(B) The Case of Mrs. Tsukahashi – Memories of Failed Attempts to see the Moonstone
Mrs. Tsukahashi was 44 years old at the time of her visit to Expo 70. She visited Expo only once
with her husband, her son 14 years and daughter 12 years. In the early stages of the interview
Mrs. Tsukahashi describes the excitement in the media about Expo and how all the newspapers
were running stories and portrayed information on the Exposition. She describes vividly her
memories of the crowds at Expo and having to line-up and wait a long time just to enter the
grounds. Her most salient memory of the event centered on considerable frustration and
disappointment in not being able to see the Moonstone in the US Pavilion.
I took my children to the Expo, my oldest child has a cold at the time. We were all looking
forward to going. On the day we went, there were so many people! Because of the long
lines while we were waiting we were overwhelmed by all the people. That was the negative
thing of the day. But so was everyone else [having to suffer the long line ups], and finally we
could get in [to the expo site]. Next we wanted to go to such places as the American
pavilion but with so many many people we said to ourselves where should we go and what
should we do? We said to ourselves, if we go to the American pavilion we can see the
moonstone - that’s the reason we were looking forward to going to the expo, but because of
Memories of Expo 70: Insights on Visitors’ Experiences and the Formation of Vivid Long-Term Memories - Dr David Anderson 15
the people and the time to wait we couldn’t get in, that was too bad. So, we went to the next
site and it was the same thing, and on and on. So, after giving up we decided to go to a
park-area. So the children were asking to go into some pavilions. But, we had already
tried to go into the American pavilion and one other building and waited for times such as 1
hour and it was beginning to get late in our day. But, since we were in the shade of the park
we went ahead and had lunch which we brought with us. We were exposed to a lot of
information and hype in the media and press, such as the theme song, about the expo and I
often talked to the children about going to the expo. We really didn’t get to do or see much
at the expo, and we didn’t get to see the moonstone, so we went home just having gone to
the expo. It would have been better to ask someone which pavilion we should devote
ourselves to [see]… I had made a promise to them [the children] that we would go again but
it ended up that there just wasn’t a chance. I had made a promise that would irritate me for
sometime. Of course many people told us that it was going to be hot and crowded but we did
listen or heed them.
Mrs. Tsukahashi describes in great detail the episodic detail of the day, pre-planned intentions of
going to expo to see the Moonstone, of the line ups to get in, the hopelessness of the line up for
the US pavilion, her considerable disappointment in not being able to see the Moonstone, and her
failed promise to her children. Even in the course of the interview Mrs. Tsukahashi relives the
disappointment of this frustrated plan to see the Moonstone evidenced in both her body language
and verbal accounts. In a real way she expressed a sense of guilt and remorse, which she still
lives with today.
We theorize that the memory vividness of Mrs. Tsukahashi recollection of this episode is
accounted for in several ways. First, Mrs. Tsukahashi memories of her day at Expo are themed
by strong negative affect - negative experiences are strongly encoded. Second, Mrs. Tsukahashi
clearly had a very strong expectation of all the wonder of seeing the Moonstone that she and her
family were going to experience at expo, having been exposed to the media which promoted at
Expo. In this instance it is clear that this pre-planned expectation (agenda) was clearly dashed
and frustrated, and resulted in considerable disappointment (negative affect) that results in strong
encoding of the memory and results in a highly memorable episode. Third, is the issue of guilt,
regret and irritation about the fact that she promises to take her children back to expo to see the
things they had hoped to see in their original agenda. We speculate that this regret has been the
source of unresolved conflict over the years, to which Mrs. Tsukahashi has reflected over and
over again. In this sense, she has rehearsed the event in an attempt to resolve the conflict or
guilt, as evidenced by the fact that she laments that she should have asked for advice about which
pavilions to visit. Thus, rehearsal has also contributed to a strongly encoded memory (Cohen,
1989)