Military Intelligence Alumni Donate to Michigan's Japanese Studies Program

Abstract

Totten represented his former army comrades in the first wartime intensive program in teaching Japanese to non-ethnic Americans, most of whom had had no contact with Japan. This was the U.S. Military Intelligence's program at the University at Ann Arbor, where stringently selected enlisted men sweated over their books and marched through the tree-lined streets of the town for twelve months before taking another half year at Ft. Snelling in Minneapolis. Over 1,500 GIs and a sprinkling of officers were trained starting January 1, 1943 in a race with time to help shorten the war until August 15, 1945 and then till the end of the year to provide further personnel for the U.S. Occupation and the transformation of Japan into a Pacific Democracy (in the two senses of the adjective). The presentation of the funds took place at the conclusion of a panel on New Directions in Japan's Foreign Policy that had been organized by the Japan Political Scientists Group, founded by Robert Ward of Stanford and for many years run by Lee Farnsworth of Brigham Young. The Group yearly organizes a panel or round-table discussion on Japanese politics and since the year before last, arranges a panel for the Japanese Political Science Association which brings Japanese scholars from Japan to the APSA meetings. As a member of the Group and also as a member of the Michigan faculty, John Creighton Campbell accepted the $1,000 on behalf of the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan. The money will be placed in a fund to the memory of the late Professor Robert Brower of Michigan, a graduate of the first class who recently passed away after retiring. He was internationally known for his translations of classical Japanese poetry. The funds will be used for enriching the Japanese library collection at the alma mater of these wartime Japanese linguists. The Japanese Embassy had earlier issued invitations to the Japan Polit-