One day at the start of a deposition interpreting assignment in the US Embassy in Tokyo, an Embassy official came in and asked us to be careful, because there had been a bomb threat, and we had heard about it, right?
Right. I imagine he was just following instructions from his boss, but perhaps he didn’t realize the questions that left.
How are we to “be careful?” I asked. No meaningful response was forthcoming.
Were we to walk around looking for the bomb? Except for brief toilet breaks, people in depositions are essentially confined to the deposition room, and there didn’t seem to be any bombs in the deposition room or the toilet.
Did he mean we should be ready to run away really quickly if we heard a blast? That doesn’t sound like being careful, but more like being terrified and wanting to be able to interpret in the deposition the next day.
It turned out that we were to be herded out the Embassy shortly thereafter and made to wait outside for about 45 minutes, standing around with the huddled masses yearning to breathe free with the visa they were applying for—such people form the core clientele of the Embassy—until the Embassy people were convinced that it was a hoax.