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