Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

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Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

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Mitsui
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/16/20

Image
Mitsui Group
三井グループ
Type
Keiretsu
Founded 1876; 144 years ago
(foundation of Mitsui & Co.)
Founder Masuda Takashi
Headquarters Tokyo Edit this on Wikidata, Japan Edit this on Wikidata
Area served
Worldwide
Products Food and beverage, industrial products, etc.
Services Financial services, real estate, retail, shipping, logistics, etc.
Website http://www.mitsui.com/ Edit this on Wikidata

Mitsui Group (三井グループ, Mitsui Gurūpu) is one of the largest keiretsu in Japan and one of the largest corporate groups in the world.

A keiretsu (Japanese: 系列, literally system, series, grouping of enterprises, order of succession) is a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings. In the legal sense, it is a type of informal business group that are loosely organized alliances within the social world of Japan's business community.[1] The keiretsu maintained dominance over the Japanese economy for the second half of the 20th century, and to a lesser extent, the early 21st century.

The member's companies own small portions of the shares in each other's companies, centered on a core bank; this system helps insulate each company from stock market fluctuations and takeover attempts, thus enabling long-term planning in projects. It is a key element of the manufacturing industry in Japan.

-- Keiretsu, by Wikipedia


The major companies of the group include Mitsui & Co. (general trading company), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Sapporo Breweries, Toray Industries, Mitsui Chemicals, Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Holdings, Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and Mitsui Fudosan.[1]

History

Edo period origins


Image
Surugacho (Suruga Street) (1856), from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, by Hiroshige, depicting the Echigoya kimono and money exchange store with Mount Fuji in background. Currently, the Mitsui Main Building (三井本館), which houses Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Mitsui Fudosan, The Chuo Mitsui Trust and Banking Co. and Mitsui Memorial Museum, is located on the right side of the street. Mitsukoshi department store is on the left side.

Image
Mitsui Main Building and Nihonbashi Mitsui Tower

Founded by Mitsui Takatoshi (1622–1694), who was the fourth son of a shopkeeper in Matsusaka, in what is now today's Mie prefecture. From his shop, called Echigoya (越後屋), Mitsui Takatoshi's father originally sold miso and ran a pawn shop business. Later, the family would open a second shop in Edo (now called Tokyo).

Takatoshi moved to Edo when he was 14 years old, and later his older brother joined him. Sent back to Matsutaka by his brother, Takatoshi waited for 24 years until his older brother died before he could take over the family shop, Echigoya. He opened a new branch in 1673;[2] a large gofukuya (kimono shop) in Nihonbashi, a district in the heart of Edo. This genesis of Mitsui's business history began in the Enpō era, which was a nengō meaning "Prolonged Wealth".

In time, the gofukuya division separated from Mitsui, and is now called Mitsukoshi. Traditionally, gofukuyas provided products made to order; a visit was made to the customer's house (typically a person of high social class or who was successful in business), an order taken, then fulfilled. The system of accountancy was called "margin transaction". Mitsui changed this by producing products first, then selling them directly at his shop for cash. At the time, this was an unfamiliar mode of operation in Japan. Even as the shop began providing dry goods to the government of the city of Edo, cash sales were not yet a widespread business practice.

At about this time, Edo's government had struck a business deal with Osaka. Osaka would sell crops and other material to pay its land tax. The money was then sent to Edo—but moving money was dangerous in middle feudal Japan. In 1683 the shogunate granted permission for money exchanges (ryōgaeten) to be established in Edo.[3] The Mitsui "exchange shops" facilitated transfers and mitigated that known risk.

Formation of Mitsui zaibatsu

After the Meiji Restoration, Mitsui was among the enterprises that were able to expand to become zaibatsu not simply because they were already big and rich at the start of modern industrial development. Firms like Mitsui and Sumitomo were led by non-family managers such as Minomura Rizaemon, who guided the business by accurately forecasting the coming political and economic situations, by acquaintance with high-ranking government officials or politicians, and bold investment.[4]

Mitsui's main business in the early period were drapery, finance and trade, the first two being the businesses it inherited from the Tokugawa Era. It entered into mining because it acquired a mine as collateral from the loan it had made, and partly because it could buy a mine cheaply from the government, Mitsui then diversified to become the biggest business in pre-war Japan. The diversification was made mainly into related fields to take advantage of accumulated capabilities; for instance, the trading company entered into chemicals to attain forward integration.[5]

On July 1, 1876, Mitsui Bank, Japan's first private bank, was founded with Takashi Masuda (1848–1938) as its president. Mitsui Bank, which following a merger with Taiyō-Kobe Bank in the mid 1980s became part of Sakura Bank, survives as part of the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation. During the early 20th century, Mitsui was one of the largest zaibatsu, operating in numerous fields.

Mitsui Bank became the holding company of the Mitsui zaibatsu from 1876. It was joined as an ultimate parent company by Mitsui & Co. and Mitsui Mining in 1900, with various industrial concerns owned by various combinations of these companies and their subsidiaries.[6]

Likewise, Mitsui invested in maritime transportation to support its trading activities as well as invest in passenger transportation, first with the creation in 1878 of Osaka Shosen Kaisha (OSK), which was merged with Mitsui Steamship in 1964, to become Mitsui OSK Lines ('MOL'), which is today one of the largest ocean shipping groups in the world.

When the United Kingdom withdrew from the gold standard in 1931, during the height of the Great Depression, Mitsui Bank and Mitsui & Co. were found to have speculated around the transaction. This raised a political furor in Japan and resulted in the assassination of Mitsui executive Takuma Dan.[6]

World War II

As part of the Japanese plans for the exploitation of China, during the 1930s and '40s the subsidiary tobacco industry of Mitsui had started production of special "Golden Bat" cigarettes using the then-popular in the Far East trademark. Their circulation was prohibited in Japan and was used only for export. Local Japanese secret service under the controversial Imperial Japanese Army General Kenji Doihara had the control of their distribution in China and Manchuria where the production exported. Within the mouthpiece were small discreet doses of opium or heroin, and consequently millions of unsuspecting consumers became addicted to these narcotics, while huge profits were created for the company. The mastermind of the plan, Doihara, was later prosecuted and convicted for war crimes before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, sentenced to death; but no actions ever took place against the company which profited from their production. According to testimony presented at the Tokyo War Crimes trials in 1948, the revenue from the narcotization policy in China, including Manchukuo, was estimated in 20 million to 30 million yen per year, while another authority stated that the annual revenue was estimated by the Japanese military at US$300 million a year.[7][8]

During the Second World War, Mitsui employed American prisoners of war as slave laborers, some of whom were maimed by Mitsui employees.[9]

Postwar development as keiretsu

In 1947 and 1948, the Supreme Commander Allied Powers pressed the Japanese government to dismantle the ten largest zaibatsu conglomerates, including Mitsui. The Mitsui Group, now broken into many separate companies, reorganized itself as a horizontal coalition of independent companies in the 1950s, once the occupation of Japan had ended and some of the smaller companies were allowed to re-coalesce. The central firms in the keiretsu became Mitsui Bank and Mitsui & Co..[6]

Mitsui lagged somewhat behind its rivals Mitsubishi and Sumitomo Group in reorganization. Mitsui Bank, which should have been the mainstay and principal capital provider of the group, declined in size due to the collapse of the Imperial Bank after the war, which resulted in reduced cohesion of the conglomerate. Many companies that were once part of the Mitsui Group have become independent or tied to other conglomerates. Specifically, Toshiba, Toyota Motors, and Suntory, once part of the Mitsui Group, became independent, with the Toyota Group becoming a conglomerate in its own right. Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries is now considered to be part of the Mizuho Group, and many companies in the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group are now more closely tied to the Sumitomo Group than the Mitsui Group. Recently there have been signs that Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and the Mitsubishi Group could be taking over other parts of the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group. Mitsukoshi merged into Isetan, a major department store with close ties to the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, to form Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings in April 2008.

Makeup of the Mitsui Group

Companies currently associated with the Mitsui keiretsu include Mitsui & Co., Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Holdings, Japan Steel Works, Mitsui Chemicals, Mitsui Construction Co., Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding, Mitsui Fudosan, Mitsui-gold, Mitsui Mining & Smelting Co., Ltd., Mitsui Oil Exploration Co. (MOECO), Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Mitsui Petrochemical Industries Ltd, Mitsui-Soko, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group, Oji Paper Company, Pacific Coast Recycling, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Taiheiyo Cement, Toray Industries, Toshiba Corporation, Tri-net Logistics Management, Mitsui Commodity Risk Management [MCRM].

