Conroy, F. Hilary, May 13, 1982

Francis Hilary Conroy (1899 - 1993) was born in Normal, Illinois, the son of a plumber, and attended Bloomington High School, from which he graduated in 1937 as valedictorian. During his high school years, he became a standout tennis player, a sport that he would enjoy the rest of his life. Following high school, he enrolled at Northwestern University on a full scholarship and graduated in 1941 with a major in history. He began graduate study at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a master’s degree in 1942, and started work on his doctorate. He interrupted his studies during World War II to enlist, studying Japanese at the Naval Language School in Boulder, Colorado. Upon completion, he was assigned to military intelligence during the Occupation of Japan; his unit was attached to the Tokyo Central Telephone office to listen for the word ansatsu (assassination). After a year in Japan, he returned to Berkeley in 1946, studying with Delmer Brown and Woodbridge Bingham and writing a doctoral dissertation on Japanese immigration to Hawaii that later became his first book, "The Japanese Frontier in Hawaii, 1868–1898 (1953)". He would later collaborate with Bingham and Frank Iklé to produce "A History of Asia " (Vol. I, 1964; Vol. II, 1965). After receiving his PhD in 1949, he remained at Berkeley for two years as a lecturer in Far Eastern history. Chafing at the requirement to sign the McCarthy-era loyalty oath, he left California to join the history department at the University of Pennsylvania in 1951, where he would teach for nearly four decades.