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Acknowledgments I first became interested in American-Japanese diplomacy almost twentyfive years ago. After graduating from college I took a job teaching English in Gifu, a small and lovely city in central Japan. I did not give much thought to the war, although it sometimes came up in conversations with students, coworkers, and friends. One weekend, in late July 1989, near the end of my stay, I attended a fireworks festival along the banks of the Nagara River. The next day at work one of my older students asked about my weekend, and, when I told her that I had attended the festival, she smiled and said she remembered sleeping on the banks of the same river with her mother on warm summer nights when she was a little girl. I thought that they slept outdoors to escape the oppressive heat that blankets central Honshu in summer, but then she continued her story. “We slept on the banks of the river,” she told me, “to escape the bombing of Gifu.” She said it matter-of-factly and without malice, and perhaps for the first time I understood why so much of Gifu was no more than forty years old. Until then, I had thought that only large cities like Tokyo experienced heavy bombings, but I soon learned that much of Gifu was leveled during the war. By the time I left Gifu, I knew that I wanted to learn more about why Japan and America went to war in 1941. After returning home, I decided to go back to school, first for a master’s at the University of California, Riverside, then for a Ph.D. at Rutgers University . At Riverside, Professors Richard Godbear and Irwin Wall encouraged my interest in diplomatic history and helped me find an appropriate doctoral program. Professor Wall also worked with me extensively on World War II diplomatic history and, along with his late wife, Sarah, offered me encouragement and friendship. At Rutgers, Donald Roden taught me Japanese history and patiently and consistently supported my interest in American-Japanese diplomatic history throughout my graduate program. Warren Kimball brought me to Rutgers and shared with me his unparalleled understanding of Roosevelt-era diplomacy . My adviser, Lloyd Gardner, was everything that a graduate student could want. His knowledge of and insight into American diplomatic history, acquired during his decades-long career, were matched only by the kindness that he showed me and his other students. I was fortunate to end up at Rutgers with its talented and caring faculty and very lucky to have trained under three such nurturing individuals. 258 Acknowledgments My work also benefited from the time and efforts of several other scholars . Thomas Buckley at the University of Tulsa read my manuscript and offered his insights into Japanese-American diplomacy and his unrivaled expertise on the Washington Conference system. John W. Chambers, who fortunately took me under his wing early in my stay at Rutgers, read an early draft of this study and helped me begin the long process of revising my manuscript . G. Kurt Piehler of Florida State University and J. Garry Clifford of the University of Connecticut read drafts and offered steady encouragement and insightful suggestions for improvement. At Fayetteville State University , my friend and colleague Stanley Johnson read the entire draft, saving me from countless errors as well as from writing that only I found clear or clever. The staffs of many libraries facilitated my research, and two in particular deserve special thanks. A generous research fellowship from the Friends of the Princeton University Library allowed me several weeks of uninterrupted work, and the staff of Princeton’s Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library helped me locate crucial information needed to bring my work to fruition. Finally, the staff at Fayetteville State University’s Charles Chesnutt Library generously secured critical secondary source material from outside libraries and, just as importantly, ensured that these same libraries restored my borrowing privileges when I failed to return items by their due dates. My editor at the University Press of Kentucky, Steve Wrinn, encouraged my work from the moment my manuscript landed on his desk. Steve, Allison Webster, Joseph Brown, and the entire staff have been a joy to work with, and this book has benefited tremendously from my association with them. My wife, Melinda, and sons, Graham and Sam, consistently supported this project. The boys happily sacrificed parts of their school holidays to take research trips, while Melinda read various drafts, listened to countless ideas...

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