Anderson, Ronald, September 22, 1980

Ronald Stone Anderson (September 7,1908- February 15,1985) was born in Seattle, Washington. He received a BA from Stanford University in 1929. That summer, after attending an organized tour of Japan, Korea, and China, he decided to stay in the East Asia and looked for a job. He taught English in high schools in Tokyo, Kanagawa, and Fukuoka, Japan until 1935, when he returned to the United States to pursure a master's degree in history at Stanford. He then taught in a Redwood City, California high school for several years. Soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, an Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) was established on the Stanford campus and later, a Civil Affairs Training Program (CATS) for officers, as well. Anderson became an instructor on Japanese education, family life, and religion in those programs. He edited the Army Handbook on Japanese welfare called M354-16 and wrote the history of the CATS program. He wanted to go to Japan to work in the Occupation and was interviewed at the Pentagon in January 1946. After several weeks, he was offered a position and arrived in Tokyo in early 1946, where he was assigned to the Office of Counterintelligence. He wanted to work on education issues, so he immediately took the initiative to be transferred out of SCAP to Military Government in Kyoto. There he became Chief Civil Education and Information (CI&E) Officer, He oversaw educational policy in 28 prefectures stretching from Shizuoka to Kagoshima. CI&E was initially responsible for enforcing the basic policy SCAPINs, including eliminating ultranationalism and militarism in the schools and purging school personnel. It moved on to following recommendations from the Education Mission, such as instituting the 6-3-3 method and coeducation, and later to the education legislation of 1947 and after. In the interview, Anderson addresses censorship of textboks, school lunch programs with rations provided by LARA, inspections of the school buildings, banned martial arts, teacher's unions, and conferences organized by CI&E, among other topics. In 1949, he returned to the United States to begin a PhD program in history at the University of California, Berkeley. Before finishing his degree, he landed a teaching position at the University of Michigan. He remained there until 1960, when he left to teach at the University of Hawaii. He was initially a visiting professor in the College of Education, but within the year became the Acting Director of the Asian Studies Program. He continued in Asian Studies until the 1967/68 academic year, when he returned to the College of Education. He established the Teacher Exchange Program at the East West Center, where secondary school teachers from Asia and the Continental U.S. met to exchange ideas and information. Anderson died in Honolulu on February 15,1985.