American Scholars of Japan in WWII

[Ross Bender]

Donald Keene and William Theodore de Bary famously served in American Navy intelligence during World War II. I know there were many other great American scholars of Japan in that generation who also served in the US (and perhaps British) military services, and I am trying to compile a list. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Ross Bender

http://independent.academia.edu/RossBender

[Luke Roberts]

Marius Jansen.

He once told me a great story of how being sent from Harvard to boot camp in Georgia during the war, he expected to be assigned to German intelligence because of his skill in German, Dutch birth and undergraduate training in European history.  But when boot camp was done and they all loaded on the train a seargant came in and said "You are all going to be intelligence for Asia.  Japan or China?" and they had to raise hands.

Best, Luke

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[Anthony Chambers]

Ed Seidensticker.

--

[Gouranga Charan Pradhan]

Edwin Oldfather Reischauer (1910-1990) served the U.S. Army Intelligence Service during the 2nd World War and was believed to have prevented an attack on Kyoto. But this claim was later proved wrong by Reischauer himself.

Warm Regards
Gouranga

http://du-in.academia.edu/GourangaCharanPradhan

--

[Howell, David]

Thomas C. Smith

[Leila Wice]

Ross,
Please see Otis Cary's _From A Ruined Empire: Letters- Japan, China, Korea 1945-46_ (Kodansha, 1984).
Leila

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Otis-Cary-Japan-expert-WWII-vet-2537175.php

[Quinn, Charles]

Robert H. Brower, Edward G. Seidensticker.

---

From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Ross Bender [rosslyn...@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 10:33 PM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII

Donald Keene and William Theodore de Bary famously served in American Navy intelligence during World War II. I know there were many other great American scholars of Japan in that generation who also served in the US (and perhaps British) military services, and I am trying to compile a list. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Ross Bender

http://independent.academia.edu/RossBender

[M. Adolphson]

Probably less known than those mentioned, Sidney Brown was selected to be part of the occupation forces, and was sent to study at U of Colorado in Boulder, where I believe one of main Japanese training centers was placed. Sid was never actually sent to Japan but his studies became the first step in his scholarly career. He taught at Oklahoma State and at Oklahoma his whole life.

Mickey

[Michael Pye]

Among British Japanologists who first learned Japanese for British
Intelligence were:
Carmen Blacker
Charles Henry Dunn
Patrick O'Neill.
I think that's well known.
Also Geoffrey Bownas, I believe (but my memory may be wrong there).
Another who similarly learned Japanese for message deciphering in
war-time was Maurice Wiles, but he became a theologian specialising in
Patristics and Doctrine.

Michael Pye

Zitat von Leila Wice <le...@wice.net>:

With all best wishes, Michael Pye
...............................................................
Professor (em.) of the Study of Religions, University of Marburg
Research Associate in Buddhist Studies, Otani University, Kyoto
...............................................................
For collected essays on method and theory, with case studies, see:
Strategies in the Study of Religions (2013):
http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/184080
http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/184339
Or for this and other work see profile on <academia.edu>

[Travis Seifman]

Ah, right. Sorry. I'm afraid the only details I have on Butler-sensei's life & career are from this "In Memoriam" newsletter put out by the IUC: https://www.stanford.edu/dept/IUC/cgi-bin/media-spotlight/newsletter-docs/IUCButler.Tribute.fall.2010.pdf

An abbreviated CV is on the last page. It tells us he was U.S. Navy, computer and radar technician, 1950-1954. I remember him telling us he believed he was one of only a very few white men in America at that time who spoke Japanese... I imagine that other IUC students might remember more of his stories, but I'm afraid I do not.

Also, Robert Karl Reischauer did not serve in the military, so I apologize for bringing him in here, but, as he was killed in Shanghai in 1937, and is described by his brother Edwin O. Reischauer as "the first American casualty in World War II," he has a particular connection to the war, and so I thought I'd mention him.

Yoroshiku,
Travis

[Diego Pellecchia]

Theatre scholars Faubion Bowers and Earle Ernst were Kabuki censors during the occupation.

All best,

Diego Pellecchia

[Tucker, John]

Mikiso Hane --- a very different kind of story here. The following is lifted from his memorial page at Knox:

http://departments.knox.edu/newsarchive/news_events/2003/x6196.html

Hane was born in 1922 in Hollister, California, to Japanese immigrant parents and lived there until the age of ten, when his parents sent him to Japan, where he lived with an uncle and attended school in Hiroshima.

Hane returned to the United States in 1940, and following the outbreak of war with Japan in 1941, he was interned by the United States government in a camp in Arizona from May 1942 until October 1943.

After 18 months in the internment camp, Hane applied for a position teaching Japanese at a program operated by the U.S. Army at Yale University.  Following the war he earned college degrees at Yale — a bachelor's degree in 1952, a master's degree in 1953, and a doctoral degree in 1957 -- paying his own way through college by teaching Japanese and setting type for an Asian studies journal.

John A. Tucker, PhD | Professor | Department of History | Brewster A-317 | East Carolina University | Greenville, NC 27858 | 252.328.1028 | Tuckerjo@ecu.edu

---

From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Diego Pellecchia [diego.pe...@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 11:39 PM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII

[JAE-HO SHIN]

E. Herbert Norman?

Being a Canadian, he worked for Canada during the war and later for GHQ in Tokyo.

[Unger, James]

Jack Seward was at Boulder, I believe.  Robert King Hall was in the Navy.  In England, Edwin McClellan was in the RAF.  Oliver Statler and (I think) Donald Richie were in the Occupation forces---I don't know about pre-1945.

---

From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Ross Bender [rosslyn...@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 10:32 PM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII

Donald Keene and William Theodore de Bary famously served in American Navy intelligence during World War II. I know there were many other great American scholars of Japan in that generation who also served in the US (and perhaps British) military services, and I am trying to compile a list. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Ross Bender

http://independent.academia.edu/RossBender

[Andrew Gerstle]

William Beasley studied Japanese in the US during the War. There is a book on the less well-known Japanese language programme at SOAS during the war.

	Ōba, Sadao
TITLE	The 'Japanese' war : London University's WWII secret teaching programme and the experts sent to help beat Japan / Sadao Oba, translated by Anne Kaneko

--

Andrew Gerstle
Head of Department of Japan and Korea
SOAS
University of London
Russell Sq
London WC1H 0XG  UK

Tel: 020 7898 4207
Fax: 020 7898 4009

[Mark Schumacher]

Dear Ross-san

Archaeologist and art historian Langdon Warner (1881–1955) served as an
advisor for
the U.S. Army's Monuments, Fine Arts and Archievs Section (MFAA) in Japan.

mark in kamakrua

[Travis Seifman]

Robert K. Sakai was interned in Poston AZ, but volunteered in the Military Intelligence Service from 1943, and was discharged from the Army in 1947.

John Whitney Hall served in naval intelligence during the war.

[Mark Schumacher]

John Rosenfield (Ebby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of East Aisan Art, Emeritus, Harvard University).
Rosenfield served with the U.S. Army in WWII, learned Thai at an army language school, and was stationed
in India and Southeast Asia. He was recalled to service in 1950 and sent to Japan and Korea.

