The University of Maryland libraries contain an important microfiche collection of primary research materials, illustrating the work of the 1946 mission and subsequent reforms during the Occupation. It includes the papers of the women members: Educational Reform in Japan, 1945-1952 (call number: LA 1311.82.A2 E38).

At last we received word that the weather up by Tokyo was good enough to warrant our flight, and we took off from Guam. As we flew over the Volcano Islands, we saw a new one being born: a great spout of steam bursting forth from the salt waves, ringed by green slime spreading over the surface of the sea. In the afternoon word suddenly came that Fujiyama was in sight. One by one we went forward and stood by the pilot. There dead ahead, about a hundred miles away, rose the sacred white cone. Our long journey was nearly over.

We landed, at Atsugi Airport, about forty miles outside Tokyo, where we were met by Army cars. We drove some miles through open country, looking with eager curiosity upon small villages and farms and rice fields of this alien land. Then for twenty miles we passed through most terrible desolation, wrecked areas of the great cities of Yokohama and Tokyo. Though I had seen some of the blitzed cities of England, I had seen nothing so vast and appalling as this. The weather was dreary and cold and wet. Among the ruins a few poor people, shabbily clad, were digging and working. Some had built temporary shelters of wood, but for miles and miles there seemed to be no home where any human being could be expected to exist. If any of us had come to Japan with the exultation of conquerors, we lost that emotion as we drove those twenty miles.

Dusk was falling on that first day of ours in Japan when we finished our ride through the wrecked and desolate streets and arrived at the Imperial Hotel. Suddenly we were in another world. The lobby was brightly lighted, and immediately opposite the entrance door was an exhibit of dolls, tier on tier, scores of brilliantly costumed dolls, all gay and colorful. It was in honor of some Japanese feast of dolls.

The Imperial Hotel, one of the most famous of all the world's hotels, had had one wing burned during the fire raids, but otherwise it was in good condition. It was run by the United States Army, and we were very comfortable there, well fed with excellent food, all imported from America. The hotel was staffed entirely by Japanese. Men waited upon us in our rooms, and in the dining room there were Japanese waitresses, charming young women, courteous and efficient. All the Japanese staff treated us with friendly courtesy and kindness, as did all the other Japanese that we met. They seemed determined to show us that we were their guests in the country and that as our hosts, they wanted to do everything possible for us. The waitresses in the dining room were so very attractive and competent that we yearned to take them back to America with us to help solve the domestic service problem.

The day after our arrival in Tokyo we lunched with General MacArthur and his charming wife. He was living in the handsome new American Embassy, tactfully spared from destruction by our bombing planes. He was an impressive figure as he sat at the head of the long luncheon table, waited upon by two Japanese-American noncommissioned officers in our Army uniform, and by elderly Japanese servants who had served our Embassy for thirty years. As I watched him ruling the great nation which he had conquered, I felt that it was rather like lunching with Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great. I sat several places away from him, but suddenly, in a quiet moment in the general conversation, I heard his voice ringing out distinctly:

"I said to the Emperor, `I think you should issue a Rescript saying you are not divine,' and the Emperor said, `Oh, I couldn't possibly do that: I should feel like a fool. Of course I'm not divine. I never for a moment thought I was, and nobody else ever thought so either.' 'Nevertheless,'" continued General MacArthur, "I said to him, `I think you should issue the Rescript. It would make an excellent impression on other countries.' " (We can all recall that such a Rescript was issued.)

When I tell this anecdote, it always annoys my hearers. They are sure the Emperor couldn't have said that. But I know General MacArthur said he did. I conjecture that there is some difference in the meaning of the word "divine" as used in this connection in the two languages.

Most of the members of the Mission had gone out to Japan prejudiced against General MacArthur, thinking of him as something of an egotistical swaggerer. But we all, I believe, came back respecting him as a man who was doing a good job in an enormously difficult post.