Mitsui companies which are in the Nikkei 225

• Mitsui & Co.
• Mitsui Chemicals
• Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding
• Mitsui Fudosan
• Mitsui Mining & Smelting Co., Ltd.
• Mitsui O.S.K. Lines
• Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group
• Mitsui Life Insurance Co.
• Mitsui-Soko Holdings
• Mitsui Mining & Smelting
• Nihon Unisys
• JA Mitsui Leasing
• Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings
• Denka
• Oji Paper Company
• Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group
• Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Holdings
• Sumitomo Mitsui Construction
• Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
• Shin Nippon Air Technologies
• Sapporo Brewery
• Sanki Engineering
• Aim Services Co., Ltd
• Toray Industries
• Toyo Engineering Corporation
• Toshiba
• Japan Steel Works

Other companies with close ties to the Mitsui Group

• Sony
• Ito-Yokado
• Sagami Railway
• Tokyo Broadcasting System
• Kanebo (Kao Corporation)
• Oriental Land
• Toyota Group
• Komatsu Limited
• Vale (mining company)
• Rio Tinto Group
• BHP Billiton
• Yamaha
• Yanmar
• Sims Metal Management – Mitsui owns 18% share capital in the company and is represented on its board.
• Columbia Asia
• IHH Healthcare Berhad – Mitsui owns 20.5% share capital in the company and is represented on its board.
• Greater Anglia – Mitsui owns 40% share of the British rail operator.
• West Midlands Trains - Mitsui owns 15% share of the British rail operator.

See also

• List of Japanese companies
• Mitsui family
• Mitsui & Co.
• Mitsui O.S.K. Lines
• Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group
• Mitsui Golden Glove Award

References

1. "Member Companies". Mitsui Public Relations Committee. Retrieved 23 April 2014.
2. Hall, John. (1970). Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times, p. 290.
3. Shinjō, Hiroshi. (1962). History of the Yen: 100 Years of Japanese Money-economy, p. 11.
4. Odagiri, Hiroyuki (1996). Technology and Industrial Development in Japan. Oxford University Press. pp. 72–73. ISBN 0-19-828802-6.
5. Odagiri, Hiroyuki (1996). Technology and Industrial Development in Japan. Oxford University Press. p. 76. ISBN 0-19-828802-6.
6. Grabowiecki, Jerzy (March 2006). "Keiretsu groups: their role in the Japanese economy and a reference point (or paradigm) for other countries" (PDF). JETRO. Retrieved 23 April 2014.
7. Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business, pages 312-313, John G. Roberts, Weatherhill, ISBN 978-0-8348-0080-9. 1991
8. Encyclopedia of espionage, p.315, Ronald Sydney Seth, ISBN 978-0-385-01609-4, Doubleday, 1974
9. Unfinished Business, Foreign Policy, June 28, 2010
Pennington, Matthew (25 April 2015). "'The truth needs to be told' about Japan's war history, some vets say". Stars and Stripes. United States. Associated Press. Retrieved 25 April 2015.

Sources

• Hall, John Whitney. (1970). Japan: From Prehistory to Modern Times in Delacorte World History, Vol. XX. New York: Delacorte Press. ISBN 0-297-00237-6
• Shinjō, Hiroshi. (1962). History of the Yen: 100 Years of Japanese Money-economy. Kobe: Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kōbe University.

External links

• Mitsui Public Relations Committee
• [1]
• [2]
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Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Mon Feb 17, 2020 8:15 am

Gregg Manners Sinclair
by libweb.hawaii.edu
Accessed: 2/17/20

The [University of Hawaii] Press was established in 1947 at the initiative of University of Hawaiʻi President Gregg M. Sinclair.

-- University of Hawaii Press, by Wikipedia


Image
University photo by Masao Miyamoto

GREGG MANNERS SINCLAIR, for whom Sinclair Library is named, served as fourth president of the University from 1942-1956. Born in St. Mary’s, Ontario, Canada, Sinclair earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota in 1912 and a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1919, but did not obtain a doctorate. He taught English in Japan before coming to the University of Hawaii’s English department in 1928.

Image
Sinclair Library

In modern parlance, Sinclair would be termed a “celebrity hound,” but he turned this interest to the University’s advantage and as a faculty member recruited many eminent people as guest lecturers to the University. Among these were Hamlin Garland, Christopher Morley, Thornton Wilder, Carl Sandburg, and Carl Van Doren. His interest in Japan led to the founding of the University’s Oriental Institute and he served as the first president of that institution. The Oriental Institute established the University’s role in international relations, and would later lead to the establishment of the federally funded East West Center in Hawaii. He was successful in bringing some of the world’s best minds to Hawaii for two East-West Philosophers’ Conferences, supported by a series of notables ranging from maharajas to America’s most wealthy.

The Asia Collection is the most significant collection of Asian materials in the State of Hawaii. It dates from 1920, when the University of Hawaii Board of Regents established the Japanese Department. The Oriental Institute was established in 1930 to support study of China, India and Japan. The East-West Center (EWC) acquired the vernacular language (CJK) materials of the Oriental Library in 1962. The Research Libraries of the EWC expanded the scope of Asia regional studies to include Korea and all countries in South and Southeast Asia. In 1970, the Asia Collection was transferred from the EWC back to the University of Hawaii Library.

-- Hamilton Library (Hawaii), by Wikipedia


During Hawaii’s war years, Sinclair as University president succeeded in maintaining and developing university programs under exceedingly difficult conditions.

At his side when he was on the English faculty and later University president was the remarkable Marjorie Putnam Sinclair whom he married in 1938. She was twenty-five years his junior. Their natures complemented one another in that, while Sinclair was attracted to eminent people, Marjorie’s interest was in the textures of ancient societies. She was to become a prominent novelist of Hawaii, while ably managing to serve as the University’s first lady and as hostess for Sinclair’s frequent and famous guests.

After his 1956 retirement, Sinclair was Chairman of the Citizen’s Advisory Commission on Statehood for Hawaii and an influential member of the Democratic Party.

STATEMENT OF UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII REPRESENTATIVES, GREGG M. SINCLAIR, PRESIDENT; K.C. LEEBRICK, VICE PRESIDENT, PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENT

Judge Wimberly: What we would like to have you do is file any statement you may have prepared, for the record, and then make any statements you wish to make.

Mr. Gregg M. Sinclair: My name is Gregg M. Sinclair, president of the University of Hawaii.

I should like to submit for the record a statement, or a series of statements, from the university people; 12 such statements, including 1 from myself. These give various facets of the statehood question and I think show that Hawaii is entitled to statehood. Now, in addition to that, I would like to make a few further statements.

These statements were made at a luncheon which we held at the university in the regents' room, a luncheon in honor of Judge Wimberly and Mr. Longley, and I ask the staff members to put down in brief compass what they had said, because I have been so impressed by the variety of arguments and the manner in which they were given -- the manner in which the points of view were given.

(The matter referred to is as follows:)

STATEMENT OF GREGG M. SINCLAIR, PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII

I believe that Hawaii is entitled to statehood for two reasons:

1. Hawaii would pass with a high grade every test that has ever been required of any Territory that ever became a State at any time in our history. I refer to such objective tests as population, taxation, business, literacy, school system -- the orderly and successful conducting of its business of living.

2. The granting of statehood to Hawaii would not only be valuable to the citizens of the Territory but would be of very great value to all Americans. Hawaii's contribution in the war demonstrated that it is ideally located as a vantage point for the people of our country. By granting statehood to Hawaii, the Government would project the idea of democracy 2,000 miles nearer the continents where we are likely to do more business in the twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-second centuries than we have ever done before. The granting of statehood to Hawaii would have a profound effect upon the peoples of Asia. This may be indicated by this incident: When the House of Representatives at Washington passed the enabling act, the news was heralded in India, as reported by Dr. Charles A. Moore, head of our philosophy department, who is now a Guggenheim fellow in India. He stated that this news made the front pages of the Madras and Calcutta newspapers.

Two arguments have always been used against the granting of statehood to Hawaii:

1. That Hawaii is not contiguous to any other State. This argument might have been valuable in 1850, although when California was admitted as a State it was not contiguous to any other State, but there were land masses over which soldiers might travel to California if necessary. I cannot regard this argument as very effective in this age of science, however. It is obvious that Hawaii is closer to the Capital of our country, by any real test, than was any Territory at the time of its admission to the Union. We have radio service; we have news services; we have constant contacts with the mainland, something that very few of the States had at the time of their admission. This fact of Hawaii's noncontiguity was considered at the time it was made a Territory, and it did not seem an insurperable objection to the majority of Senators and Representatives.