[B.M. Bodart-Bailey]

Grant Kohn Goodman. The blurb for his book <<America's Japan: The First Year 1945-1946>> (Fordham U. Press 2005) says

 

"One of the few non-Japanese Americans trained to read, write, and speak Japanese, Princeton undergraduate Grant Goodman had a privileged position during World War II. As an Army lieutenant, Goodman served in the Philippines at the close of the war and in Tokyo as an intelligence officer on General Douglas MacArthur's staff. Goodman translated thousands of letters, interviews, and other documents by Japanese citizens of all kinds, and came to know, as few Americans could, the hearts and mindsof a defeated people as they moved slowly to democracy."

 

Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey.

[Peter Kornicki]

Two other British scholar to be included in the list are Eric Ceadel and Douglas Mills, both of whom served as intelligence officers.

Mills, who wrote A collection of tales from Uji; a study and translation of Uji shūi monogatari (1970), did the wartime course at SOAS and was then employed as a translator and teacher on the course, remaining in London. See his A memoir in Richard Bowring, ed., Fifty years of Japanese at Camrbridge, 1948-98: a chronicle with reminiscences (http://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/deas/japanese/fifty_years.pdf), p. 57ff.

Ceadel, whose work is now largely forgotten, who hired Donald Keene in his first university teaching job at Cambridge and who later became head of the University Library at Cambridge, was a classicist with three articles under his belt when he was called up to learn Japanese. Incredibly, his progress and commitment were such that after six months (yes, just SIX months!) he was made an instructor. He compiled a grammar and an index of kanji which were used throughout the British army by instructors and translators and in 1948 he became the first person to teach Japanese at Cambridge. Biographies of him and other individuals who studied Japanese during the war will be found in the series Britain and Japan: biographical portraits, edited by Ian Nish, then James Hoare and more recently by Sir Hugh Cortazzi.

Peter Kornicki

[aniu perez]

British historian Charles R. Boxer, wounded in Hong Kong and in 1941 and then prisioner in Japan up to 1945, whose books are essential for the history of Christianity in early modern Japan.

Andres Perez

[Patrick Reinhart Schwemmer]

Boxer, seconded. "The Christian Century" is not reliable as a source of precise information, but in addition to outlining some interesting topics not found elsewhere, it ends with a fascinating postscript in which Boxer situates his POW experience as a "reenactment" (397) of that of the Japanese Christians, under the aegis of an unchanging Japanese essence which always rejects benevolent, enlightened European ideas in favor of "wickedness" (397) and "oriental despotism" (150).

Joseph Yamagiwa, the Japanese American who escaped the internment camps by teaching the language to most of the WW2 white Japanologists, is also a fascinating figure.

--
ⓟ

Oct 15, 2013 15:24、aniu perez <aniu...@gmail.com> のメッセージ:

[James McMullen]

Charles D. Sheldon (American; Ph.D. from University of California) was in charge of translation, I think, for the defence in the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. I don't know whether he enlisted during the war itself. He was more or less of the same age as Carmen Blacker, Eric Ceadel. He was Lecturer in Japanese at Cambridge from 1959 and is best known for his book on the rise of the merchant class in the Tokugawa period. He died in England.

James McMullen
________________________________________
From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Patrick Reinhart Schwemmer [patricks...@gmail.com]
Sent: 15 October 2013 07:53
To: pm...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII

Boxer, seconded. "The Christian Century" is not reliable as a source of precise information, but in addition to outlining some interesting topics not found elsewhere, it ends with a fascinating postscript in which Boxer situates his POW experience as a "reenactment" (397) of that of the Japanese Christians, under the aegis of an unchanging Japanese essence which always rejects benevolent, enlightened European ideas in favor of "wickedness" (397) and "oriental despotism" (150).

Joseph Yamagiwa, the Japanese American who escaped the internment camps by teaching the language to most of the WW2 white Japanologists, is also a fascinating figure.

--
ⓟ

Oct 15, 2013 15:24、aniu perez <aniu...@gmail.com<mailto:aniu...@gmail.com>> のメッセージ:

British historian Charles R. Boxer, wounded in Hong Kong and in 1941 and then prisioner in Japan up to 1945, whose books are essential for the history of Christianity in early modern Japan.

Andres Perez

On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 3:17 PM, Peter Kornicki <pk...@cam.ac.uk<mailto:pk...@cam.ac.uk>> wrote:
Two other British scholar to be included in the list are Eric Ceadel and Douglas Mills, both of whom served as intelligence officers.

Mills, who wrote A collection of tales from Uji; a study and translation of Uji shūi monogatari (1970), did the wartime course at SOAS and was then employed as a translator and teacher on the course, remaining in London. See his A memoir in Richard Bowring, ed., Fifty years of Japanese at Camrbridge, 1948-98: a chronicle with reminiscences (http://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/deas/japanese/fifty_years.pdf), p. 57ff.

Ceadel, whose work is now largely forgotten, who hired Donald Keene in his first university teaching job at Cambridge and who later became head of the University Library at Cambridge, was a classicist with three articles under his belt when he was called up to learn Japanese. Incredibly, his progress and commitment were such that after six months (yes, just SIX months!) he was made an instructor. He compiled a grammar and an index of kanji which were used throughout the British army by instructors and translators and in 1948 he became the first person to teach Japanese at Cambridge. Biographies of him and other individuals who studied Japanese during the war will be found in the series Britain and Japan: biographical portraits, edited by Ian Nish, then James Hoare and more recently by Sir Hugh Cortazzi.

Peter Kornicki



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[Barbara Brennan]

Letters amongst several of the US Naval intelligence officers who were isubsequently active in the 

Occupation are published 

Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S™ III, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone

-------- Original message --------
From: Mark Schumacher <m...@onmarkproductions.com>
Date: 2013/10/15 01:37 (GMT-05:00)
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII

John Rosenfield (Ebby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of East Aisan Art, Emeritus, Harvard University).
Rosenfield served with the U.S. Army in WWII, learned Thai at an army language school, and was stationed
in India and Southeast Asia. He was recalled to service in 1950 and sent to Japan and Korea.

From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Ross Bender [rosslyn...@gmail.com]

Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 10:32 PM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII

Donald Keene and William Theodore de Bary famously served in American Navy intelligence during World War II. I know there were many other great American scholars of Japan in that generation who also served in the US (and perhaps British) military services, and I am trying to compile a list. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Ross Bender

http://independent.academia.edu/RossBender

--
PMJS is a scholarly forum.
 

[Barbara Brennan]

The correspondence edited by Otis Cary for the 1984 Kodansha compilation may be the same as that among Keene , de Bary, Cary and others previously published as War Wasted Asia , but you might check that as well.  Fascinating reading in any case.

Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S™ III, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone

-------- Original message --------
From: Leila Wice <le...@wice.net>
Date: 2013/10/14 23:11 (GMT-05:00)
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII

Ross,
Please see Otis Cary's _From A Ruined Empire: Letters- Japan, China, Korea 1945-46_ (Kodansha, 1984).
Leila

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Otis-Cary-Japan-expert-WWII-vet-2537175.php

On Oct 14, 2013, at 7:32 PM, Ross Bender <rosslyn...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Donald Keene and William Theodore de Bary famously served in American Navy intelligence during World War II. I know there were many other great American scholars of Japan in that generation who also served in the US (and perhaps British) military services, and I am trying to compile a list. Any suggestions would be welcome.
>
> Ross Bender
> http://independent.academia.edu/RossBender
>
> --
> PMJS is a scholarly forum.
> 

[Unger, James]

Herbert Passin (see obit in NYT 9 March 2003).