Our work as an Education Mission had been well organized. There was a Japanese Mission corresponding to us, our opposite numbers, so to speak. We were divided into committees, and I was a member of the one on higher education. The Japanese also were divided into corresponding committees. There were opening sessions in the auditorium of the Peers School, where I was deeply impressed by the address of welcome delivered by the Minister of Education, Mr. Abe. The fact that it had been put into English by a former Barnard student, who was his secretary, gave it added interest for me. Mr. Abe spoke movingly of the strange irony of fate by which war, instead of separating peoples, as you would expect, brings them closer together -indeed into the closest possible contact. "Had it not been for this war," he said, "our two peoples would never have learned to know each other as they have done. There would never have been some 200,000 Americans living for months in Japan. With some terrible exceptions," he continued, "they have on the whole learned to like and respect each other. Now our destinies are woven together. As you may guess," he added, "after two thousand years free from conquest it is a severe trial and a hard task to be a defeated country and a defeated people; but, if I may say so, it must also be a very difficult thing to be a good victor."

There were other addresses by distinguished Japanese scholars on various aspects of Japanese culture. I remember particularly the interesting one on language, and one on the folk arts of Japan beautifully illustrated with maps which were themselves bits of art.

In taking up our task, the Mission worked closely with the Civil Information and Education Section of SCAP, a group, of about twenty-five young men, with one young woman, all experienced in education in the United States, who were officers of the Army or Navy and who had been carrying the responsibility of getting acquainted with the Japanese educational system and recommending to SCAP the first urgent changes. We came to know them well and began to allude to them as "the C., I., and E. Boys." I thought they were on the whole an excellent lot. Having made a careful study of Japanese education, they were able to give us all sorts of facts and figures and details.

The member of the group that was assigned to our Committee on Higher Education, of which I was a member, I got to know particularly well. He had had a bitter experience in Korea, where he had gone with the American Army when it first landed in that unhappy country. He had been assigned to take charge temporarily of the great university at Seoul. Apparently the American Army was not well equipped with interpreters or with knowledge of the country. They tried to billet some of the troops in the American missionary colleges in Seoul and when these objected violently, they billeted the soldiers instead at the National University at Seoul, and especially in the great library. This the Japanese had built up during the years of their occupation so that it was perhaps the greatest collection of manuscripts and books in all East Asia. But when the American troops were billeted in it, they naturally knew nothing of all this; they tore and burned books and manuscripts or threw them out of the windows. My poor young friend could not even get anyone from Headquarters to come and look at the place, still less help him preserve some of the treasures.

This seemed a terrible story when he told it to me. On that foundation, I thought, we might have helped build up a great center of learning for Korea and all East Asia, but we had destroyed it thought lessly. Now I know that this did not matter. Seoul has since been so utterly devastated that I presume there is not an atom left of the great library. It would have perished anyway.

Besides conferring with the C., I., and E. Boys and learning from them, we visited a good many educational institutions and we began to meet with our opposite numbers, the corresponding committees of the Japanese delegation. Our first meetings of the higher education groups were held in a modern office building which had escaped much damage except that it was frightfully cold and that the plumbing had been smashed so that the corridors were filled with horrible odors. At the first sessions the language difficulty discouraged me greatly. I had supposed that all educated Japanese understood and spoke English, but of course that was not true. Only a few of them had a good command of English. Moreover, the difficulty of translation between Japanese and English is very great, so different are the two languages in structure and in general spirit. At first progress was very slow.

The Japanese who were sitting with us had of course been carefully screened. They were ones who were liberal in tendency and naturally inclined to be sympathetic towards the democratic ideas that we were expounding. They were, however, in a rather awkward position. The future was so uncertain. How could they tell whether this democratic regime was going to continue? They were naturally in great fear of the Ministry of Education. Suppose that it gained again complete dictatorship over them. Suppose the reactionaries came back into control. Where would our friends, these liberals, be then?

On the other hand, there were certain assets favorable to us in their psychological situation. They had an ardent desire to be readmitted to the community of nations, and they wanted to be democratic, since that seemed the proper thing in the world of today. They wanted to please the Americans and win their aid and protection against possible worse terrors and in the preservation of their ancient and beautiful culture.

Another asset was the ease with which friendship developed between Japanese and Americans. This was true on our committees, and it was true also among other Americans in Tokyo. A private soldier who was driving the car in which I rode said one day: "These are good people. They're honest and hard-working'. We like them much better than we like the Filipinos or the Chinese." I think this sentiment was typical of many of the men of our armed forces there. At all events in our committee, as we sat and talked with our Japanese colleagues and as we met them at various social functions and sight-seeing expeditions, we came to feel at ease and at home, and our discussions went on much more comfortably.