2. Our racial composition: I believe the work of our civilians and local soldiers during the war reduced this objection to the minimum. Anyone who lived here in Hawaii during the war years must have a deep sense of appreciation of the fine American qualities of our population. Our people met the greatest test that has ever been forced upon a large segment of our people, and they met the test beautifully. It is inconceivable that any section of our country will ever again have to meet such a test as our Americans of Japanese ancestry met from 1941 to 1945. They acted as Americans because they are Americans.

I fell, therefore, that these two arguments against the granting of statehood to Hawaii are untenable. I feel that Hawaii is as ready for statehood as it will ever be and that if statehood is granted both Hawaii and the country will be the better for it.

-- Statehood for Hawaii: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Territories and Insular Affairs of the Committee on Public Lands, United States Senate, Eightieth Congress, Second Session on H.R. 49 and S. 114, Bills to Enable the People of Hawaii to Form a Constitution and State Government and to Be Admitted Into the Union on An Equal Footing with the Original States, January 5-20, 1948, Washington, D.C., April 15, 1948


Honors continued to come, among them the “Order of the Sacred Treasure, Second Class” awarded by the Emperor of Japan. He also tried, none too successfully, novel writing. Sinclair died in 1976. In 1980 Marjorie Sinclair married the literary giant Leon Edel, a long-time friend of the Sinclairs.

____________

References:

* Building a Rainbow (Hui O Students, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1983)
* Day, A Grove, History Makers of Hawaii (Mutual, 1984)
* Nickerson, Thomas. “A University Comes of Age; the Administration of Gregg M. Sinclair.” Alumni News, July 1955: 3-23.

****************************************

"Above All Nations Is Humanity": "Maluna a'e o na lahui a pau ke ola ke kanaka"
by Kalidas Nag, M.A., University of Calcutta, D. Litt., University of Paris[Dr. Kalidas Nag, Visiting Professor in the Oriental Institute of the University of Hawaii, delivered this address at the Annual Commencement of the University, June 22, 1937.]
University of Hawaii Bulletin
Volume 16, Number 8, June, 1937

I

My predecessor on this platform, Dr. Edwin R. Embree, President of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, told you last year of his grand aspiration and his realistic dream: the birth of the "New Civilization" through the "mingling of the East and West." Some dreams are just fantastic and illusory; others are based on our deepest longings and hopes, peopling the world of our subconscious being, and hence their potency and positive character.

In a 1944 address in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 4—provocative both for its timing and its substance—[Edwin R. Embree] proclaimed the coming of a new order in race relations and international affairs. The war, he predicted, would shift the center of world politics from Europe and the Atlantic to Asia and the Pacific. China and Japan would be major powers, demanding equal status with the U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union and, he asserted, they would expect fair treatment for their distant relatives in North America. More than a year before Japan’s surrender, with the battle for Saipan raging as he spoke, he cautioned against an occupation of the conquered country based on vengeance, rather than one that would allow the Japanese people to divest themselves of their military rulers and become a force for world peace.

-- Edwin Embree As Exemplar: How One Philanthropic Leader Confronted Racial Prejudice During The Second World War, by Alfred Perkins


The Orient suffered from serious historical mutilations and psychological distortions but it is a reality in human history. So, too, the Occident is very much of a reality today, almost dictating the pace of the modern world. Politically and economically the East and the West have often been found to be in conflict, because of maladjustments and misunderstandings. Culturally, the two hemispheres of Humanity are indispensable partners in a vast cosmic drama. These are not mere figures of speech but basic realities. And speaking on this solemn occasion, before my departure from this noble University to participate in the World Conference on Education in Tokyo, which takes as its major topic of discussion "A Twentieth Century Program of Education," I beg leave to affirm that our future education should and must be based on an adequate synthesis of eastern and western cultures. With all its aggressive sense of superiority, western education and culture appear today to be terribly inadequate, judged from the standpoint of moral progress and peace for mankind. So, with all its traditions of spirituality and renunciation, the eastern life and society are darkened today by an atmosphere of poverty, despair, and ignorance dangerously subversive to the world order. The western methods of dividing and dominating the East are doomed to failure; and no less so the eastern reactions against the West, either to treat it as a dangerous "enemy" or a successful "barbarian."

It is indeed a tragic irony of history that the two sister civilizations, so complementary to one another, have not yet found their "Laboratory of Synthesis" in most of our universities of the East and the West. Western science and technology are invading the eastern schools and colleges, divorced pathetically from the correctives of the creative life of the West manifested through her Arts and Literature. So, also, a sprinkling of "Orientalism" is found in the western institutes of higher education in their syllabi of Sociology, Anthropology, Comparative Philology, and such other humanistic studies. But even academic approaches of the Occident to the Orient are vitiated often by an unconscious condescension, a veiled imperialism, or colonialism actual or potential. Thus even the so-called modern Humanities are tainted by the original sin of "the un-human"; and consequently our observations and studies are just materials for the exploitation of one another's weaknesses!

When and how should we organize a new World Education Board, based on mutual respect and cooperation, which alone can drag us out of this quagmire of suspicion and hatred, threatening the peace of the world? This is a challenging question which has to be faced and answered, not only by our universities and cultural organizations but also by our political and economic trusts which are facing today the serious charge of betrayal of trusts! We accuse no one, and we invite one and all in reorganizing the World Trust, without which world security and peace are mere illusions. With malice for none and charity for everyone, we shall join hands, men and women of today and tomorrow, to rebuild the neglected and often desecrated Temple of Humanity, singing in chorus with our whole soul the sublime song of the Pacific expressed in the words inscribed at the entrance gate of this University, both in the musical Hawaiian language and in English:

"Maluna a'e o na lahui a pau ke ola ke kanaka."
"Above All Nations Is Humanity."


Facing, as I do, the representatives of some of the outstanding nations of East and West, here under the harmonious sky of Hawaii, I cannot help expressing some of the doubts and aspirations of our generation. Doubts, if any, have got to be boldly faced; and aspirations severely tested in the light of reality. I know that many of us have become skeptical about the possibility of our nationhood naturally evolving into Humanity. Some are asserting that to reach Humanity one must outgrow nationhood. That again appearing to be a problematic, nay dangerous, experiment, some swing to the opposite extreme, saying that to safeguard our nationhood we must throw overboard the cult of Humanity!

A few of us suspect, however, that whether we like it or not we float, move and have our being on the infinite ocean of Humanity which ultimately supports and regulates the variegated flotilla of diverse nations. Each nation-boat may imagine itself to be self-contained and independent of the others; but all of them stagnate or push forward according to their special rhythmic adjustments with the deep undercurrents of the ocean of Humanity. It is sheer foolhardiness to ignore the ocean while we are lost in our special dances on our particular boats. It may be wise and graceful to adjust our steps with the elemental rhythms of the dancing waves. Our sophisticated civilization has a fair chance of surviving if it learns the moral lesson of the superb technique of Hawaiian surf-riding. Every nation from East or West, must learn this basic rhythm of Humanity or be engulfed for good. Several apparently invincible nations have thus been submerged in history, emerging only as archaeological fossils of a dead past, crowding the galleries of our museums. The lesson of history is clear and it is for us of this modern age to make a choice: suicide or survival, war and extermination or peace and fulfillment of life? The twentieth century confronts us with this life-and-death question. Our entire thought and action should grapple with these vital issues if we are objective enough to visualize the future, and realistic enough to accept the lessons of science and history.

We know that despair and doubts are darkening our horizon today. From the awful experience of the last World War we learned what a penalty we shall have to pay if we follow again blindly the dictates of egotism and greed, leading inevitably to violence and war. Europe tried that path and may try it again and again. Asia, older in age and experience, ever speaks through her great seers that it is wiser to renounce than to grab, and that peace is more effective than war in the social economy and hygiene of Humanity. Twenty-five centuries ago India promulgated through her great sons, Mahavira and Buddha, the great principles of Non-violence (ahimsa) and Fraternity (maitri). The selfsame messages go out to the world from the makers of modern India, as Gandhi and Tagore.

Ram mohun Roy (1772-1833), the Father of Modern Indian Renaissance, and a junior contemporary of George Washington, sounded the keynote through his essays on comparative religion, harmonizing the apparently conflicting creeds of the East and the West, of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, laying the foundation of the first Universalist Church (Brahmo Samaj) of India. Freedom of speech and self-expression for all men and women, freedom of worship, freedom for womanhood and her equality with man are some of the problems tackled in a spirit of tolerance and peace which so endeared him to Jeremy Bentham that he saluted Rammohun Roy as his "beloved collaborator in the service of Humanity." The history of India from Rammohun Roy to Tagore and Gandhi is that of a progressive humanization. So it is but natural that two of our leaders of Asiatic Renaissance, Tagore and Gandhi, are deeply interested in the noble experiment that America is making here in the heart of the Pacific. Before sailing from India to join the University of Hawaii, I requested Mahatma Gandhi to send a message to the students of this University, and these are his words:

"I have no inspiring message to give to anybody if non-violence is not its own message. But I can state my own experience of nearly fifty years of practice that there is no force known to mankind which is equal to non-violence. It cannot however be learned through books. It has got to be lived."

