Dear Rick,

Thank you for your comment. I am away from my library, and have not 
examined primary sources on Shigeto Tsuru myself, so here is what I 
gathered from secondary sources.

When Tsuru was a visiting professor at Harvard, he was summoned to 
testify before the U.S. Senate committee in March 26 and 27, 1957. To 
his surprise, he was presented his own letters which he wrote from 
1936 to 1937: they became the possession of the committee after Tsuru 
departed U.S.

About these letters, he wrote immediately after the testimony as 
follows: "these letters, if someone else reads today, must be judged 
to be written by a communist. Confronted with these letters, I 
recollect that indeed I have written them, while it is also a fact 
that I was not involved in the party organization".  So, as far as his 
own recollection is concerned, he may hold a communist belief, but was 
not a member of the Communist party.

In any case, I will subtract the last sentence of my previous post.

with best,
Masazumi

On Thu, 7 Aug 2014 08:31:02 -0700
  Ric Holt <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Shigeto Tsuru was a long time friend of Ken Galbraith. He first met
> him when Tsuru was doing graduate work at Harvard. In the 1940s when
> Ken went to Japan to evaluate the impact of America's military 
>action
> during the war, Shigeto was his guide and translator. They kept up a
> correspondence to 2005 -- probably a hundred letters providing
> insights into Tsuru's work and views about Japan and the world 
>economy
> and Ken's response. Ken always cherished his friendship with Tsuru.
> There was no doubt of Tsuru interest in Marxian economics and was 
>also
> a good friend of Paul Sweezy, but his politics in my view was always
> based on his deep humanity rather than association with any 
>particular
> political movement or party. Unfortunately because of space I will 
>not
> be able to publish all the letters between Ken and Tsuru in the
> Cambridge University volume ( which might turn out to be two 
>volumes).
> Ric Holt
> 
> On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 7:06 AM, 若田部昌澄 <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Dear Olav,
>>
>> Just a couple of comments on Shigeto Tsuru.
>>
>> First, Shige Tsuru was probably not the first Japanese with American 
>>Ph.D.
>> in economics. I cannot tell who the first was, but Senjiro Takagi
>> (1881-1934) had already received his Ph.D. from Yale under the 
>>supervision
>> of Irving Fisher in 1910.  I said probably since I am not sure that 
>>the
>> degree was called Ph.D. "in economics" back then. Dr. Takagi went 
>>back to
>> Japan to become a professor of economics at Keio university, having
>> introduced the quantity theory of money to Japan. Also according to 
>>the
>> following source (unfortunately written in Japanese), he conceived 
>>economics
>> as a science of relationship between ends and means,  having written 
>>several
>> pieces on the economic analysis of war, marriage and suicide.
>>
>> http://bdke.econ.keio.ac.jp/psninfo.php?sPsnID=11
>>
>> Second, Tsuru never became a Minister. He was the Deputy Chairman of 
>>the
>> Sogo Chosei Iiinkai (General Coordination Committee) of the Economic
>> Stabilization Board from 1947 to 1948 under the Socialist-led 
>>coalition
>> government. This roughly corresponded to a position of Deputy 
>>Minister,
>> although he was probably more famous than the Minister since he 
>>wrote the
>> first white paper, or government report on the status of the 
>>Japanese
>> economy. Tsuru worked with Leontieff when he was a lecturer at 
>>Harvard
>> before he went back to Japan in 1942, and Leontieff got into trouble 
>>since
>> Tsuru told an FBI officer that he was a Communist while he was in 
>>the U.S
>> later in the 1950s.
>>
>> with best,
>> Masazumi
>>
>> On Thu, 7 Aug 2014 13:27:54 +0200
>>  Olav Bjerkholt <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Wassily Leontief had to go through interrogation at the Bureau of 
>>>the
>>> Budget, for which he worked as a consultant around 1952. But things 
>>>got
>>> worse when he was invited to work as Rand consultant. He had to 
>>>answer to
>>> nine menacing charges, of which (from my memory) one was that 
>>>Leontief knew
>>> Shigeto Tsuru [Tsuru who was the first Japanese iwth American ohd in
>>> economics, had by then served as Minister in Japanese government), 
>>>another
>>> that his wife was a member of the Boston Branch of the League of 
>>>Women
>>> Shoppers which had been cited by HUAC as communist front 
>>>organization, and a
>>> third that Leontief had known Dorothy Fox Richardson who later 
>>>married
>>> Solomon Adler, reported to be a member of the Communist Party! [Yes, 
>>>you
>>> ought to pay attention to the future associations of the people you 
>>>know]
>>>
>>> It was a humiliating experience for Wassily Leontief but he fought 
>>>the
>>> charges bravely and had them rebutted in the end.
>>>
>>> olav bjerkholt
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Professor Olav Bjerkholt
>>> University of Oslo
>>> Department of Economics
>>> Pb 1095 Blindern
>>> 0317 Oslo, NORWAY
>>> mobile phone 47 90654957

Masazumi Wakatabe
Professor of Economics
Faculty of Political Science and Economics
Waseda University
1-6-1 Nishi-Waseda, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan 169-8050
Phone:+81-(0)3-5286-9722
Fax:+81-(0)3-5286-9722