This report briefly discusses the March 11, 2001 earthquake off the east coast of Honshu, Japan's largest island. The earthquake caused an automatic shutdown of eleven of Japan's fifty-five operating nuclear power plants, though the plants closest to the earthquake's epicenter, Fukushima and Onagawa, were damaged by the earthquake and resulting tsunami. This report also discusses efforts by the United States and other countries to provide assistance to Japan to deal with the nuclear crisis.

Interview with Rebecca H. Bishop, a USMC Iraq War veteran from Los Angeles, California. Bishop discusses choosing to become a Marine Corps officer, attending the Naval Academy, being a female in the Corps, experiences and combat in Iraq in 2005-06, life as a Marine parent, attending Army Airborne School, the Advanced Degree Program and graduate school, leadership and decision making, the relationship between enlisted and officers, women in combat, plans for the future, and some general reflections. An appendix includes a short chronology of Bishop's military career.