-- MKGandhi


Here Gandhi is speaking not simply for his own people but for Humanity as a whole. Those who accept Gandhi only as a national leader do not know his preoccupations for the welfare of mankind, irrespective of creed or color. When America was celebrating the fourth centenary of her discovery, in 1893, Gandhi was opening his heroic campaign of non-violent resistance to the inhuman treatment of man by man in South Africa.

Though Gandhi was concerned for the plight of the Indians of South Africa, he shared the racist beliefs of the Theosophists. Of white Afrikaaners and Indians, he wrote: “We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they do.” Gandhi lent his support to the Zulu War of 1906, volunteering for military service himself and raising a battalion of stretcher-bearers. Gandhi complained of Indians being marched off to prison where they were placed alongside Blacks, “We could understand not being classed with whites, but to be placed on the same level as the Natives seemed too much to put up with. Kaffirs [Blacks] are as a rule uncivilized—the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals.”

Gandhi and Mussolini became friendly when they met in December 1931, with Gandhi praising the Duce's "service to the poor, his opposition to super-urbanization, his efforts to bring about a coordination between Capital and Labour, his passionate love for his people." He also advised the Czechs and Jews to adopt nonviolence toward the Nazis, saying that "a single Jew standing up and refusing to bow to Hitler's decrees" might be enough "to melt Hitler's heart."


-- The Untold Story of Gandhi and Theosophy, by David Livingstone


His activities aroused the attention of no less a personality than Leo Tolstoy. The venerable author of "War and Peace" exchanged several letters with Gandhi which you may read in the volume "Tolstoy and the Orient," published by Paul Birukoff, the disciple of the Russian sage in the last few years of his life.

A little earlier, about 1888, another great thinker and artist of Europe, Romain Rolland who would be the noblest interpreter of Gandhi and his non-violence in the West, also corresponded with Tolstoy. Privileged to collaborate with Mon. Rolland in his study on "Mahatma Gandhi," I saw in 1923, in his Swiss home, the original letter of Tolstoy in reply to the poignant questionings of that adolescent French artist who immortalized himself by writing the epic novel "Jean Christophe" and his Lives of Illustrious Men: Beethoven, Michael Angelo, and Tolstoy. Spending his last days studying Oriental religions, Tolstoy left this world in 1910; and within four years the so-called civilized world plunged itself into an orgy of destruction and carnage rarely paralleled in history. The old world motto "Love Thy Neighbor" was coolly replaced by "Kill Thy Brother!" In the face of that awful sacrilege against all religions, Rolland, the symbol of the awakened conscience of the West, wrote that magnificent vindication of humanity: "Above the Battlefield" and his "Appeal" to the elite of all nations to save modern civilization from utter wreckage. Since then, for the last twenty years, Romain Rolland, the master interpreter of music and musicians, has been trying to hold aloft the torch of Humanity in this age of nationalistic obscurantism. It is a rare privilege for me to make his solemn voice also join in this superb symphony of the souls of many nations which naturally drew the sympathy of the great European harmonist. Receiving from me an account of the quiet and constructive work of my friends of this American territory, radiating inter-racial amity, and specially hearing about the noble outlook of internationalism in our University of Hawaii, Romain Rolland sent me by air mail the following lines:

"I am happy to feel the growth of this new family. We are brothers born of the same spirit of human unity and universal communion. Those who are realizing that in harmony, are happy indeed in that Eden of Hawaii. Here, where I am, in Europe, we must accomplish the same through the tumult of strifes. We are the archers of the Gita. We do not fight ourselves; we fight for the welfare and liberty of all those to come and to build the grand Union of all Nations, the sovereign harmony rich and complex; the symphony which weaves into one garland the beautiful and embracing accords of the whole earth....

To fraternal friends
Of all nations
at the University of Hawaii
With my affectionate greetings.

-- ROMAIN ROLLAND."


These words of the most musical prophet of modern internationalism will, I am sure, gladden your hearts, my friends and students of this University: Hawaiians, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, and Portuguese -- all enjoying a common culture in a common democracy. I urge you young graduates, going out to the world, to be proud of your Alma Mater and to serve the cause so nobly championed by her. I strengthen my appeal by reminding you of the prophetic words of a great American who addressed you last year: "A population descended from the various stocks of Europe and Asia, from Polynesia and the other islands of the Pacific, is here making a new race and a new culture . . . Appropriately enough, the birthplace of this new culture, compounded of the best of the East and the West, is in the group of islands situated midway between the western world and the Orient."1

India of three hundred and fifty million souls, that vast sub-continent of many races, religions, and cultures, would always be with you in your pursuit of cultural fellowships which is the keynote of Indian history and which, I hope, will be the guiding light of all national histories. My Alma Mater, the University of Calcutta, to which I am grateful for this opportunity to serve you for a while, is so glad to learn about your bold experiment that our Vice Chancellor presented your library with all our research publications -- an example which will be followed by many other universities and learned societies of India.

Through ages India maintained the proud tradition of free cultural exchange, ever since the days of our ancient universities of Taxila and Nalanda. And modern India, nay the entire New Orient, would ever be proud of the fact that its greatest living poet-philosopher, Tagore, came to vindicate Humanity insulted and crucified by the "carnivorous and cannibalistic" nationalism during the last world war. As early as 1899 Tagore wrote that soul-stirring poem "The Sunset of the Century." So in 1917, with the unerring judgment of a prophet, Tagore exposed in his "Nationalism" the festering sores of our modern history. Returning in 1921 from the devastated areas of war-mad Europe, Tagore, with little else but his grand dream to support him, transformed his rural school of Santiniketan into the first international university of India, the Visva Bharati. Here Asiatics, Africans, Europeans, and Americans, Christians and non-Christians, have found their haven of meditation for the welfare of Humanity in that "Abode of Peace." As a member of its governing body, I had the honor of introducing your Professor Sinclair to our venerable Founder-President; and the poet-laureate of Asia, on behalf of India and the Orient, gave this benediction on the Oriental Institute of the University of Hawaii:

"I congratulate the authorities of the Hawaii University for the wise step they have taken in starting an Oriental Institute under its auspices. For this distracted world of ours nothing is perhaps so much needed today as a proper understanding between and appreciation of the cultures of the East and the West. That also is the mission of my university Visva Bharati. Hawaii, situated as it is in the midst of the seas that separate the East from the West, is preeminently fitted to be the center of such an institute and I offer it my best wishes for a glorious and useful career."

-- Rabindranath Tagore


II

It is distinctly a pathological symptom, ominous for our human family, that while countless millions of men and women are hungering for peace, a few politicians are stampeding the nations into rearmament, making war almost inevitable. Collective security is a pious fraud if it is only regional and not universal. It is regrettable that while the experts of the International Labor Office and of the League of Nations are bringing out indisputable evidences showing that cooperation is the only solution of our tragic problems, the tariff walls and muffled war drums are threatening us on all fronts, western and eastern. But, towering high above these vagaries of nationalistic politics and economics, are the clear verdicts of the "Representative Men" of the East and the West. Numerically negligible yet spiritually invincible, these poets, philosophers and philanthropists -- our Tagores, Rollands, and Gandhis -- declare with one voice that the basic religion of mankind is just to be human and that "Humanity is above all Nations."

So, before taking leave of you, I beg to entrust to you of the newborn Pacific race, my concrete dream of a "Laboratory of Human Relations." This University of Hawaii is to me more than a chance experiment of America in the field of international education. It plays the symbolical role of reconciling the glorious traditions of American democracy with the noble Hawaiian traditions of good-will and welcome for all. Its departments of culture show a rare potentiality of expansion and growth with a rich variety in its ethnic basis and with the immense horizon of its geographical situation.


Before developing the story of my Dream-Laboratory, I sketch here the outline of the cultural chart of America's collaboration with her neighbors. Hawaii is culturally connected with New Zealand and the South Pacific cultures through Tahiti. Situated on the crossroads of transpacific liners and clippers, Hawaii is the most valuable and convenient base for American relations with entire Polynesia and Indonesia, through Japan and China, right up to the farthest western base of America in the Orient, the Philippines. There America, true to her democratic traditions, is going to make the first sincere experiment in autonomy for her Filipino citizens. In the new regime of national self-government, the University of the Philippines and allied institutions, if properly developed would, I hope, render a great service by keeping America in intimate relations with French Indo-China, the Dutch East Indies, India, and the Middle East.