---

From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Ross Bender [rosslyn...@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 10:32 PM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com

Subject: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII

Donald Keene and William Theodore de Bary famously served in American Navy intelligence during World War II. I know there were many other great American scholars of Japan in that generation who also served in the US (and perhaps British) military services, and I am trying to compile a list. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Ross Bender

http://independent.academia.edu/RossBender

[Amanda Stinchecum]

Philip Yampolsky, scholar of Zen Buddhism and director of Columbia's East Asian Library, served in the Navy.  I can't remember the details, but Donald Keene probably would have further information.

Amanda

[Philip Brown]

Robert K. Hall, Jr., followed in his father's footsteps as a geographer and was involved in the Strategic Bombing Survey as I recall.  Professor of History at the University of Rochester and instrumental in establishing Japanese studies there.

Phil Brown

Philip C. Brown

[Sharon Domier]

UMass is proud to claim Jack Maki, political scientist and one of the
founding members of the Asian Studies program at UMass. Jack was
another one who was interned and served in the Occupation force -
working on the Japanese constitution.

http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/umarmot/maki-john-m-john-mcgilvrey-1909/

[Adam L. Kern]

Howard S. Hibbett.

I believe he suspended his undergraduate education at Harvard College to serve as a code breaker for several years. He is still sworn to secrecy...

AK

On 10/14/13 9:32 PM, Ross Bender wrote:

Donald Keene and William Theodore de Bary famously served in American Navy intelligence during World War II. I know there were many other great American scholars of Japan in that generation who also served in the US (and perhaps British) military services, and I am trying to compile a list. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Ross Bender

http://independent.academia.edu/RossBender

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_____________________________________

Adam L. Kern
Associate Professor
Japanese Literature & Visual Culture

East Asian Languages & Literature
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Van Hise Hall, Room 1108
1220 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706 USA

Tel: 608.262.8731
http://eall.wisc.edu
alk...@wisc.edu

Office hours:
T 9:30-10:30 by appointment and R 10:15-11:00

Please address personal messages to:
adam...@gmail.com
_____________________________________

[Chris Kern]

How about Bernard Bloch and Eleanor Harz Jorden?  I saw a copy of Jorden and Bloch's 40's textbook "Spoken Japanese"; it contains lessons on talking about your military experience, and assumes you will be working with a native speaker who doesn't know English.  So hand signals are provided to communicate classroom instructions.  Despite that, you can see that the textbook is Beginning Japanese and Japanese: The Spoken Language in embryo.

-Chris

[Kristina Troost, Ph.D.]

Robert A. Scalapino (from Wikipedia)

Robert Anthony Scalapino (19 October 1919 – 1 November 2011) (Chinese name: 施伯樂) was an American political scientist particularly involved in East Asian studies. He was one of the founders and first chairman of the National Committee on United States – China Relations. Together with his co-author Chong-Sik Lee, he won the 1974 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs as awarded by the American Political Science Association. Scalapino's daughters include the renowned artist Diane Sophia and the poet Leslie Scalapino (1944–2010).^[1]

Scalapino was born to Anthony and Beulah Stephenson Scalapino in Leavenworth, Kansas. In 1940, he completed his bachelor's degree at Santa Barbara College (now theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara) where he was student body president in his last year.^[2] He married Ida Mae Jessen, the next year on 23 August 1941. Over time they had three children: Leslie, Diane, and Lynne.^[1] Scalapino received his master's degree in 1943 and his doctorate in 1948, both from Harvard. During World War II he served in U.S. Naval Intelligence from 1943 to 1946, where he studied Japanese.^[2][3] He reached the rank of lieutenant junior grade.

 

Howard Hibbett （b. 1920）began his studies of Japanese as a sophomore at Harvard College 1942 before working as a language specialist for the US Army in 1942-46.

Also the International House of Japan has published a series of memoir-like essays about many of the people mentioned. I don’t remember if they were written by or about people like Seidensticker, Hibbett and others.

Kris

[Cynthea Bogel]

Block and Jorden are discussed in the section on Spoken Language Theory in _Theory Groups and the Study of Language in North America: A Social History_, by Stephen Murray, 1994.

Cynthea J. Bogel
Kyushu University

[Kristina Troost, Ph.D.]

Dan Fenno Henderson (1921 - March 14, 2001) was a university professor who established the Asian law program at the University of Washington. (again complements of Wikipedia)
Henderson was born in 1921 in Chelan, Washington.[1] He attended Whitman College in Walla Walla. He graduated in 1944 as Phi Beta Kappa. He was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was given a choice on whether to learn Chinese or Japanese; he chose to learn Japanese.[2] He attended the U.S. Army Japanese Language School, located at the University of Michigan. At the university he received a bachelor of arts degree in Oriental Studies in 1945. By the time he arrived in Japan, World War II had ended.[3] Under Douglas MacArthur he became the head of censorship of the Army force occupying Hokkaido.

-----Original Message-----
From: pm...@googlegroups.com [mailto:pm...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Cynthea Bogel
Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2013 10:22 AM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII

[Matthieu Felt]

In Political Science, James W. Morley and Robert S. Schwantes both served in the U.S Navy.

[Carl Freire]

I don't believe Donald Shively has been mentioned yet. He was a
language office with the Marine Corps in the closing years of the war.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/08/17_shively.shtml

[Danielle Rocheleau Salaz]

Please see the below message, which I am forwarding on behalf of David Hays of the University of Colorado Libraries.

-- 

Danielle Rocheleau Salaz

Assistant Director

Center for Asian Studies

University of Colorado Boulder

From: David M Hays <David...@Colorado.EDU>

 

Several of the men mentioned (Keene, Cary, Sheldon, deBary) were not only in Naval Intelligence during World War II, they were also among the 1650 attendees and graduates of the US Navy Japanese/Oriental Language School, located by turns in Tokyo [1910-1940], Harvard University [1941-42], University of California, Berkeley [1941-42], the University of Colorado [1942-1946], and Oklahoma A&M [1945-1946].  Since the Navy chose Phi Beta Kappas and people with graduate degrees, I suppose it should not be a surprise that the roll of the school reads like a who's who in academia, intelligence and diplomacy.

I have been directing the US Navy Japanese/Oriental Language School Archival Project  http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/archives/collections/jlsp/index.htm, at the Archives, University of Colorado Boulder Libraries, for the past 13 years. I am attaching some documents I put together regarding that postwar legacy. I am even working on a bibliography of what the attendees of the school produced regarding Asia and the Pacific.

My list does not include those who graduated or attended the US Army Japanese Language School, or those who were in intelligence in both services, but who did not specialize in languages.

Respectfully, David M. Hays, Archivist

David M. Hays

Archives

University of Colorado Boulder Libraries

184 UCB

Boulder, CO  80309-0184

Office: (303) 492-7242

Fax: (303) 492-3960

[Philip Brown]

I believe that Frank O. Miller, a political scientist (College of Wooster) and biographer of Minobe Tatsukichi was also a product of the military foreign language program.  (He also knew Russian.)