We also visited a great many Japanese educational institutions. The various committees of our Mission divided these up, and to the lot of my committee fell for the most part the institutions of higher education. I happened to visit a good many Christian schools and colleges and at some made speeches to assemblies of their students. One of my happiest recollections is addressing the senior class at Tsuda College, about twenty miles outside Tokyo, of which Miss Ai Hoshino, my able Japanese colleague on the Committee on Higher Education, was President. The bright, attractive faces of all the girls, their apparent complete understanding of English, their ready response to all my attempts at humor, made them a perfectly delightful audience.

The Tsuda students were preparing a production of Barrie's "The Twelve-Pound Look." But what impressed me most was the following brief and searching examination written on the blackboard for the First Year Class in the History of England and America course under the Department of English:

The First Year Class girls were bent earnestly over their papers, writing the answers. I wished I could read them.

We visited of course the Imperial University of Tokyo, and during our stay at Kyoto we visited the Imperial University there. Kyoto is the ancient capital of Japan and the birthplace and home of Japanese culture. It was the one Japanese city which had been spared by the American Air Force. While at Kyoto a few members of my committee visited also the Otani Buddhist University there. I found that peculiarly interesting, especially the content of the curriculum of their Faculty of Letters, which naturally stressed Japanese subjects, gave some emphasis to India, touched very briefly on European philosophy, and devoted as much attention to the Tibetan language as to English.

The officials were most hospitable to us. They presented me with a beautiful volume on Zen Buddhism in the Japanese characters, and their professor of Buddhist philosophy gave me a book in English which he had himself written. As I glanced inside I found that it was dedicated to Charles R. Crane, that friend of mine who had introduced me to so many interesting and significant persons from remote parts of the world. This Professor Suzuki had stayed, he told me, in Mr. Crane's apartment in New York, which I knew so well. On that damp, dreary, chill day in Kyoto, in the small dark room where the Buddhist officials received us, it seemed a far cry indeed to the warmth and the glow of lights and the rich colors of the Russian pictures on the walls of that Park Avenue apartment. But Mr. Crane's friendly interest in the spiritual core of all peoples bridged the gap.

Another occasion that stirred my feelings was a luncheon meeting of Japanese women graduates of American colleges and universities. There were some forty or fifty of them present. I urged them to form a Japanese Association of University Women, and to become a member of the great International Federation of University Women. They were attracted but they were very tired and there was a great deal to be done in reconstructing their own country. To my joy, however, I heard within a few years that they had formed such a Japanese association and were applying for membership in the International Federation, to which they are sure to be welcomed.

There was a very great interest among the Japanese in the newly constituted United Nations. They had been cut off from all normal contacts with the West and had had very little chance to hear about the new world organization. When they learned that I had been a member of the United States Delegation at San Francisco and had had a part in the drawing up of the Charter, they were eager to hear from me something about this new enterprise. The Minister of Foreign Affairs invited me to deliver an address at their Foreign Service Training Institute for the young men who in the future, when Japan again had international relations, would serve in foreign posts. So I went one day to a large hall, very cold as were all the buildings in Tokyo, and spoke to a gathering of about a hundred earnest men. Besides the faculty and students of the Institute there were forty members of the Foreign Office staff. I tried to explain to them the principal points of the Charter and the process by which it had been adopted in San Francisco. They listened with the most grave attention and took careful notes.

An even more interesting United Nations meeting was one held by the United Nations Study Committee of Tokyo in one of the office buildings still standing, very cold as usual, and with that horrible odor in the corridors. The twenty or thirty members who met in the small room were very friendly. They were men who in the past had represented Japan at the League of Nations, and on other international bodies. They knew all about the kind of problems which we had faced at San Francisco. After I had finished telling of the Conference and the process of adopting the Charter, they were full of questions. Why had we put in such-and-such a provision instead of the one on this subject which was in the Covenant of the League of Nations? Why had we not continued this and that provision of the Covenant? How did we think this new idea was going to work? And finally—How is Professor Shotwell?