Privileged to inaugurate in this University the first series of lectures on the history, thought and culture of the living nations of India and the Near East, I was deeply impressed by the genuine interest in the subject evinced by the students and the public attending the lectures. Compared with Great Britain, France, and Germany, the United States of America was late in entering the field of Oriental studies, especially of India. She has compensated, however, for her loss of time by her generous investments in archaeological explorations and cultural activities in the Near and the Far East, through her great museums, the American Association of Learned Societies, the American Oriental Society, and other similar organizations. Several American universities and museums are excavating in the sites of the dead civilizations in Egypt and Iraq, in Turkey and Persia. The University of Chicago has developed its grand Oriental Institute. Columbia University has its series of Indo-Iranian classics, and Harvard its Oriental Series mainly devoted to India, and its Yenching Foundation attending to Chinese culture. The pre-historic civilizations of the Indus Valley are being explored by the American Association of Learned Societies and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. So, Yale University sent several expeditions to the sub-Himalayan regions in search of the fossil man. Yale also shows keen interest in Polynesian studies, as we find from her intimate collaboration with the Bishop Museum which, with its wonderful collections and research records, is a real pride of Hawaii. The scientific activities of the Bishop Museum are supplemented by the young yet most promising Academy of Arts of Honolulu which very appropriately tries to cultivate in the public of Hawaii, not forgetting its most important element, the children, a taste in Oriental art. So the Pan-Pacific Union, the Institute of Pacific Relations, and the Anthropological and Sociological Societies are doing admirable work in the last few years, cooperating with and supplementing the work of the University of Hawaii. The latter has already provided for the study of Japanese, Chinese and Indian cultures, as well as Hawaiian language and literature. This year, the University has taken a momentous step by inviting an expert musician to open systematic courses on Music. May it help to save from corruption and oblivion the noblest arts of Polynesia, its chants, and rhythms, its music and dances, finding, at last, their sanctuary at a conservatory of the University.

The diversity of human interests, the rich complexity of racial types and traditions in and around the University of Hawaii naturally signalize it as the most promising "Laboratory of Human Relations" that America can develop, here in the heart of the Pacific, for the better understanding of mankind.
I know that "human relations" and "better understanding" are phrases at the tip of the pen of almost every diplomat and journalist. Over-familiarity seems to have bred a silent contempt for such concepts in this age of refined cynicism. Yet I cannot help reiterating with all the conviction I command that the only way of revitalizing our studies and humanizing our sciences is the way of human relations. So, modifying a little the sonorous words of Danton in the age of the French Revolution, I wish to give to you, of the future generation, the following:

"L'humanite, encore l'humanite, tousjours l'humanite."
"Humanity, more humanity, always humanity!"


Human exploitation and race hatred must stop, or this civilization will just go. Every University of the world boasted of its department of Humanities, and yet owing to the lack of concrete touch of human relations the studies degenerated into dead analysis. That is why in the fire-baptism of mankind in the last World War, so many universities could easily betray human trusts. "Can Nations Be Neighbors?" is the challenging title of a book2 of the learned President of the University of Hawaii; and we can answer that question adequately if we can humanize our academic Humanities.

America rang the Liberty Bell for the whole human race a few years before the French Revolution and the grand Statue of Liberty was very appropriately installed at the entrance of the biggest American harbor on the Atlantic. America is a continent of many races, the dominant ones coming from across the Atlantic. Naturally we find, down to this day, that its academic, political, and cultural outlooks are severely circumscribed by the principles and prepossessions of the Atlantic civilization. This is an unbalanced and unhistorical attitude, as I could not help pointing out while attending, as a delegate from India, the World Writers Congress (P.E.N.) at Buenos Aires. In the crowded auditorium of the leading university of the Argentine Republic I asked and got reply to my question: Since the entire body of the two Americas extending from Alaska to Chile is irrigated, nourished, and built through countless ages by the waves of the immense Pacific, what provision has been made so far for the study of this much-neglected Pacific civilization? It has legitimate claims on full one-half of the body of the New World, and yet how few of the American universities and learned societies are Pacific-minded? The earliest colonizers of America, the pre-historic ancestors of the American Indian, came from the Orient, sometimes walking over the ice-bridges or crossing in skin boats which brought the daring folks across the islands to Alaska, as recently stated by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, the distinguished anthropologist of the Smithsonian Institution. From that dim past down to our days the Pacific races and cultures have been negotiating with America. Yet, where is the clearing house of the information, not to speak of research centers of Pacific civilization?

Spending these few months in the human atmosphere of the University of Hawaii, fraternizing with the teachers and the students of so many different countries and nationalities, I have felt that this University is the most possible and propitious center for the study of Pacific civilization. Here I met, among the several scholars. of the Pacific basin, professors from Alaska in the north, to New Zealand in the south. So, teachers and students from China, Japan and India are working at our Oriental Institute harmoniously, amidst a thousand material handicaps, to develop a living synthesis of the East and the West, as original as it is comprehensive.
Our aim is not the necrology of scientific analysis, abstract and inhuman, but living reactions and interactions of the past, present and future.

III

So I hope that in this "Laboratory of Human Relations" of the University of Hawaii a new faculty of research on Pacific culture and a new chapter in world history may someday be developed through the cooperation and good-will of all nations as neighbors in this world-village. It is significant that two of the leading universities of America, Harvard and Yale, are already Pacific-minded, and I hope that others will follow their example when the case for centralizing Oriental and Pacific research in the University of Hawaii is convincingly demonstrated. Then the Carnegie Corporation would find it necessary to establish a Pacific Division of its Institute of Race Relations;

On August 16, 1947 University of Chicago President Robert M. Hutchins announced the formation of the Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations. Funded by equal grants of $75,000 from the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Committee was constituted to be a five-year program under the direction of Louis Wirth, professor of sociology.

-- Guide to the University of Chicago Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations Records 1944-1962, © 2009 University of Chicago Library


the Rockefeller Foundation would build here laboratories for the study of Oriental and Pacific hygiene; the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace would endow chairs for the study of peace problems of the Orient and Pacific zone. So also the Latin American universities, the universities of China and Japan, of the Philippines and of India, the scientific institutions of Indonesia and of the Near East would gradually come to collaborate with the University of Hawaii, which is the advance-guard of American culture in the Pacific and the Orient. It is the meeting ground of diverse nations of the East and the West. It deserves fully, and will surely draw in the near future, the material and moral support permitting it to fulfill its grand destiny.

Hawaii has often been called the "Geneva of the Pacific," and I plead for the progressive development of the University of Hawaii from a territorial institution into one of the grandest monuments of American internationalism -- a veritable "Pacific Foundation." So many millions have gone to the building up of the departments of Atlantic Civilization. Is it not overdue, this project of a special Foundation for the Study of Pacific Civilization? Arts and sciences, races and literatures would find their special libraries, museums and laboratories. Experts and researchers from all corners of the globe would come here to teach and to learn under this marvellous atmosphere of fellowship. The scholars all the world over would seek the publications of the Foundation for enlightenment; and original texts and translations from the Hawaii University Press would go to enrich the libraries and minds of the various nations.
Here is peace, propitious climate, and rare comradeship; only material resources and tools are lacking. Should the Temple of Humanity be postponed simply on that account?

The answer to this question must come primarily from America, although it should come simultaneously from all the nations immediately interested. If we believe in neighborliness as the soul of all religions, and peace as the real criterion of culture, we should try to make our dream a reality. America has installed the Statue of Liberty on her Atlantic basin. May America with the Pacific Foundation of the University of Hawaii dedicate, in the near future, the first statue of Humanity on the Pacific, announcing peace to all her neighbors! Some future Rodin may design that grand statue of Humanity bearing on the pedestal the noble motto of the University of Hawaii, "Above All Nations Is Humanity."

Our ancestors of the Vedic dawn left us the priceless legacy of world-vision through the following profound message: "To see the Self in the Universe, and the Universe in the Self, is the right seeing." A great philosopher of modern India in the Universal Races Congress (1911) pronounced, in keeping with our ancestral wisdom, that "Nationalism is but the halting stage in our onward march to Humanity." So, the greatest poet of India of today, in his Gitanjali which won the first Nobel Prize from the Orient, sang:

"Thou hast made me known to friends I knew not;
Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own;
Thou hast brought the distant near,
And made a brother of the stranger."