PCBrown

Philip C. Brown

On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 9:41 AM, Adam L. Kern <alk...@wisc.edu> wrote:

[Kristina Buhrman]

I have no specific names to add, but I do know Roger Dingman, emeritus professor of history at University of Southern California was working on the subject, focusing on language education. His book project hasn't made publication yet, but I'll attach a link to a relevant 2004 article of his. Contacting him would probably be fruitful (along with the useful University of Colorado US Navy Japanese/Oriental Language School Archival Project).

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_military_history/v068/68.3dingman.html

Sincerely,

Kristina Buhrman    kristina...@gmail.com, kbuh...@fsu.edu

Department of Religion

Florida State University

On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 10:50 AM, Carl Freire <cpfl...@carlfreire.com> wrote:

I don't believe Donald Shively has been mentioned yet.  He was a language office with the Marine Corps in the closing years of the war.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/08/17_shively.shtml

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[Hitomi Tonomura]

Dear Ross:

Some of these names have come up already, but here are the scholars who had been trained in the military, became UM students or faculty and went to the UM Center for Japanese Studies Okayama Field Station (岡山分室）in1952-55: Robert Hall, George Totten, Edwin Neville, Forrest R. Pitts, Arthur Klauser, John Cornell, J. Douglas Eyre, Robert E. Ward, Richard K. Beardsley, Robert J. Smith, Joh W. Hall and a few others. Also (outside the Okayama framework) Dan Fenno Henderson, Harold W. Stevenson, and Grant K. Goodman. You can read some of their reflections in Japan in the World, the World in Japan: Fifty Years of Japanese Studies at Michigan (CJS Pub, 2001). In addition to the Navy Language School at the University of Colorado, mentioned by Charlotte Eubanks in the previous message, the Army Language School at the University of Michigan trained hundreds of men in Japanese. 

It seems to me the list of Japanese scholars (all fields) who were in the service during WWII or shortly thereafter is very long, and I wonder if combing through the two language schools might be a good place to start. 

Hitomi Tonomura

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ross Bender <rosslyn...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 10:32 PM
Subject: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII
To: pm...@googlegroups.com

Donald Keene and William Theodore de Bary famously served in American Navy intelligence during World War II. I know there were many other great American scholars of Japan in that generation who also served in the US (and perhaps British) military services, and I am trying to compile a list. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Ross Bender

http://independent.academia.edu/RossBender

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--
Hitomi Tonomura

Professor, Dept of History, Women's Studies

Director, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies

Faculty Director, Center for Japanese Studies Publications

1029 Tisch Hall, 435 S. State St.

Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1003

phone: 734-647-7298

[Evgeny Steiner]

I guess Beate Sirota Gordon (1923-2012) could be mentioned, although she was not an academic in a strict sense. (However she wrote extensively on Japanese and Asian dance.) Being of Russian-Jewish extraction, she was one of but very few non-Japanese people in US who were fluent in Japanese at the beginning of the war (about 60, she recollected). During the war she worked at the War Office Information, and after the war she served for MacArthur as a translator and took part in writing the new Japanese constitution.

Evgeny Steiner

Evgeny Steiner
Professorial Research Associate
Japan Research Centre
SOAS, University of London
Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
United Kingdom

[Unger, James]

Robert Borgen asked me to forward following message.  For some reason, he was unable to send it from his present location (in Korea) to the PMJS server.

 

First, I'd like to thank Ross for starting this discussion, even if so far it consists mostly of listing rather than discussing. I've long thought it remarkable how a vicious war created a core of serious scholars, fond of their former enemy, who would create, from virtually nothing, the academic study of that nation.  The phenomenon merits more attention then we have given it.

Second, I suspect the professional concerns of those on this list have led us to omit scholars whose research was outside our interests. My impression is that, when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, all the senior faculty members were military language school alumni. That includes Robert Ward (political science), Richard Beardsley (anthropology, including archaeology), and Roger Hackett (modern history).  I believe Donald Shively and John Hall were also in the military.  The final three scholars were all children of missionaries who grew up in Japan, but I recall Prof. Hackett telling us that, until he went to military language school, his Japanese lacked an adult vocabulary.  

And finally, my impression is that most of the American Japan specialists who came out of military language schools went to the Navy school at the University of Colorado, not the army school at my alma mater.  I wonder why?

Robert Borgen

P.S. Among English scholars, wasn't Ivan Morris a military language product?

---

From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Ross Bender [rosslyn...@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 10:32 PM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com

Subject: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII

[William Wetherall]

It is hard to finda Japanese-language or other Japan specialist of the
mid-20th century and onward who was not a of the Pacific War.

The Japanese Language School at the University of Colorado had its
immediate origins at UC Berkeley, where Keeneentered the program. The
history of the program is a story in itself about the intimacy of
Japanese-language training and national defensein the United States.

http://www.swet.jp/columns/article/keene_seidensticker_et_al/_C34

Among my professors at UC Berkeley in the late 1960s and early 1970s,
Elizabeth (McKinnon) Carr (Classical Japanese) and Susumu Nakamura
(advanced Japanese and kanbun) had been among the core instructors at
theU.S. Navy Japanese Language School at Boulder. Nakamura was part of
the original Berkeley faculty that moved to Colorado, partly on account
of the Executive Order to evacuate "Japanese" from the westcoast.
Elizabeth McKinnon, of part Japanese ancestry, had helped Elisséeff and
Reischauer produce their language materials at Harvard. Her husband,
Denzil Carr, was the resident Malay-Polynesian specialist at Berkeley,
but he was originally a Japan-specialist, trained and ordained in the
1930s, and he served as a Japanese specialist during the war. Denzil
Carr made cameo appearances in Haruo Aoki's graduate courses on Japanese
comparative linguistics. Aoki himself would be an example of a scholar
who wouldprobably never havedone what he did had the warnot ended the
way it did. Born raised in Korea, and a witness of the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima, he ventured to America as a student of English linguistics
and ended up a Nez Percespecialistwhiledefending Japanese linguistics in
the Oriental Languages Department (as it was then called).

And not to forget the McCulloughs. They had returned to their alma
materby the start of my second (or third) stint at Berkeley in the late
1970s and early 1980s. Helen was a JLS product (class of November 1944),
and servedin Washington, D.C. before serving in Tokyo during the
Occupation. Bill began his studies at Berkeley after the war but studied
under those who had returned to Berkeley from Boulder (and others), and
he himself servedas a language specialist in the US Army before
completing his doctorate. The McCulloughs went out to pasture at
Stanford for a while before returning to the barn at Berkeley. They
represent the"continuity" of wartime Japanese studies that spilled into
the coldwar era. Even my own generation was heavily supportedby national
defense fundingas Japanese continued to be regarded a "strategic" language.

It would be interesting to know who KNEW Japanese at the time of the
Pacific War but DECLINED to contribute their expertise to the Allied
Cause -- including "No-No" kibei, and sons and daughters of missionaries
and others who had become bilingual. It would also be fascinating to
explore the contributions and fates of their bilingual counterparts in
Japan.