The Chairman of the Committee wrote me a charming letter afterwards, thanking me for my speech, which he called "a brilliant combination of ethic, politic, logic and rhetoric." "You are now," he told me, "the first honorary member of our Study Committee. Nothing will be more encouraging to us than to know that you keep somewhere in your memory the existence of a small group óf men determined to work for the sake of the ideal you have so clearly set before our eyes."

I was much pleased by my election as honorary member. Their Committee soon became converted into the United Nations Association of Japan, and I still get reports from them which I read with much interest. I hope that it will not be too long before their great ambition is achieved and Japan is admitted to membership in the United Nations.

About midway in our visit we were invited to meet the Emperor. Since the palace in which he had lived had been destroyed by American bombs, he received us in another building on the grounds of the imperial establishment. While we were waiting in an anteroom I was horrified by the rude and arrogant behavior of an American newspaperman wearing our Army uniform, who tried to bully the court official in charge into admitting him along with the members of the Mission. It seemed to me that if journalists wore our American uniform they should be under some sort of Army discipline. I tackled the young man and begged him not to disgrace our country's uniform by such rudeness to our host. He was not impressed and just said he must "get a story." Emily Woodward, of Atlanta, Georgia, came forward and supported me, but no other member of the Mission, not even the representatives of the Army and the State Department, risked incurring the enmity of the press. The reporter was not admitted; the court official handled him with imperturbable good humor, courtesy, and firmness. (The young man's newspaper gave me a dig the next day.)

Presently we were ushered into the Emperor's reception room and arranged in order of precedence. This is always a problem for Americans outside Washington. In this case we settled it simply. After our Chairman and the representatives of the State and War Departments came the four women members, in alphabetical order, followed by the men in alphabetical order. After we were duly arranged the Emperor entered, attended by a charming and polished chamberlain who interpreted and presented us one by one as the Emperor passed along the line and shook hands with us. My name came first among the women, and I have sometimes wondered if I was not the first foreign woman with whom he had ever shaken hands. When he had completed the line, he returned to the Chairman and stood for several minutes chatting with him. As I was only three places away I could hear this little conversation. It was then that the Emperor asked us to recommend an American woman to come to Japan as tutor for the crown prince, a plan which was afterwards carried out with, I gather, much success.

I presume that the Emperor understands and speaks English, but it was assumed on that occasion that he did not. In aspect he was a completely unimpressive figure, but friendly and courteous and obviously trying to do his very best in a new and strange role. I was sorry for him. We did not meet the Empress or any of the imperial children, but after the session with the Emperor, were taken to another building on the palace grounds where we were delightfully entertained by his younger brother, Prince Takamatsu, and his agreeable and sophisticated wife.

We were now privileged to see a performance by the imperial court dancers, who, we were told, never performed except at court, and only in these ancient dances which were not presented anywhere else in Japan. The auditorium into which we were escorted bore a striking resemblance to an Elizabethan theater, with a stage projecting into what may well have been a symbolic representation of an inn yard. Prince Takamatsu sat next to me and politely explained the performance, which is also well described in a little program prepared for us that I still preserve. We were seeing the "Bugaku," which literally means "Dance and Music." Its accompaniment is the "Gagaku," the most elegant form of classical music of old Japan.

The musicians in gorgeous robes sat at the back of the stage playing ancient instruments, one of the flute family, a reed organ, and three kinds of percussion. To the Western ear the effect was very strange. The dancers, in most ornate garb of traditional design, came forward on the stage. For this program two dances had been chosen, unusually simple so as to be comprehensible for us, "Polo" and "Finding Snake." "The polo stick and ball of the former and the snake-shaped ring of the latter are telling some of the meanings of what they represent which is rather unusual with Bugaku pieces." So says the little program. The dancers were all men, eight of them in the first dance but only one in the second. The form was pantomimic and highly stylized; it was very beautiful in a strange, exotic way, largely because of the brilliance and ornate splendor of the costumes, in which flame color predominated, with vivid green: "Polo" was striking, but to me "Finding Snake" was the more effective. The solo performer was a very gifted actor-dancer.

The Bugaku originated in Tibet, I was told, thousands of years ago and was passed on through China to Japan, where it attained its highest development and greatest beauty. It still carries with it the flavor of far-away antiquity. As I watched it, I felt that I was looking through a long time-telescope at the art and ritual of thousands of years ago.