This initiation of individual Man into Humanity is the spiritual dowry of India, and I bring the same to you, my young friends of the University. May right endeavor bring you Unity. May right aspirations bring you Unity. May right achievement bring you Unity. Strive and thrive in rearing the Temple of Humanity. It is a task worthy of the future heroes and heroines of the world. I wish you all success, and conclude with the Vedic prayer which came to impregnate the soul of the Pacific as manifested in some of the fragments of the Polynesian Vedas:

"The One who, himself without colour, by the manifold application of his power
Distributes many colours in his hidden purpose
And into whom, its end and its beginning, the whole world dissolves -- He is God!
May He unite us all with propitious Wisdom!"


-- SVETASVATARA UPANISHAD. IV, 1.


_______________

Notes:

1 "The New Civilization: A Mingling of East and West," by Edwin R. Embree, University of  Hawaii Occasional Papers No. 30, July 1936.
 
2 "There is no greater task, no greater opportunity, confronting education than this: to teach the  nations of the world to understand their neighbors, to respect their neighbors as themselves. Let us educate for mental disarmament, with assurance that physical disarmament will then take care of itself." David Livingston Crawford, Can Nations Be Neighbors?, page 113. (Boston:  The Stratford Company, 1932).
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Edwin Embree
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/17/20

Image

Edwin Rogers Embree (1883–1950) was one of the former vice presidents of the Rockefeller Foundation, president of the Julius Rosenwald Foundation (also known as the Rosenwald Fund), a writer, and president of the Liberian Foundation.

The Rosenwald Fund (also known as the Rosenwald Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, and the Julius Rosenwald Foundation) was established in 1917 by Julius Rosenwald and his family for "the well-being of mankind." Rosenwald became part-owner of Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1895, serving as its president from 1908 to 1922, and chairman of its board of directors until his death in 1932. He became interested in social issues, especially education for African Americans in the rural South, which was segregated and chronically underfunded.

Before establishing the foundation, Rosenwald provided funding directly through Dr. Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now known as Tuskegee University), a historically black college (HBCU), to help support a model project to design and operate schools for black children in the rural South.


Unlike other endowed foundations, which were designed to fund themselves in perpetuity, the Rosenwald Fund was designed to expend all of its funds for philanthropic purposes before a predetermined "sunset date." It donated over $70 million to public schools, colleges and universities, museums, Jewish charities, and black institutions before funds were completely depleted in 1948.

The rural school building program for African-American children was one of the largest programs administered by the Rosenwald Fund. Over $4.4 million in matching funds stimulated construction of more than 5,000 one-room schools (and larger ones), as well as shops and teachers' homes, mostly in the South, where public schools were segregated and black schools had been chronically underfunded. This was particularly so after disenfranchisement of most blacks from the political system in southern states at the turn of the 20th century. The Fund required white school boards to agree to operate such schools and to arrange for matching funds, in addition to requiring black communities to raise funds or donate property and labor to construct the schools. These schools, constructed to models designed by architects of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now known as Tuskegee University), became known as "Rosenwald Schools." In some communities, surviving structures have been preserved and recognized as landmarks for their historical character and social significance. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has classified them as National Treasures.

The Rosenwald Fund also made fellowship grants directly to African-American artists, writers, researchers and intellectuals between 1928 and 1948. Civil rights leader Julian Bond, whose father received a Rosenwald fellowship, has called the list of grantees a "Who's Who of black America in the 1930s and 1940s."[1] Hundreds of grants were disbursed to artists, writers and other cultural figures, many of whom became prominent or already were, including photographer Gordon Parks Jr., Elizabeth Catlett, poets Claude McKay, Dr. Charles Drew, Augusta Savage, anthropologist and dancer Katherine Dunham, singer Marian Anderson, writers Ralph Ellison, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, dermatologist Theodore K. Lawless,[2] and poets Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou and Rita Dove.[3][4] Fellowships of around $1,000 to $2,000 were given out yearly to applicants and were usually designed to be open-ended; the Foundation requested but did not require grantees to report back on what they accomplished with the support.


In 1929, the Rosenwald Fund funded a syphilis treatment pilot program in five Southern states. The Rosenwald project emphasized locating people with syphilis and treating them, during a time when syphilis was widespread in poor African-American communities.[5] The Fund ended its involvement in 1932, due to lack of matching state funds (the Fund required jurisdictions to contribute to efforts to increase collaboration on solving problems). After the Fund ceased its involvement, the federal government decided to take over the funding and changed its mission to being a non-therapeutic study. The infamous Tuskegee syphilis study began later that year, tracking the progress of untreated disease, and took advantage of poor participants by not informing them fully of its constraints. Even after penicillin became recognized as approved treatment for this disease, researchers did not treat the study participants.[5]

-- Rosenwald Fund, by Wikipedia


Early life

Embree was born in Nebraska in 1883, the youngest of four children of Laura and William Norris Embree. His grandfather and grandmother were John Gregg Fee and Matilda Fee, Abolitionist leaders from Kentucky. Embree had a very close relationship with his grandfather, the founder and president of Berea College. His father was discharged from the Union Army, after he took a job as a telegrapher with the Union Pacific Railroad. His father died in 1891, so his mother took her four children and moved with her parents to Berea. Embree's grandfather John Fee formed Embree's values and character at an early age, so he followed his grandfather examples. Edwin went to school at Berea and Yale, became a lecturer, and had many other outstanding accomplishments throughout his life. He died in 1950.

Education

Embree attended Berea Academy when he was growing up. He later attended and graduated from Berea College, then enrolled in Yale where he graduated with an advance degree in philosophy. He later worked at Yale for 10 years in alumni affairs.

Accomplishments

In 1917, Embree joined the Rockefeller staff in New York as secretary (1917–1924), then as director of the Division of Studies (1925–1927), and later as one of three vice presidents (1927). He also traveled to Japan several times while working with Rockefeller. He became president of the Julius Rosenwald Foundation also known as the Rosenwald Fund for 20 years (1927–1948). When the foundation closed, he became president of the Liberian Foundation. Embree also wrote a handful of books. Brown America "The Story of a New Race" 1931. "Indians of the Americas" 1939. American Negroes "A Handbook" 1942. "13 Against the Odds" 1944.

References

• Alfred Perkins, "Living The Fee Legacy: Edwin Embree and the Rosenwald Foundation", Berea College Magazine, Winter 2006, pages 34–36, available at [1].
• [2]
• History of Science June 99.p65 at the Wayback Machine (archived September 25, 2006)
• Rosenwald School Initiative
• The Rockefeller Archive Center – Papers of Individuals – Rockefeller Foundation

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Edwin Rogers Embree
by The Rockefeller Foundation
Accessed: 2/17/20

Image

Edwin Rogers Embree was an early voice championing the Rockefeller Foundation's (RF) expansion into the humanities and social sciences.

Born in Osceola, Nebraska in 1883, Embree moved with his family to the racially integrated town of Berea, Kentucky in 1891. His formative childhood years in Berea and his family's abolitionist history shaped his lifelong commitment to racial equality.

Embree received his B.A. from Yale University in 1906. He spent a year in New York City as a reporter for the New York Sun before returning to New Haven in 1907. He spent the following decade working at Yale first as assistant editor of the Yale Alumni Weekly and then in several university administrative positions, while also earning an M.A. degree from the university in 1914. Embree's administrative work at Yale brought him to the attention of the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 1917 he was appointed secretary of the RF under president George E. Vincent.

When Embree joined the RF, the Foundation’s efforts were focused primarily on medicine and public health projects. Embree advocated for expanding their work into the humanities and social sciences. In a rousing 1924 address to RF Trustees and the General Education Board, he asked, “Of what good is it to keep people alive and healthy if their lives are not to be touched increasingly with something of beauty?” His speech received a lukewarm response from the Trustees, however. Embree instead channeled his efforts into directing the newly formed Division of Studies (DS), which was created in 1924 to administer all Foundation work in areas outside of medicine and public health. When the DS was eliminated in 1927, Embree went on to serve briefly as the RF's vice president. His vision for a robust humanities and social sciences program would not be fully realized until after his departure from the RF in 1928. That same year, the Foundation reorganized and established a Division of Humanities and a Division of Social Sciences.

Embree left the RF in 1928 to become president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which supported educational, public health, and welfare programs for African Americans. When the Fund closed after expending all of its funds in 1948, Embree went on to serve as president of the Liberian and Africa Foundations, collectively focused on improving health, education, and welfare in Africa.

In addition to his long philanthropic career, Embree was a prolific author. He wrote numerous articles, essays, and several books including Brown America: The Story of a New Race (1931), Brown Americans: The Story of a Tenth of the Nation (1943), and Thirteen Against the Odds (1944).

