¹ Kokutai seika no hatsuyō, Tokyo: Rakuyōdō, 1919.

² RHM: The title of Tachibana's Bungei shunjū series was My Tōdai (Watakushi no Tōdai).

³ Kokutai shinron.

⁴ Tōkyō daigaku no gakuto dōin, gakuto shutsujin, Tokyo: Tōdai shuppanbu, 1998.

⁵ Gakuto shutsujin: sensō to seishun, Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1998.

⁶ Kindai Nihon no gun-san-gaku fukugōtai: kaigun, jūkōgyōkai, daigaku, Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 2005.

⁷ Naitō Hatsuho, Gunkan sōchō: Hiraga Yuzuru, Tokyo: Bungei shunjū, 1987.

⁸ RHM: There are translations of this book into English: tr. Tanaka Seitarō, Voices from the Sea: Letters and Diaries of Japanese Students Killed in the War, Tokyo: Eihōsha, 1964; and Midori Yamanouchi Rynn and Joseph L. Quinn, trs., Listen to the Voices from the Sea: Writings of the Fallen Japanese Students, Tonawanda, New York: University of Scranton Press, 2000. There is also a translation into French: trs. Suzanne Audrey and Jean Lartéguy, Ces voix qui nous viennent de la mer: le Japon et ses morts, Paris: Gallimard, 1954. There is even an English translation of Ces voix: The Sun Goes Down: Last Letters from Japanese Suicide-Pilots and Soldiers, tr. Nora Wydenbruck, London: W. Kimber, 1956. “From the sea” is only an approximation of the Japanese wadatsumi; that term goes back to the 8^th century and refers to the gods of the sea (of the water, the rain, and so on). So its use in the title lends an animistic/religious patina to the subject. Alternative translations might be Listen to the Voices of the Gods of the Sea, and Hark! Voices from the Beyond.

⁹ “Kike wadatsumi no koe” no sengoshi, Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 1999.

¹⁰ Senjiki Nihon no seishinshi, Tokyo: Iwanami, 1982; tr. (no translator credited), An intellectual history of wartime Japan, 1931-1945, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986.

¹¹ RHM: In the mid-18^th century, Leopold von Ranke gave lectures on world history to the future King Max of Bavaria. The king's question: “What should we expect of Nemesis in history if not only the leading personalities but the people as a whole commit national crimes and act unjustly.”

¹² This analysis echoes what Carol Gruber concluded of American scholars in World War I: “[P]rofessors assumed that knowledge is effective chiefly in association with power, and they ultimately came to serve the interests of power rather than the interests of truth.” Gruber, Mars and Minerva: World War I and the Uses of the Higher Learning in America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975), p. 259. Gruber draws on an essay by Merle Curti that takes the issue back even further: “The American Scholar in Three Wars,” Journal of the History of Ideas 3 (June 1942).

¹³ Harvard, UAI 5.158.48, Box 5.

¹⁴ Hershberg, Conant, p. 128: “The NDRC…broke with the past by carrying out most war-related scientific research under contract to civilian universities and institutes. Later accepted as a norm, this strategy…fostered a transformation of the relationship among American universities, government, and the armed forces that would long outlast the war for which the committee was created.”

¹⁵ “What Victory Requires,” Dec. 22, 1941, in Vital Speeches of the Day, 8:9 (Jan. 15, 1942), 199-202.

¹⁶ “American Youth and the War” (to National Council for Books in Wartime, May 14, 1942), Vital Speeches of the Day, 8:16, 500-502.

¹⁷ Quoted in John T. Bethell, “Harvard and the Arts of War,” Harvard Magazine (September-October 1995), p. 39.

¹⁸ Conant to MacLeish, June 25, 1937; quoted in Hershberg, Conant, pp. 113-114.

¹⁹ June 29, 1940; quoted in Hershberg, Conant, p. 126.

²⁰ Bethell, “Harvard and the Arts of War,” p. 34.

²¹ Bethell, “Harvard and the Arts of War,” p. 41.

²² Bethell, “Harvard and the Arts of War,” pp. 37-39, 48.

²³ The same holds true of all major research universities: Berkeley, Columbia, Yale, and the others.

²⁴ To speak of my own experience as an academic, national priorities have been a leitmotif of my career. For most of my seven years (1960-67) of graduate training I received funding under the National Defense Education Act (1958). That legislation aimed “To strengthen the national defense and to encourage and assist in the expansion and improvement of educational programs to meet critical national needs.” Those critical needs included modern languages (e.g., Japanese, Chinese, Russian) but not classical languages. The act was an immediate response to American shock at the Soviet launching of Sputnik, earth's first orbiting satellite (October 1957). My first regular appointment was as assistant professor of history at The Ohio State University. On arrival in Columbus in 1967, I had to sign an oath: “I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Ohio against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same… SO HELP ME GOD. … I do not advocate, nor am I a member of any political party or organization that advocates the overthrow of the Government of the United States or the Government of the State of Ohio by force or violence; and that during such time as I am an officer, instructor, or employee of The Ohio State University, I will not advocate nor become a member of any political party or organization that advocates the overthrow of the Government of the United States or the Government of the State of Ohio by force or violence.” I also signed an affidavit that I was not a member of a long list of organizations. I remember only that the Sakurakai was one of them. I had heard of it as an organization of radical right-wing Japanese military officers in the 1930s. No, I wasn't a member. I remember sitting in the Ohio State football stadium for a fall convocation—it was probably 1967—listening to the university's president, Novice Fawcett, warn incoming students against their professors: they are experts, he intoned, but only in their fields. I have regretted ever after that I didn't walk out. My memory is that no one did walk out. In 1971 I moved to the University of Massachusetts. Shortly after my arrival there, I was asked to sign this loyalty oath: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and that I will oppose the overthrow of the government of the United States of America or of this Commonwealth by force, violence or by any illegal or unconstitutional method.” But between 1967 and 1971, I had changed. I refused to sign, and a number of us brought suit against the oath, and as a result the university backed down and agreed not to enforce it. Of course, filing suit is quite different from refusing absolutely to sign the oath. Would I have sacrificed my job had we lost in court? I doubt it. Loyalty oaths to the contrary notwithstanding, the situation I faced was light years removed from that of professors at Tōdai in the 1930s. My experience of Japanese universities has always been in the privileged (and removed) position of visiting graduate student or visiting scholar. I spent three years attached to Kyoto University (Faculty of Law, 1964-66, 1970-71), six months attached to Tokyo University (Faculty of Law, 1993-94), and a total of seven months attached to Hokkaido University (Faculty of Letters, 1975; Faculty of Law, 1994).