UMUC - Asian Division - Mason G Daly - Greetings - 1959 University of Maryland Commencement -Tokyo

Asia;Hoffmann, Rosemary1959 University of Maryland Commencement Tokyo, Japan Dr. Mason G. Daly, Director * GREETINGS * No other American university has ever enjoyed the opportunity to convene in formal convocation nine thousand miles from home, in a foreign land, associated with men and women of letters arising from another culture. The University of Maryland is here, in full panoply of academic convocation in the very heart of Tokyo, Japan, a few yards from the Imperial palace. This surely dramatizes the proximity and interdependence of the United States and nations of the Orient. This is a true convocation, traditional, correct. It is invested with all of the significance a university can place in the dramatic moment of endorsing those who have fulfilled degree requirement's and are therefore ready to be formally charged with the rights and responsibilities that go with membership in the family of letters. We are here today because America's alliances take its citizens to far places, and because America has asserted that its citizens in uniform are neither separate nor unique. The man flying aircraft based on the Kanto plain of Japan, pulling sentry duty on the jagged scar of demarkation in Korea, patrolling the troubled water between two Chinas, securing island fortresses in positions of containment, and readiness - that man must have access to the system of education from which his culture and his country spring. These graduating seniors have shouldered impressive responsibilities, personal and professional, for many years. And yet they are like many tens of thousands of adult Americans everywhere in the United States who insist that higher learning is not limited by age, by offspring or job; adults who insist that higher education is as much the right and responsibility of the mature man and woman as it is the more fortunate youth who proceeds without interruption from secondary to university classroom. Our universities have learned to keep their doors opened wide at night, on weekends, around the clock, if need be; universities and their professors now freely go into centers of population, into bank buildings, city halls, Church basements, at hours and places determined in part by the student. The great military Pentagon building in Washington D. C., becomes at 5 o'clock each evening a hall of learning, accommodating five universities, of which Maryland is one. And so it is that every airfield, army post, navy shipyard within the United States and throughout the world where Americans are stationed, may house a segment of a university. Something is being taught. There may be only one course in European History or in Mandarin Chinese for fifteen students on an island radar station, or there may a twenty five courses for several hundred regular students to choose from, as at Tachikawa, Seoul, or Sukiran. As we proceed in this ceremony today please understand that the Far East Division of the University of Maryland may be host at an unusual commencement event, geographically speaking; it is not however, engaged in an unusual educational venture. The men and the one woman honored here today are a representative segment of our Far East student body of many thousands scattered around Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan, and Guam. The faculty on the stage here are a senior, continuous segment from among two hundred lecturers, including a score of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese scholars who instruct in our classrooms. Among this audience are those civilian and military educators who serve all phases of education on the United States military installations in the Far East and cooperate with us to provide university training for their personnel. We wish to single out the civilian education advisors and directors for a special word of thanks on this occasion. Without their interest, cooperation, and professional advise our students could not enjoy a coordinated educational venture such as ours. We are appreciative of and honored by the presence of high ranking military commanders today, leaders who show a sustained personal interest in the education of their men generally and an individual pride in the achievement of each graduate honored today. And in this audience we are delighted to see so many Japanese educators and leaders, come to observe us honor our Ambassador to Japan and to make academic tribute to one of the great Japanese of today. The whole world is benefiting from Japan's tradition of higher learning, its tradition of national literacy, of developed research, of artistic and scientific development. To be associated with you on this day, in this way, will always be a memorable moment in the history of the University of Maryland. I would also like to make reference to this setting, because the Kudan Kaikan occupies an historic place of unusual interest to an academic gathering. During the Tokugawa period of Japanese history, the period in which Japan withdrew from the outside world, there was a building here known as the Bansho Torishirabe Sho, approximately translated it means Barbarian Books Investigation Office. Here western publications which otherwise could not be seen in Japan were scrutinized and evaluated for possible translation and careful dissemination during that period of intense Japanese xenophobia. The country was closed to the west, but right here there was one significant, official source of contact and intellectual observation. The Far East Division of the University of Maryland is proud to be host to this assemblage on this historic spot for this significant event. We welcome all of you to this commencement and invite you to join us in the reception immediately following this ceremony