Edwin Rogers Embree died in New York City on February 21, 1950, at the age of 66. His officer's diaries are digitized and can be accessed through the Rockefeller Archive Center's (RAC) online collections. A collection of his papers, including correspondence, a family journal, and some of Embree’s articles and speeches can be accessed at the RAC.

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Edwin Embree As Exemplar: How One Philanthropic Leader Confronted Racial Prejudice During The Second World War
by Alfred Perkins
Histphil.org
April 20, 2016

Editors’ Note: Alfred Perkins highlights the leadership of Edwin Embree, who served for two decades as president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, in advocating for the rights of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War.

The current presidential campaign has brought again to the surface the hostility to cultural differences long an element in the American emotional landscape. While that hostility now targets primarily Muslims and undocumented immigrants of Hispanic origin, it calls to mind the wartime situation, three quarters of a century ago, when it was directed against Japanese-Americans. Such nativist sentiments undergirded the forcible relocation of persons of Japanese ancestry from the west coast to internment camps in the interior. One of the most outspoken opponents of that policy was Edwin Rogers Embree (1883-1950), an early official of the Rockefeller Foundation and, from 1928, President of the Julius Rosenwald Fund.

Though neither Embree nor the Chicago-based foundation he headed are widely known today, he was for more than two decades an influential figure in philanthropy and race relations. His unstinting defense of America’s Japanese minority represents a merging of personal conviction and institutional purpose. In addition, it reflects his principled beliefs about the qualities and behaviors appropriate to a foundation executive, a model of leadership well worth considering today.

Embree happened to be in northern California in March, 1942, when the relocations got underway. He saw whole families being removed from their homes to assembly points, in circumstances not altogether unlike the rounding up of Jews in Nazi Germany. He was left with searing, unforgettable memories, the most poignant, perhaps, the sight of a two-year-old anxiously clutching fresh flowers, as grim-faced soldiers led him away. Like many Americans then and since, Embree found this treatment of some 110,000 persons, most of whom were U.S. citizens, profoundly troubling. In time he came to regard the evacuations as “one of the most terrible crimes America has ever committed against her own citizens and against democracy.”

Committed to fighting racial intolerance in all its expressions, Embree in 1943 joined with over sixty academics, ministers, journalists, union leaders, and corporation executives to sponsor the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). The League, devoted to protecting civil rights and ending discriminatory practices, protested ceaselessly against the internment policy, while emphasizing the fundamental patriotism of citizens of Japanese ancestry.
In the League’s Chicago chapter, its largest and most active, Embree played a prominent role during the war and thereafter, planning strategy, chairing fund-raising dinners, introducing speakers and, with his keen sense of public relations, undoubtedly helping to frame official statements.

The League provided Embree with critical information about the plight of the internees, and other instances of discrimination against Japanese-Americans. A more comprehensive news source was The Monthly Summary of Events and Trends in Race Relations, a publication developed in response to a request from President Franklin Roosevelt, fully financed by the Rosenwald Fund, and serving over 15,000 subscribers at its peak. But Embree learned also from personal contacts, including members of his own family. His anthropologist son John had published in 1941 a doctoral dissertation describing his year-long observations in a Japanese village, a book containing the most current information in English on Japanese beliefs and customs. Called to governmental service a few days after Pearl Harbor, John was assigned to the federal agency responsible for the evacuees, enabling him to inform his father of unclassified but unpublicized developments, and to give him a tour of one of the internment centers.

Anecdotal reports came as well from Edwin Embree’s brother Howard, a social worker at a camp in Wyoming, and from Edwin’s daughter Catherine, a volunteer teacher at a camp in Arizona. Catherine’s extensive letters home initially gave detailed descriptions of her unfinished camp’s harsh living conditions, but later, when some young internees were permitted to enroll in midwestern and eastern colleges, she also alerted her parents to any student passing through Chicago. Either Embree or his wife, and frequently both, met the train, helped with transfers and schedule changes, offered advice and encouragement, and often provided meals and overnight lodging in their home. At least one young woman was allowed to rummage through Catherine’s closet for the warm clothes she lacked. Conversations with these students, and close attention to his other sources, undoubtedly made Embree, of all private citizens, among the best-informed about the internment policy.


Embree gathered information, and he conveyed it—lots of it. His principal educational vehicle was the American Council on Race Relations (ACRR), an organization he envisioned earlier, but co-founded only in 1944.

American Council on Race Relations, 1945-1948
Part of Collection — Box: 2, Folder: 11
Call Number: RG 73, Series I
Geographical location: Chicago, IL
Subjects: Race relations; Civil rights
Comments: The Council is "a kind of over-all coordinating agency -- closely associated with the University of Chicago," that "works primarily with national organizations, such as the NAACP. Compiles data, serves as a clearing house, runs pilot projects, education & training." --L.P. Contains six issues of "ACRR News Letter" (1945-48) incl. re. war relocation; "Hemmed in: ABC's of race restrictive housing covenants," by Robert C. Weaver (1945); chart "Programs under way" [1946].

