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EISENBUD: Wu've had many incidents of many kinds, mostly of
considezably less severity in terms of hurt, but potentially of sensi-
tivity, equal sevat ivity in relaticn to pecple, and there was a period
in the late 1.950% wien there was worldwide concern about fallout and
the subject came up before parliaments all over the world. Ihada
number of opportunities to visit capitola on short notice, perhaps
80 or 65 of them around the world, to meet, and I found that the
guidance that | was setting from the State Department was good, and
Ithink lt wae good in Japan,
[ spent, I guess, 9 or 10 weeks there
and I've had many opportunities over the years to just reminisce
with Japanese friends now about this incident, and I've thought about
ita great deal.
{really can't think o. a cingle bad lead that they
gave me. I think that their appraisals of the people | would have to
deal with were gocd. I think they seemed to have a very good understanding of the Japanese culture,
A number of them had been there
before the war and a number of them had learned the language and
eome of the senior people did live in the Japanese community.
SCHULL: [I would like to support Merril in that general statement.
Japan has been one of the few major embassies to which we've tried
conaletently .o appoint professionals witnesaed by the fact that all of
our recent ambassadors to Japan have spoken Japanese,
EISENBUD:
Reischauer has a Japanese wife,
FREMONT-SMITH
the few; right’
[Isn't this somewhat of an exception, one of
SCHULL: We even have been fortunate to have Japaneseespeaking
acience attachés. [ can think of one in particular, Otto Laporte, who
fe a physicist of competence, and probably one of the very few in the
United States who speaks Jz panese well enough to communicate effectively in that language.
At the social sciences level we've had w pro-
cession of outstanding people. The competence was there on the
State Department side, in my opinion,
HUSTAD: Isn't cur criticism, Merril directed at the fact that the
State Department expert in Japan should have been allowed to speak
out?
EISENBUD: I think that if he had been allowed to work out his
arrangements with the Prime Minister then~who incidentally told us
he recalled saying, "Mr. Ambassador, it was you folks who thought