere but urged on the killers, with phrases like "cutting the tall trees" and "killing the cockroaches".In an era of drones and spy satellites, it may seem odd that crude simple radio transmitters can still make huge mischief.