-- American Council on Race Relations, 1945-1948, by Archives at Yale


Guide to the University of Chicago Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations Records 1944-1962
© 2009 University of Chicago Library
Title: University of Chicago. Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations.
Dates: 1944-1962
Abstract: The University of Chicago Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations Records cover the period 1944 to 1962 and also include the records of two cooperative organizations: American Council on Race Relations; and National Organization of Intergroup Relations Officials. The collection contains correspondence, financial and personnel records, published materials, research project and proposal data, reports and studies, seminar files and committee papers, student recommendations, minutes, charters and by-laws, photographs, and newsletters. It also includes files relating to the Parent Teacher Association, the Sigmund Livingston Fellowship, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, and the Chicago Community Inventory.
Historical Note: On August 16, 1947 University of Chicago President Robert M. Hutchins announced the formation of the Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations. Funded by equal grants of $75,000 from the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Committee was constituted to be a five-year program under the direction of Louis Wirth, professor of sociology. At its inception the Committee enumerated 5 practical objectives:
1. to design research that would test theories of race relations in order to provide a scientific basis for public policy and programs, as well as for further field research;
2. to introduce the social scientific knowledge acquired through this research into both general and adult education curricula, and to instruct teachers how to apply and transmit this knowledge;
3. to train professionals, educators, and community leaders in the science of race relations and minority problems;
4. to foster national institutional cooperation in research and training in the field of race relations;
5. to implement pilot programs to test the findings of race relations research, and to design methods of evaluating existing programs. The Committee worked in cooperation with the American Council on Race Relations at the national level, and with the Industrial Relations Center, the Committee on Communications, and the Committee on Human Development within the academic community at the University of Chicago.
Unlike other committees at the University of Chicago such as the Committee on Human Development and the Committee on Social Thought, the Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations did not confer degrees. Rather, graduate students in the Division of Social Sciences at both the master’s and Ph.D. level could construct a concentration of course work, or elect to write a thesis with a focus on race relations. Working simultaneously with faculty in their own departments and members of the Committee, such students formed bridges between the social sciences and the Committee.
A major component of the ongoing work of the Committee was preparation and publication of the Inventory of Research in Racial and Cultural Relations. Published with the aid of the American Council on Race Relations, the Inventory was a quarterly bulletin containing abstracts of articles, books, and reports on unpublished research dealing with racial and cultural issues. After a debut issue of June 30, 1948, the Inventory continued production through volume 5, number 3 in 1953.
The original members of the Committee under the direction of Louis Wirth were anthropologists Robert Redfield, Fred Eggan, and Sol Tax, sociologist Everett C. Hughes, education professors Allison Davis and Ralph W. Tyler, and the executive officer of the Industrial Relations Center, Frederick Harbison. Membership fluctuated slightly between 1947 and 1956 and included at various times Kermit Eby, professor of social sciences, Donald T. Campbell, professor of psychology, William C. Bradbury, professor of sociology, and Clyde W. Hart, professor of sociology.
After the death of Louis Wirth in 1952, the Committee extended its work beyond the five year period of its original design under the leadership of Sol Tax. Although the Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations disbanded in 1956, its educational and research interests continued in the research and mentoring of individual social scientists at the University of Chicago.
Scope Note: The records of the University of Chicago Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations consists of 18 linear feet and cover the period 1944 to 1962. In addition to the records of the CETRRR, the collection includes the records of two cooperative organizations. Because the information was distinct to these two groups the collection was divided into three separate series. They are:
SERIES I: Committee on Education, Training and Research in Race Relations
SERIES II: American Council on Race Relations
SERIES III: National Organization of Intergroup Relations Officials.
The collection contains correspondence, financial and personnel records, published materials, research project and proposal data, reports and studies, seminar files and committee papers, student recommendations, minutes, charters and by-laws, photographs, and newsletters. It also includes files relating to the Parent Teacher Association, the Sigmund Livingston Fellowship, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, and the Chicago Community Inventory.
INVENTORY
Series I: Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations
Series I: Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations contains the administrative files of the committee and covers the period 1944 to 1962.
Series I has been divided into sixteen subseries.
Subseries 1, Correspondence, covers the period 1947 to 1962 and has been arranged alphabetically by the name of the correspondent. Additional subdivisions have been created for the letters of Louis Wirth (director of CETRRR) and William Bradbury (secretary).
Subseries 2 contains the minutes of the CETRRR meetings and covers the period 1947 to 1953. The minutes have been arranged chronologically.
Subseries 3 contains financial records of the CETRRR. Financial statements of the committee cover the period 1946 to 1952 and have been arranged chronologically. Subseries 3 includes financial statements regarding funds from the Carnegie-Rockefeller Race Relations Fund. These statements date from 1948 to 1953. This subseries also contains information on contributions, budgets, and expenses.
Subseries 4 contains personnel records of the CETRRR. It includes information on office staff, research assistants, and temporary employees. It also includes personnel associated with the Chicago Housing Authority Ogden Courts Project (1951-1953).
Subseries 5 contains student recommendations from 1946 to 1953.
Subseries 6 contains information on research projects and proposals submitted to the CETRRR. The files have been arranged alphabetically and date from 1947-1953. A significant portion of this subseries is devoted to Chicago elementary and high schools and redistricting.
Subseries 7 contains reports and studies produced by the CETRRR. Many of the research projects from Subseries 7 were supported and expanded by the CETRRR. This subseries includes unpublished abstracts, studies and reports from 1947 to 1953. The files have been arranged chronologically.
Subseries 8 contains published articles, pamphlets, and guides on research and programs of the CETRRR. The publications in this subseries have been arranged chronologically. One of the first publications produced by the CETRRR was the of Research in Racial and Cultural Relations. This subseries has been arranged into general publications and files relating to the . This subdivision includes correspondence, questionnaires, research, and a subscription card file.
Subseries 9 contains information on seminars organized by the CETRRR. The files in this subseries have been arranged chronologically according to seminar title.
Subseries 10 contains the minutes and correspondence of the Technical Committee on Intergroup Relations.
Subseries 11 contains pamphlets and yearbooks for the Parent Teachers Association.
Subseries 12 contains applicant files, correspondence and reports for the Sigmund Livingston Fellowships from 1948 to 1950. The Sigmund Livingston Fellowship was awarded by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. Named after the League's founder, the fellowship was intended "to advance knowledge of the basic social and psychological processes underlying intergroup relations and prejudice". In 1947-1948 the fellowships were awarded to graduate and post-graduate students of the social sciences at three participating institutions: Harvard University, New York University, and the University of Chicago. At the University of Chicago applications were handled by the CETRRR and fellows worked in the Division of Social Sciences.
Subseries 13 contains correspondence and reports for the Chicago Commission on Human Relations in 1953. This group was a commission of the City of Chicago which is still in existence today. The commission is a neutral body that "handles complaints of discrimination." William Bradbury, of the University of Chicago Sociology Department faculty was appointed to the group in January 1953. Subseries 14 contains information on the Chicago Community. This group was associated with processing census and population data.
Subseries 15 contains minutes, memos and reports of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. The SPSSI was formed in 1936 at the convention of the American Psychological Association. The SPSSI was "a group of several hundred social psychologists and allied social scientists with a particular interest in research on the psychological aspects of key social issues." The focus was on applied social action, and on making social scientific research accessible to non-specialists without a loss of disciplined thinking. The material in this subseries constitutes informational copies of communications sent to Louis Wirth as chairman of the American Council on Race Relations.
[/b]
Finally, Subseries 16, Writings of Others, contains reprints of journal articles, journals, booklets, conference papers, and newspapers articles. These files have been arranged chronologically and cover the period 1940 to 1954.

-- Guide to the University of Chicago Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations Records 1944-1962, © 2009 University of Chicago Library


Financially supported by the Rosenwald Fund, even housed in the Fund’s headquarters, the ACRR had as its purpose “to bring about full democracy in race relations.” Seeking to increase public knowledge about minority groups, it underwrote research, developed materials for use in schools, published and distributed tens of thousands of pamphlets, fact sheets, and reprints. Two of its publications focused on citizens of Japanese ancestry. “Facts about Japanese Americans,” for example, pointed out the invaluable assistance of these minority civilians during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Nisei’s (second generation’s) continuing contribution to the war effort through intelligence-gathering and propaganda activities.Above all, it called attention to the thousands of Japanese-Americans in military uniform, and particularly to the heroism of the all-Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during the Italian campaign. Through correspondence and personal interviews, the Council lobbied energetically for resettlement of the internees, and for prompt federal action on indemnity claims. In cooperation with the JACL, it worked to energize civil rights groups on the West Coast, and to lay the groundwork for restored racial harmony.

Embree’s empathy for the plight of Japanese-Americans was evident even in his hiring practices, as he combatted the discriminatory attitudes he knew minority persons faced whenever they sought employment. During the war years, for example, his secretary was a woman of Japanese background, as were two other members of the Rosenwald clerical staff. At the ACRR, perhaps one-fifth of the office staff were of Japanese extraction. Similarly, when Embree became the founding chairman of the Chicago Mayor’s Commission on Human Relations, he established policies that provided jobs for no fewer than five women who were members of the city’s Japanese community. When he needed outside help with a research project, he gave the assignment to two Japanese-American graduate students.


Embree’s commitment to racial equality long predated the war years. At an early age he had embraced cultural diversity, beginning with the Blackfoot Indian children in Wyoming who were his first playmates, and with the scores of African-Americans who were his schoolmates in the thoroughly integrated Kentucky town where he was reared. His specific fondness for the Japanese, however, stemmed from three visits he made in the 1920s to East Asia on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation. Though the trips centered on China, he made it a point to spend substantial time in Japan. From the outset he was taken by the Japanese people. He admired their love of nature, appreciation of beautiful things, unfailing courtesy, devotion to family, and deep attachment to their homeland. Returning to the U.S., he was appalled by talk of a future war with the island nation, believing such a conflict would be a disaster for both countries.

When that war came more than a decade later, Embree looked beyond the combat to long-term consequences at home and abroad. In a 1944 address in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 4—provocative both for its timing and its substance—he proclaimed the coming of a new order in race relations and international affairs. The war, he predicted, would shift the center of world politics from Europe and the Atlantic to Asia and the Pacific. China and Japan would be major powers, demanding equal status with the U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union and, he asserted, they would expect fair treatment for their distant relatives in North America. More than a year before Japan’s surrender, with the battle for Saipan raging as he spoke, he cautioned against an occupation of the conquered country based on vengeance, rather than one that would allow the Japanese people to divest themselves of their military rulers and become a force for world peace. And even with anti-Japanese feeling at fever pitch across the country, he called again for the speedy return of the interned thousands to their homes, and an end to hostile behavior by their neighbors.

In 1948 the Julius Rosenwald Fund, having expended all its capital as specified by its founder, closed its doors. Two years later Embree, having returned to New York, was stuck down by a heart attack on a Manhattan street. At a memorial service held in the Bond Chapel on the University of Chicago campus, a telegram from the Japanese American Citizens League, paying tribute to “a great American,” was read:

“[D]uring the war years, when our group of people were suspect, [Embree] was one of the first to express confidence in us and faith in America by becoming one of the national sponsors of our organization. We mourn his passing but the memory of him will sustain our faith that all people can live and work together.”

The philanthropic community can take pride in the fact that one of their own, in a time of great national trial, was worthy of such commendation.

By moving boldly beyond the customary boundaries of organized philanthropy, Embree was able to challenge deeply-held prejudices, demand justice for a vulnerable minority, and extend the impact of the monies he disbursed. This pioneer of his profession would not have voiced the idea, but implicit in his words and actions is the notion that foundation executives might on occasion serve as the nation’s conscience. In these less stringent times, his example might provide useful lessons for his contemporary successors—to the benefit of the philanthropic enterprise, and the nation as a whole.

Alfred Perkins is the author of Edwin Rogers Embree: The Julius Rosenwald Fund, Foundation Philanthropy, and American Race Relations (Indiana University Press, 2011). In addition to philanthropy, he has published on French imperial history, higher education in Appalachia, and desegregation in the U.S. Now retired, he taught European history and served as academic dean and vice president of Upsala, Maryville, and Berea Colleges.
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