I should add the late psychological anthropologist George De Vos to the
expanding list. He was a product of U.S. Armylanguage training during
the war. Many of his colleaguesin the United States were products of
similar training. Their counterparts in social and medical sciences in
Japan benefited from the earliest postwar Fulbright scholarships to
study in the United States.They, and others like them, were also
essentially nursed and weaned at the breast of the Pacific War. For
some, the war continues.

Bill Wetherall

[Helen Hardacre]

I'm so glad someone mentioned Gordon. She was a member of the Occupation committee that drafted the postwar constitution of Japan and thus tremendously influential.

Helen Hardacre

[Hitomi Tonomura]

(i thought I sent this out yesterday, but my mail has been strange and I apologize for repetition....)

Some of the following names have come up already, but here are the scholars who had been trained in the military, became UM students or faculty and went to the UM Center for Japanese Studies Okayama Field Station (岡山分室）in1952-55: Robert Hall, George Totten, Edwin Neville, Forrest R. Pitts, Arthur Klauser, John Cornell, J. Douglas Eyre, Robert E. Ward, Richard K. Beardsley, Robert J. Smith, Joh W. Hall and a few others. Also (outside the Okayama framework but at UM) Dan Fenno Henderson, Harold W. Stevenson, and Grant K. Goodman. You can read some of their own reflections in Japan in the World, the World in Japan: Fifty Years of Japanese Studies at Michigan (CJS Pub, 2001). In addition to the Navy Language School at the University of Colorado, mentioned by Charlotte Eubanks in the previous message, the Army Language School at the University of Michigan trained a large number of [future] experts in Japanese. 

Please see: 

http://www.ii.umich.edu/cjs/aboutus/historyofcjs  

It seems to me the list of Japanese scholars (all fields) who were in the service during WWII or shortly thereafter is very long, and I wonder if combing through the two language schools might be a good place to start. 

Hitomi Tonomura

[Avery M.]

I notice that William Woodard has not yet been mentioned. Woodard, a
former missionary, was in the Navy and later the GHQ from 1942 to
1952. He supervised the re-alignment of Japanese religious policy
during the Occupation, and authored the book "The Allied Occupation of
Japan 1945-1952 and Japanese religions", which is a fine and detailed
study despite his personal involvement with the policymaking. He also
assisted in the publication of "Shinto: The Kami Way" which strongly
influenced the postwar Western image of Shinto for many decades.

Avery Morrow

[Kamens, Edward]

The In Memoriam notice published by the Yale University Office of Public Information at the time of the death of Edwin McClellan in May, 2009, stated: "At 18, he joined the Royal Air Force, hoping to become a pilot, but his fluency in Japanese made him more useful to allied intelligence. He spent the years 1944-1947 in Washington, D.C., analyzing intercepted Japanese communications."  

I would be interested to know how you plan to make use of the list you are compiling. 

---

  Edward Kamens
  Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies                    
  Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University 

  http://eall.yale.edu/              
                                                       

  

[Nicholas Teele]

To the list please add Roy E. Teele (1915-1985).  Commissioned in the Navy, he studied at the University of Colorado in Boulder, in the Chinese class.  After serving in China he returned there as a missionary (University of Nanking).  Forced out in 1949, he moved to Japan (Kwansei Gakuin) in 1950 , and added classical Japanese literature to his many loves. After moving back to the US he found a home teaching Japanese and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas  at Austin.  His activities in Japanese studies included not only work in the Man'yoshu and Noh but also editing the Japan section of the Twayne World Authors Series and the journal Literature East & West, which often had a Japanese focus.

See:  http://www.utexas.edu/faculty/council/2000-2001/memorials/SCANNED/teele.pdf.

Nicholas Teele

[Stephen Robertson]

Edward Norbeck (1915-1991), who was among the first scholars to study Japan as an anthropologist should also be counted on this list. He and his wife had been living in Hawaii, working as a manager on a Libby pineapple plantation when Pearl Harbour was attacked, and spent the next year serving as volunteer air raid wardens in Honolulu. Apparently, his frustration with the curfew prompted him  to volunteer for the army (not mandatory, as the government did not want to depopulate the islands), and he went back to the mainland for basic training.

By March, 1943, he had entered the military intelligence service where, according to a 1945 obituary for his first wife, Jeanne (who earned her wings as a WASP, but died in a test-flight accident in Oct 1944) , he acquainted himself with the Japanese language, and was then transferred to the signal corps and stationed at Washington, D.C. There, he worked on intercepted communiques, notably exchanges between the ambassador to Russia and Japanese military command. After the Japanese surrender, Norbeck was sent to Germany, where he was placed in charge of an African American division of combat veterans, his first actual command. (As an aside, I think John Dower has written that it was SCAP policy in Japan to avoid using people who had actual experience with the Japanese, which might be why he was sent to Germany.)

After the war, Norbeck got his Ph.D. in anthropology at Michigan. He also worked out of the Okayama Field Station, and after his doctorate had faculty positions in Utah, Berkeley and eventually Rice University.

Also worth noting is John F. Embree (1908-1950), who probably was the first foreign anthropologist to write an ethnography of contemporary Japanese society. Quoting from an obituary written by Fred Eggan:

After receiving his Ph.D. at Chicago in 1937, Embree returned to the University of Hawaii as an assistant professor and studied acculturation among the Japanese of the Kona Valley. By 1941 he became restless in the isolation of Honolulu and accepted an offer from the University of Toronto. With Pearl Harbor his knowledge of Japan and the Japanese made him a key figure and he served his country in several capacities. He aided in the preparation of the pocket guides for the Office of Strategic Services, then helped improve the administration of the Japanese relocation centers as principal community analyst for the War Relocation Authority. But his major contribution was made as associate professor of anthropology and head of the Japanese area studies of the Civil Affairs Training School for the Far East which the War Department set up at the University of Chicago during 1943-45 for the training of military government officers for Japan and the Occupied Areas. Here he had the task of organizing the basic curriculum for area instruction, which was later extended to several universities, and of instructing army and navy officers in the complexities of Japanese society, culture, and character. He has written of this period, [cf. "American Military Government,” in Social Structure, Studies Presented to A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, ed. Meyer Fortes, Oxford, 1949]  but I would like to add the observation that not once during these years did he compromise with anthropological standards. Officers returning from the Occupation of Japan have remarked on the usefulness of the training which he gave them in meeting the practical problems which they had to face.

Kind regards,

Stephen 

[Michael...@ma2.seikyou.ne.jp]

A brief comment:
This seems to bode well for the future of Arabic studies.