After the dance we went into a reception room where we had tea in European style. A large table was laid in the center of the room and we were handed cups as we stood about and plates of sandwiches and cakes were passed. We had a chance to talk then with the princess and other persons of the court.

When I visited Kyoto I went with a small group to a charming Japanese house belonging to the University of Kyoto, where we were served ceremonial tea in the very highest Japanese style. There we sat on the floor (very painful to Western limbs!) and watched one of the great experts of the tea ceremony make and serve the pale beverage. Every one of his movements was strictly in accord with a long-established ritual. The two Japanese ladies who sat on either side of me murmured their appreciation. "It is indeed a great privilege," said one, "to see him perform the tea ceremony." In my ignorance, alas, I could see nothing impressive in it.

To the Japanese the tea ceremony apparently has a profound significance. When we were discussing the education of women, a man remarked: "However you change the education of our women, you must leave them thorough training in the delicate art of the tea ceremony. Imagine how humiliated a man would be if his wife were unable to perform this ritual skillfully and charmingly for his friends."

I recall another remark made by a man, this time an American, about the education of women. As we were flying up from Guam to Tokyo a friendly G.I., hearing of our Mission, said, "Oh, please don't do anything to change the women of Japan. They are quite perfect just as they are." However, General MacArthur did change them, or try to. He issued a rescript saying that in Japan women were now equal to men. Since he had said it, they were. It seemed quite simple. They were entitled to vote, to hold office, to be admitted to educational institutions if qualified, and in every way to have equal rights with men. Though technically this great change may have seemed simple, I imagine that in practice it has not worked out quite so easily. But a number of Japanese women were promptly elected to Parliament, and many have shown ability in various fields and the gift of leadership.

Our Japanese colleagues and several high government officials entertained us handsomely at various parties of a formal sort and in many personal individual ways treated us with great courtesy and kindness. We, alas, were not allowed to return their hospitality. The Mission and the C., I., and E. Boys gave a farewell party to ourselves but not to them. Apparently it was not etiquette for the conquerors to entertain the conquered; that embarrassed us considerably.

In the Imperial Hotel we were not permitted to invite a Japanese to a meal in the restaurant. We could receive Japanese callers in the corridor and lounge, but those places were chill and drafty in the bitter weather of March. The kindest thing any one of us could do for a Japanese was to invite him or her to visit for a time in our heated bedrooms, which were comfortably warm, so that they could thaw out a little their bodies which had been chilled by months of cold and damp.

I had various interesting callers, mainly graduates or former students of Barnard or their relatives and some other Japanese of the educational world. In accordance with their custom they occasionally gave me little gifts. When one Barnardite departed, she put into my hand a small package which proved to contain, to my delight but embarrassment, an unusually lovely necklace of the famous Japanese cultured pearls. With these courteous Japanese visitors I experienced that difficulty common to Westerners of not knowing whether what they said was really what they thought or just what they hoped would be pleasing to me.

I have said very little as yet about the principal business of our Mission. In carrying it on we were handicapped by the profound differences of opinion among us, which had begun to be painfully apparent at that first meeting on the island of Guam. There were two vital points on which we were utterly at odds. The first was our attitude towards the Japanese and towards the kind of educational reorganization that we were going to recommend to them.

One group of about eight I might call the "Supra-Americans." They had no friendly feeling for the Japanese people or regard for their culture and no desire to aid them. They had embarked on this Mission as a service to their own country and to the cause of democracy. They wanted to impose on the Japanese, American education in its entirety, or what they thought to be American education. They wanted to wipe out the past of Japan. One member of this group went so far as to say that unless he managed to get the Emperor abolished, he could not return from the Mission with any degree of satisfaction. He urged that we recommend that there should be a law forbidding the reading in the public schools of Japan of any rescript from the Emperor. When some of us tried to point out to him that this would be like forbidding in the United States the reading in any public school of a Thanksgiving Proclamation from the President, he refused to see any similarity.

