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