An additional name:
Hans Baerwald (1927-2010) from the Political Science department at UCLA

From an online obituary:

At the age of 18, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to the Japanese Language School. As a Second Lieutenant he was posted to Government Section in General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo during the American occupation. In this capacity, he participated in implementing the political purge of Japanese leaders, a complex process about which he has written extensively.

m.jamentz

> The In Memoriam notice published by the Yale University Office of Public Inf
> ormation at the time of the death of Edwin McClellan in May, 2009, stated: "
> At 18, he joined the Royal Air Force, hoping to become a pilot, but his flue
> ncy in Japanese made him more useful to allied intelligence. He spent the ye
> ars 1944-1947 in Washington, D.C., analyzing intercepted Japanese communicat
> ions."
>
> I would be interested to know how you plan to make use of the list you are c
> ompiling.
>
> ________________________________
> Edward Kamens
> Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies
> Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University
> http://eall.yale.edu/
>
>
>
>

> From: Ross Bender <rosslyn...@gmail.com<mailto:rosslyn...@gmail.com>
> >
> Reply-To: "pm...@googlegroups.com<mailto:pm...@googlegroups.com>" <pmjs@google
> groups.com<mailto:pm...@googlegroups.com>>

> Date: Monday, October 14, 2013 10:32 PM

> To: "pm...@googlegroups.com<mailto:pm...@googlegroups.com>" <pmjs@googlegroups
> .com<mailto:pm...@googlegroups.com>>

> Subject: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII
>
> Donald Keene and William Theodore de Bary famously served in American Navy i
> ntelligence during World War II. I know there were many other great American
> scholars of Japan in that generation who also served in the US (and perhaps
> British) military services, and I am trying to compile a list. Any suggesti
> ons would be welcome.
>
> Ross Bender
> http://independent.academia.edu/RossBender
>
> --
> PMJS is a scholarly forum.
>
> You are subscribed to PMJS: Premodern Japanese Studies.

> To post to the list, send email to pm...@googlegroups.com<mailto:pmjs@googleg
> roups.com>
> To unsubscribe, send email to pmjs+uns...@googlegroups.com<mailto:pmjs+
> unsub...@googlegroups.com>

> Visit the PMJS web site at www.pmjs.org

> Contact the group administrator at edi...@pmjs.org<mailto:edi...@pmjs.org>

[Peter Kornicki]

Two more British scholars. First, Geoffrey Bownas, who taught at Oxford and was the foundation professor of Japanese at Sheffield University. His obituary (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/13/geoffrey-bownas-obituary) records as follows: 

Recruited into the army in 1942, his life was changed when the sergeant major snapped: "I need five volunteers to learn Japanese – you, you, you, you and you!" He was eventually commissioned as an intelligence officer in India working on Japanese military codes. He returned to Oxford in 1946 to complete his degree and, after a spell teaching classics at Aberystwyth University, was tempted back to Oxford in 1948 to learn Chinese.

It is striking how many of those whose names have appeared so far had a good command of other languages as well as Japanese.

The second is Richard Storry (1913-1982) (http://www.historytoday.com/brian-powell/richard-storry-1913-1982)

Unlike many of the others he was in Japan before the war. My teacher Brian Powell wrote in his obituary:

In 1937, he accepted an appointment as a Lecturer in English at what is now Otaru University of Commerce in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. He taught in Otaru until 1940, when he returned to wartime Europe. Between 1941 and 1946 he served in the intelligence corps in the Middle East, Singapore, India, Burma and in Britain, and he commanded, with the rank of Major, No. 1 Mobile Section, South East Asia Translation and Interrogation Centre, during the battle of Imphal (1944).

Peter Kornicki

[Alexander Vovin]

Dear all,

Unless I missed something, I am really surprised that no one mentioned one of the most illustrious American Japanologists (and by the role he played in scholarship really a World Japanologist) -- Samuel E. Martin, who was a Navy Translator Officer, and a member of the team who contributed to the breaking of  the Japanese Naval Code that was a foundation of the victories at Midway and Guadalcanal.

As I personally met Martin only in the late 90s, I took the liberty of forwarding this message to some of his closest disciples who are probably not on PMJS, but who can undoubtedly provide more details than myself.

All the best,

Sasha Vovin

On Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 4:32 PM, Ross Bender <rosslyn...@gmail.com> wrote:

Donald Keene and William Theodore de Bary famously served in American Navy intelligence during World War II. I know there were many other great American scholars of Japan in that generation who also served in the US (and perhaps British) military services, and I am trying to compile a list. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Ross Bender

http://independent.academia.edu/RossBender

--
PMJS is a scholarly forum.
 
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--

Alexander Vovin
Professor of East Asian Languages
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
University of Hawai'i at Manoa, USA
========================
iustitiam magni facite, infirmos protegite

[Helen E. Moss]

I'm not sure where to start to try to pin down my late dance teacher's activities.

 

Miyoko Watanabe, a Nisei, graduated from UCLA with a degree in German language, and she was already fluent in Japanese.  According to her family, she spent much of the war somewhere in Texas doing translation.

 

Any suggestions you can give would be greatly appreciated!

 

Helen E. Moss

 

[Lani Alden]

Hello,

I am only an undergraduate senior (hoping to start my Master's somewhere soon!), so my knowledge is somewhat limited as to specifics, but I should say that I work in the Gordon W. Prange Collection and I have not noticed his name on here. I'd be remiss not to add him.

While not a strict "Japanologist" persay, he was MacArthur's Chief Historian and the man that ended up saving the titular collection I work in, which houses a mostly complete collection of the censored documents from 1945-1949. He also conducted many interviews of Japanese military personelle and had a deep fascination with Japanese military tactics, etc.

You can find out more here: http://www.lib.umd.edu/prange

And here: http://digital.lib.umd.edu/video?autostart=true&pid=umd:55387

Lani Alden

[Ross Bender]

Thank you all so much. This is absolutely amazing, not to say overwhelming. It would be a full time job simply to read all the fascinating obituaries. Apparently there are several archival projects on this topic underway.

I must say that my favorite bit of information was that Faubion Bowers and Earle Ernst were Kabuki censors during the Occupation. Talk about a dream job.

Please carry on -- we seem to have jogged a lot of interesting memories here. Also, as Michael Jamentz suggests: 

"Would it not in some sense be more interesting to know the scholars of Japan in the immediate post-war generation who were not trained by the military or the offspring of missionaries?  That list would surely be more manageable and might prove revealing as well."

Another list might be that of the pre-WWII  scholars who worked especially on the ancient classics -- Aston, Chamberlain, Sansom, Snellen, Waley, RK Reischauer, Bohner, Zachert et al. It might be said that in some sense their work was cut off by WWII itself, and is one tragic reason we still know so little about ancient Japan.

Ross Bender

http://independent.academia.edu/RossBender

[Sachie Noguchi]

During my research on Ryukyu and Okinawa library resources in North American libraries, I encounter the following scholar and I like to add to our list:

*****  
Douglas Gilbert Haring: (1894-1970)

Anthropologist, sociologist, theologian.

 Dr. Haring is best known for his action–system theory in the study of human societies but his World War II service as a teacher in the Civil Affairs Training School at Harvard and his term as adviser to the Civil Government in Okinawa provided numerous opportunities to apply his knowledge and skills to the goals of the occupation.

 Dr. Haring, who retired in 1962, established a course in the anthropology of Japanese culture at Syracuse and retained a lifelong interest in the field.

Dr. Haring received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Colgate University in 1914, a Bachelor of Divinity degree from the Rochester Theological Seminary, M.S. and M.A. degrees in sociology from Columbia in 1923.

 With a B.S. in chemistry from Colgate University in 1914, Haring turned to theology and in 1917 jointed the mission field in Japan. After studying the Japanese language and culture and teaching underprivileged boys for three years, Haring became convinced of the need for further training. He received an M.A. degrees in sociology from Columbia and a Bachelor of Divinity degree from the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School both in 1923.  He returned to Japan just after the great earthquake in 1923. … He authored his first major publication, The land of Gods and Earthquakes, still not satisfied with his training, the turning point in his career came after he turned to anthropology for a year of intensive study under Franz Boas, Leslie Spier and Ruth Benedict.  He became aware of the scope of the discipline that incorporated all aspects of his previous studies and experiences and felt prepared to accept a teaching post in the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, a post he held from 1928 until retirement in 1962.