Then there was another group of about eight of us whom I might call colloquially the "Live-and-let-live Americans." We had a great admiration for the ancient culture of the Japanese, especially for their art and their love of beauty in all forms. We wanted to preserve these great virtues while helping the Japanese to eliminate the features of their education which had led them to disaster. We in this group had all had experience in foreign relations. We knew a good deal about the cultures of other countries. We thought that we knew how to advise and lead the Japanese, to aid them towards political democracy. We believed, however, in the purpose expressed in the Preamble to the Constitution of UNESCO where it states that "the organization promises to preserve the independence, integrity and fruitful diversity of the cultures and educational systems of the various states," while helping them to know and understand one another and to work together for the advancement of learning and the general well-being of mankind.

There was another fundamental principle on which we differed and the two groups divided in much the same way on this. It concerned a basic ideal of American education. The Supra-Americans insisted that the American ideal was that all children should have the same educational advantages up through the junior college, irrespective of their natural ability or interest or ambition. They insisted that it was totally undemocratic to apply any tests to pupils in order to find out which ones had more promise than others and to give to the most promising ones greater opportunities. I recall that one city superintendent of schools illustrated this principle by saying "If a school were very crowded so that there were only five places available for new pupils and there were ten applicants, then it would be undemocratic and unethical to apply any kind of test to find out which five of the ten showed the most promise. The only fair, democratic, and right thing to do would be to take the odd numbers on the list."

"But," spoke lip one member of the other group, "wouldn't that be very unfair and undemocratic towards the even numbers?"

The group that I have called the "Let-live Americans" took the opposite stand on this point. We agreed of course that education should be spread among all the people of Japan, but we knew that for many years to come Japan would be a very poor country, since its resources and its economy had been wrecked by the war. There would not be vast sums of money available for education. But in a democracy it was absolutely essential that there should be able, trained, highly educated leaders. And so we felt that after the elementary stages of education, the most promising young men and young women should be selected by suitable tests, and helped to go on to the higher training. Only these should have that privilege, but of course means should be taken to open these opportunities to all classes of society, so that the really able boys and girls should not be kept from advancement by economic or social barriers.

Well, the two sides never could agree; starting from such absolutely different fundamental principles, they ended their discussions by just looking at each other blankly. As I have said, there were about eight in each of the groups who remained fixed in their principles, and the rest of the Mission voted sometimes with one group and sometimes with the other as specific questions arose.

The Japanese educational system on which we were invited to give advice and suggestions had been in some ways a highly efficient one. We were told that practically every child of school age in Japan had actually been in school and that 95 per cent of the population was literate, a figure considerably higher than that of the United States of America. (There were fierce discussions as to what "literate" meant in Japan.) The system was a highly centralized one, somewhat resembling in this respect that of the French. Everything was run from the "Mombusho," the Ministry of Education. Curriculum, textbooks, rules, and regulations were handed down from that high source. The local communities, principals, and teachers had almost no choice, we were told, or chance for personal initiative, and the children were not taught to develop their own individualities, but just to be loyal subjects of the emperor. How could we help to democratize this system? All of us except a few of the Supra-Americans realized that any changes would ultimately have to be made by the Japanese themselves, but we thought that suggestions from us might stimulate and encourage them.

A fundamental principle of American advice on the educational system of Japan was the elimination of militarism and "supra-nationalism"; on the constructive side the development of the individual rather than of the state. Before our Mission arrived SCAP, with the advice of the C., I., and E. Boys, had already taken some drastic steps. Directives had been issued eliminating state shinto as a religion in the schools and suspending all instruction in history, geography, and morals! The canceling of such vitally important courses may seem absurd, but it had to be done pending the preparation of new textbooks which would be free from those militaristic and supranationalistic tendencies which had brought Japan to destruction.

Each of our committees prepared a report on its special field and these were then debated, amended, and finally, by slight majorities, adopted by the Mission as a whole. As I have said, we disagreed so fundamentally and violently among ourselves that there was scarcely anything we could adopt by a sizable majority. At the end of the debates a good many members began to say that they could not possibly sign the report.

