Operation Study Abroad

Abstract

“You were in the Zengakuren that turned away Eisenhower?”. In 1963, my second year of graduate school, Professor John Buttrick, who had come from University of Minnesota as a guest professor, asked me, his eyes wide with wonder. The name Zengakuren had gained notoriety in the U.S. His ancestor was Major John Buttrick, one of those who gave the order to “Fire!” on the British forces in Concord, on the outskirts of Boston, starting the American War of Independence in 1775. Having this republican heritage, he was a conscientious objector during World War II and a strong pacifist.