 Although most widely known for his interpretations of Japanese culture before and after World War II, his most significant anthropological contribution were Order and Possibility in Social Life (1940),  co-authored with Johnson and his multi-authored compilation textbook, Personal Character and Cultural Milieu (1948-56).

Selected other works:

Blood on the Rising Sun (1943)

The Island of Amami Oshima (1952

Bibliography of the Ryukyu Research Collection (1969)

Okinawa Customs, Yesterday and Today (1969)

Japan’s Prospect (1946) editor and contributor

 (Sources: Who was Who in America: International Dictionary of Anthropologists: New York Times (August 26, 1970))

*****

Sachie Noguchi

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sachie Noguchi, Ph.D.
Japanese Studies Librarian
C.V. Starr East Asian Library
Columbia University
308M Kent Hall, Mail Code 3901
1140 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10027
 
E-mail: sn2...@columbia.edu
Tel: 212-854-1506
Fax: 212-662-6286
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Pinnington, Noel J - (noelp)]

As for a scholar who was influential but more or less supported Japan during the war, Reginald Blyth is surely notable. As he tried to aid in the rapprochement at the end of the war between the enemy powers, he seems rather admirable. Were there others like him?

Noel Pinnington

From: Ross Bender <rosslyn...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: "pm...@googlegroups.com" <pm...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 3:35 PM
To: "pm...@googlegroups.com" <pm...@googlegroups.com>

[Lawrence Marceau]

Dear Ross & all,

One scholar who I had the great honor to work with in the mid-1970s was Toshio George "Tusky" Tsukahira, author of the first study in English of the Sankin kōtai system. He passed away in 2011 at the age of 95, and I found an obituary in the Washington Post online:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/17/AR2011031704064.html

Another informative biography providing more background into his original study of Japanese is found at the Japanese-American Veterans' Association website:

http://www.javadc.org/toshio_tsukahira.htm

Lawrence Marceau

[Danielle Rocheleau Salaz]

See below for another message from David Hays of the University of Colorado Libraries.

-- 

Danielle Rocheleau Salaz

Center for Asian Studies

University of Colorado Boulder

http://cas.colorado.edu

----------------

 

A quick run through our entrance list (1650 in Japanese, Malay, Chinese, and Russian) for the US Navy Japanese/Oriental Language School showed many names of scholars whose names may seem familiar, in all areas of Asian-Pacific studies:

Robert Ward, Roger Hackett, Richard Beardsley, Ivan Morris, William Beasley, Edward Seidensticker, Otis Cary, John Ashmead, Donald Merriam Allen, Horace Underwood, Helen McCullough, Thomas Smith, Sidney DeVere Brown, Edwin Neville, Solomon Levine, Marion Levy, Robert Scalapino, Donald Willis, Michael Rogers, Robert Morley, Sidney Fine, Frank Gibney, Ardath Burks, Donald Keene, Willard Hanna, Houghton "Bucky" Freeman, Noel Leathers, Edward Bronfenbrenner, Jay Stillson Judah, John Howes, Earle Swisher, Harold Stevenson,  Lionel Casson, John L. Fisher, Stuart Tave, Joseph Levenson, Lawrence Olson, Philip Yampolsky, William Braisted, Thomas Francis Mayer-Oakes,  Laurence Thompson, Robert H. Walker, Wayne Suttles,  Charles Sheldon, George Skinner, Robert Schwantes, Kenneth Stewart, Lew Mickleson, Lucien Pye, Harold Rogers, and William Theodore de Bary.

 

Among the names that surprised me were two I recognized, Frank Freidel and Wilcomb Washburn, whose historical works I read in graduate school.

You could likely find a number of references to these scholars and more in the US Navy Japanese/Oriental Language School Archival Project newsletter, The Interpreter, http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/archives/collections/jlsp/interpreters.htm. The best way to search the 15 years of the newsletter is to   use the custom Google Search on the Archives, University of Colorado Boulder  front page http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/archives/index.htm.

I have attached some documents for your possible perusal.

Feel free to ask any questions that occur to you on this topic.

Respectfully, David M. Hays, Archivist

 

David M. Hays

Archives

University of Colorado Boulder Libraries

184 UCB

Boulder, CO  80309-0184

Fax 303-492-3960

Phone 303-492-7242

 

 

[Stephen Robertson]

While this topic has wound down a bit, I wanted to make the observation that, by my count, among the 118 scholars so far mentioned, there have been a total of six women - Carmen Blacker, Elizabeth McKinnon Carr, Beate Sirota Gordon, Helen McCullough, Virginia Miner, and Miyoko Watanabe. Of these women, three were mentioned (though not unfairly) alongside their husbands, also scholars of Asia. I realize that this under-representation no doubt reflects the gender imbalance of the day, but surely there are more women scholars of Japan to be noted alongside the menfolk of the "Greatest Generation"?

No one has yet mentioned Ruth Benedict in this context, so maybe I can start the ball rolling with her?

Best,

Stephen

[William Wetherall]

Does Ruth Benedict qualify as a "scholar" of Japan on a par with the
others on the developing (snowballing) list?

Benedict based her "observations" of Japan on contacts with nisei
(including some kibei) informants. I am not aware that she had any
proficiency in Japanese -- which is not to say that Japanese proficiency
has anything to do with "understanding" Japan. For sure, her work
(mis)informed a couple of generations of American and other "scholars"
attempting to fathom "the Japanese mind" in the heydays of "national
character" studies. And certainly she is famous. But is influence or
fame a criterion for inclusion?

With the inclusion of people like Beate Sirota Gordon, the list has also
expanded from one of "scholars" to one that also includes people who
participated in the war or its aftermath as bilingual amateurs or
specialists outside academia.

Gordon's inclusion opens the list to people like William Joseph Sebald
(1901-1980), who came to Japan in the 1920s as a US Navy officer to
study Japanese in the historical forerunner of the program that evolved
into the language school at Boulder, Colorado during the war two decades
later.

Sebald met and married Edith Frances de Becker Kobayashi, studied law in
the United States, then returned to Japan, where he ran the De Becker
Law office in Kobe after his father-in-law, Joseph Ernest De Becker
Kobayashi (1863-1929), passed away.

Sebald, continuing also his father-in-laws translation work, translated
many laws before he and Edith left Japan in 1939 after being suspected
of spying. This was the fate of not a few bilingual people in the late
1930s and of course also after the war began.

During the Pacific War, Sebald served as an intelligence officer. After
the war, he served as a foreign service officer in GHQ/SCAP and became
head of its Diplomatic Section. As MacArthur's principal foreign affairs
advisor, he was closely involved in peace treaty and other negotiations.
He was also the main facilitator of talks between the Republic of Korea
and Japan in 1951-1952, which unfortunately floundered (unlike those
with the Republic of China).