Here however was where our Chairman showed his great ability. He had seemed a rather odd Chairman in meetings, occasionally bullying members of the Mission when they spoke and apparently trying to force his views upon them. At the end he shut himself into his room all day while the five members of the Drafting Committee, of which I was one, worked over the separate sections and brought them to him. T. V. Smith and I, I recall, were able to tone down some of the more obnoxious points and clarify a few of the statements and recommendations. David H. Stevens of the Rockefeller Foundation did some excellent work in rewriting part of the Higher Education section. The Chairman, closeted in solitude, amalgamated and reconciled the various points of view and produced the final report. Some of the members of the Mission had already gone home, the others were off sight-seeing while we labored. When they returned, they were all willing to sign.

In general, the report recommended a decentralization of the educational system, far more local and individual responsibility in administration and in teaching. In my own field of higher education it strongly recommended that access to the universities be made much easier for students of all social and economic classes, and that to this end opportunities for adequate preparation for university entrance be made far more widely available. We suggested also that the curriculum be altered so as to give the students more opportunity for general education and avoid such a high degree of specialization, which seemed to us excessive. As part of this we recommended that provision be made in the universities for lectures for all students in world history as well as Japanese history and for work in international relations.

We urged the great importance of research and expressed the hope that provision might be made for far more of this. We urged also that as rapidly as possible all present restrictions on the freedom of this work be lifted. (This was directed at SCAP.)

One section of the Mission's report dealt with what seemed tc me the most difficult and interesting educational problem I have ever encountered, a proposed reorganization of the written language of Japan. Japanese is an extremely difficult language. Learning to write it and to read it involves concentrated labor over long years. We were told that during the eight years of required education the pupils devoted approximately two-thirds of all their time to writing and reading. (Estimates of this amount differed somewhat.) Even with all this effort—and Japanese pupils are mentally alert and remarkably diligent—the elementary-school graduates have trouble in reading common material such as daily newspapers and popular magazines. As a general rule they cannot grasp books dealing with contemporary problems and ideas. Usually they have failed to acquire a degree of mastery sufficient to make reading an easy tool of development after leaving school.

This grave difficulty is due largely to the form of the written language, which uses "Kanji," Chinese ideographs introduced in the third century with the Chinese civilization, and also "Kana," purely phonetic symbols each standing for a syllable. The Chinese ideographs are very beautiful, but they represent speech sounds entirely different from Japanese ones, and each character is an ideograph or symbol for a Chinese word, not a Japanese one. Long before our Mission arrived in Japan there had been discussion of possible reform of the written language. Shortly after I reached Tokyo the husband of one of our Japanese Barnard graduates presented me with a little pamphlet published by the Roman Alphabet Propagating Society of Japan in 1931 entitled "The Japanese Language and the Roman Alphabet." This movement for the Romanization of the written language, the use of "Romaji" as the Roman letters were called, had obtained considerable influence.

Our Mission appointed a special committee to consider this fundamental and intricate problem, and we discussed it with some heat and difference of opinion. Our report takes the question up with apologies, stating, "Language is so intimate an organism in a people's life that it is hazardous to approach it from without." But the report goes on to say that the question of language reform is basic and urgent, casting its shadow over practically every branch of the educational program from the primary school to the university. Moreover, without some drastic change the great mass of Japanese citizens will not be able to read sufficiently well to carry on the simple duties of citizenship, and Japan cannot be a political democracy. The report recommends therefore that some form of Romaji be brought into common use by all means possible, and that the particular form to be chosen should be decided by a commission of Japanese scholars, educational leaders, and statesmen.

The Mission was encouraged in this drastic recommendation by the fact that Turkey had recently made, and with apparent success, the great change from Arabic to Roman characters in its written language.

But what did the Japanese scholars and experts say on this question which to them touched the core and soul of their culture? Most of them said that all these hours over the years devoted by pupils in the schools to the study and the drawing of the Kanji was not just training in reading and writing. It was a profound development of their nature and their taste. Drawing these ideographs taught them line and design and appreciation of beauty. It steeped them in the tradition and philosophy of Japanese culture. Had we not observed the deep joy which all Japanese from the highest to the lowest took in beauty, beauty of nature and beauty of art? Did we wish to sacrifice this most precious heritage of the Japanese people? If we forced the Romanization of their written language upon them, that is what we should be doing.

Of course we could not and would not have forced it on them. We left the decision to them, inevitably. I personally was deeply impressed by their argument. I had indeed observed how the Japanese, from the sophisticated artist to the humblest peasant, got happiness out of beauty in so many aspects of life, happiness of a kind very few Americans ever know. I was ready to believe that the drawing of the Kanji developed and perpetuated in the child a sensitive instinct for beauty. If this was true, should the Japanese risk sacrificing such an instinct, especially in a land of inevitably, continuing poverty, where it might compensate the people for the material possessions which we had and they lacked? Or even if they could gain material possessions, was not this sensitiveness to beauty more precious anyway? Was political democracy worth the risk of losing such a gift? To most Americans the answer seemed obviously in the affirmative, but for the Japanese, I felt, the sacrifice demanded was too heavy.

Since the time of the Mission I have begun to realize that they may not have to make this critical choice. Reading has become less important for the citizens of a political democracy as other media of mass communication have developed. Through the ear, as in the distant past, they now absorb facts and argument, by radio; and they see as well as hear, on the television screen, the characters of their national life. As village radios spread through the Far East, perhaps Japan can have both her Kanji and effective political democracy.

In the midst of the grim wreckage that surrounded us as we met in Japan one cheerful element remained—the children. Japanese children are entrancing, just like the little dolls that my mother used to buy for me at Vantine's exotic store in New York in my childhood, but full of life and radiant warmth and smiles. They softened the hearts of even those members of the Mission who had been most bitter in their feelings towards Japan when we arrived. At the last meeting on March 30th, just before our departure, we voted unanimously to make a gift to the children of Japan, a collection of the best children's books we could find in our own country. Every member of our group, and we were none of us wealthy, contributed 1,000 yen, or about $70, for this gift.

Of course, in the long run the Japanese, as I have often said, had to reform and develop their own educational system, in accordance with their national temperament and genius. But I think the visit of our Mission perhaps did a little good in stimulating and encouraging them at a difficult moment in their history. Some of them at least were pleased because twenty-five Americans, busy people, of some prominence in their home fields, had as volunteers devoted six weeks of their time and had faced some risk of their lives, to make this gesture of helpfulness toward our former enemy.

One afternoon at the Imperial Hotel I had a visit from Michi Kawai, a remarkable Japanese woman in the field of education, strong and gentle.

"This Mission of yours," she said to me, "is a very wonderful thing, and it has touched us greatly. Has there ever been such a thing before in the history of the world? Have any conquerors sent teachers to the conquered to help them improve their education?"

"Well," I answered, "I believe Alexander the Great took with him on his campaigns of conquest Greek philosophers to spread intellectual enlightenment among the conquered."

"Nevertheless," said Michi Kawai, "even if it is not the first example, it is a kindly act you have done, and we shall not forget it."

Two profound impressions remained in my mind after this expedition. The first was a sense of our grave responsibility towards the natives of Guam and of the other Pacific islands for which we had now assumed trusteeship. Were we really qualified to carry out this task? Scarcely one American in a million thought about it and gave a moment's worry to our islanders. I felt that had I been young and strong, I should have liked to devote myself somehow to this new mission.

But of course the deepest impression had been made by that strange experience of arriving as a conqueror in a great and ruined nation and sitting for weeks in earnest conference with our enemies. It was odd to recall how quickly we came to have warm and friendly sentiments towards them.

They were indeed still technically our enemies, for the war was not officially ended. And that Pacific war had been the most terrible and barbarous and ruthless war in all human history. We Americans had not forgotten Pearl Harbor nor the horrible cruelties inflicted by the Japanese upon prisoners, nor could our Japanese colleagues sitting with us amid the appalling devastation of their capital possibly forget what the Americans had done to them. A charming Japanese woman alluded very gently one day to the fact that it was the anniversary of the "Great Fire Raid." On that one night under the fire bombs of our B-29's one hundred thousand men, women, and children, civilian citizens of Tokyo, met a terrible death.

Yet in spite of all this, as we sat and worked together, as we looked upon the material wreckage and the cold and hunger and wet and misery and planned for better things, somehow the dividing line between victor and vanquished seemed to me to fade and we were just human beings struggling side by side, "with malice towards none and charity for all," to bind up the wounds of the world.

Gildersleeve, Virginia Crocheron. "Mission to Japan" excerpt. Many a Good Crusade. New York: Macmillan Company, 1954, 371-391.