Joseph Ernest De Becker was a London-born British subject educated in
the United States. He came to Japan in 1887 and became Kobayashi Beika
through his marriage to Kobayashi Ei, a Kanagawa prefecture commoner, on
29 July 1891 -- not through naturalization (an entirely different
procedure not available until 1899) -- but as an "incoming husband"
(nyufu) under a 1873 Great Council of State proclamation that was
encoded in the 1899 Nationality Law. The "nyufu" procedure remained an
avenue to Japanese nationality until the 1899 law was replaced by the
1950 law, which did away with all forms of nationality derived through
marriage or adoption. Hearn too, of course, was one of many others of
all manner of nationalities who became Japanese this way between 1873
and 1950.

De Becker / Kobayashi was the first to translate Japan's basic laws into
English, but he is probably better known as the author of "The Nightless
City, or the 'History of the Yoshiwara Yukwaku History of the Yoshiwara
Yukwaku'" (Yokohama: Z.P. Maruya & Co. Ltd., 1899). De Becker went on to
translate many Japanese laws, including the 1899 Nationality Law.

But back to his son-in-law -- William Sebald. If Beate Sirota Gordon
qualifies for the list, then so does he -- in my humble opinion.

Bill Wetherall

[Stephen Robertson]

I recognize that many might question Ruth Benedict's merits for inclusion on this list, given the concerns raised by Dr. Wetherall. My suggestion was premised on the original call for "American scholars of Japan in that generation who also served in the US (and perhaps British) military services", admittedly with a bias to the latter qualification. 

Definitions of "scholarship" in this context will vary, and Benedict (1887-1948) does stand out in that unlike those who became scholars through their exposure to language training, she was from an older generation of scholars asked to apply their knowledge to the particular problem of the Japanese. Even so, we have to recognize that The Chrysanthemum and the Sword was a product of her work with the Office of War Information (Foreign Morale Analysis Division) from mid-1943, when she succeeded Geoffrey Gorer, to the summer of 1946.

However controversial it has become, and notwithstanding the fact that "national character" studies have given way to subtler sociological paradigms, no less an authority than George Sansom reviewed Chrysanthemum favourably. Benedict's familiarity with cultures including those of the Zuni, Plains Indians, Kwakiutl,and Dobu, not to mention the explosive reception in Japan of the fruits of her "crash course" on Japanese culture make a strong case for her contemporary insight.

Anyway, this is all secondary to my original point. Were there simply no women who went through the wartime language programs - at Berkeley/Colorado or SOAS - to become scholars of Japan? Is this a historical blind spot, or simply an artefact of school policy?

Regards,

Stephen

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[Nathan Ledbetter]

"Anyway, this is all secondary to my original point. Were there simply no women who went through the wartime language programs - at Berkeley/Colorado or SOAS - to become scholars of Japan? Is this a historical blind spot, or simply an artefact of school policy?"

I have nothing other than speculation as a currently serving active duty military officer to answer Dr. Roberts, but from that vantage point it seems less likely to be a policy of the school itself, and more likely a personnel policy related to where the graduates would be expected to serve following graduation. That would not necessarily have anything to do with geographic location, and more the fact that jobs in the military are coded by military occupational specialty or "MOS", and the specialties open to women at that time were very few and far between. Certain exceptions would be made for those women who already had valuable Japanese language and culture skills, but it's highly doubtful the military of that time would elect to send a woman to language school training when they would not have normally been assigned to the end-user units otherwise.

Again, just speculation, but as an Army officer who has served in the current unit descended from MIS and is preparing for PhD work upon retirement in a few years, I appreciate the ability to see the vast amount of scholars who have gone before me.

Nate Ledbetter

MAJ, US Army

Fort Polk, LA

www.sengokufieldmanual.blogspot.com

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[David Pollack]

The BBS has recently produced interesting documentaries and fictional series concerning the role of the many women who were a large part of the staff at Bletchley Park, the center for wartime signals intelligence. (According to the Wikipedia website, "Some 9,000 people from the armed services and civilians were working at Bletchley Park at the height of the codebreaking efforts in January 1945,^[26]and over 12,000 (of whom more than 80% were women) worked there at some point during the war.") While the long-held perception of the general public has been that the work there was strictly divided between male "professor types" ( "boffins") and female secretaries ("debs"), the fictionalized series "The Bletchley Circle" places the contributions of women in less gender-stereotyped roles. 

David Pollack 

---

From: "Nathan Ledbetter" <ltdo...@gmail.com>
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 9:27:01 AM

Subject: Re: [PMJS] American Scholars of Japan in WWII

"Anyway, this is all secondary to my original point. Were there simply no women who went through the wartime language programs - at Berkeley/Colorado or SOAS - to become scholars of Japan? Is this a historical blind spot, or simply an artefact of school policy?"

I have nothing other than speculation as a currently serving active duty military officer to answer Dr. Roberts, but from that vantage point it seems less likely to be a policy of the school itself, and more likely a personnel policy related to where the graduates would be expected to serve following graduation. That would not necessarily have anything to do with geographic location, and more the fact that jobs in the military are coded by military occupational specialty or "MOS", and the specialties open to women at that time were very few and far between. Certain exceptions would be made for those women who already had valuable Japanese language and culture skills, but it's highly doubtful the military of that time would elect to send a woman to language school training when they would not have normally been assigned to the end-user units otherwise.

Again, just speculation, but as an Army officer who has served in the current unit descended from MIS and is preparing for PhD work upon retirement in a few years, I appreciate the ability to see the vast amount of scholars who have gone before me.

Nate Ledbetter

MAJ, US Army

Fort Polk, LA

www.sengokufieldmanual.blogspot.com[sengokufieldmanual.blogspot.com]

Visit the PMJS web site at www.pmjs.org[pmjs.org]

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[Sharon Domier]

I can't speak to women going through the wartime language programs,
but there were some female American Scholars of Japan who predated the
war. Eleanor Hadley - known as the Trustbuster - was a lovely and
remarkable woman.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2003736138_hadleyobit06m.html


Sharon Domier

>
>
>
> Anyway, this is all secondary to my original point. Were there
> simply no women who went through the wartime language programs - at
> Berkeley/Colorado or SOAS - to become scholars of Japan? Is this a
> historical blind spot, or simply an artefact of school policy?
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Stephen
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 22 October 2013 17:58, William Wetherall < bi...@wetherall.org > wrote:
>

> <blockquote>

> <blockquote>

> </blockquote>

>
>
> --
> PMJS is a scholarly forum.
>
> You are subscribed to PMJS: Premodern Japanese Studies.
> To post to the list, send email to pm...@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe, send email to pmjs+uns...@googlegroups.com
> Visit the PMJS web site at www.pmjs.org[pmjs.org]
> Contact the group administrator at edi...@pmjs.org
>

> </blockquote>

[Philip Brown]

I don't think she participated in the language programs that were at the core of the initial inquiry, but one wartime scholar who worked on Japan as well as Germany, and who was engaged in advising on labor issues was Cornell University's Alice H. Cook, a specialist in labor relations.  Among other things she wrote about the ILO and its relationships with Japanese labor unions.

Philip C. Brown

[Beatrice Shoemaker]

Belated thought -

Lawrence Sickman and Ross Taggart, both formerly of the Nelson-Atkins, were active in China during the war. 

Unfortunately have few corroborative details to offer.

Beatrice B. Shoemaker