The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

[This column has emendations. View original version]

      

NIKKO, Japan—In the air there is a feeling of last minure things being done for this is my last week in Japan and only to be a half a week at that!

I did four recordings for broadcasts Monday morning for this area of the world, three for Japanese stations and one for the US Embassy program.

At 12 o'clock I attended a luncheon given by the American Japan Society where I spoke.

After the luncheon I went to the office of the International House which with the Committee for Intellectual Interchange has sponsored all the visitors who have come here on this program. I met the whole staff which has done so much work for our visits to this country.

Afterwards, I spent a half hour with Mr. Ichimada, governor of the Bank of Japan, at his office. This is a very fine building, reminiscent of some of the government buildings in Paris. Mr. Ichimada is the recognized authority on the economic problems of Japan and I found it a great privilege to have this short time to hear what his solution to some of these economic problems are. He feels the development of power in this country is a pre-requisite to the development of their industrial potential and he says that ways and means must be found to increase the production of power. Japan's export trade must increase, particularly to southeast Asia and anything we can do to increase the purchasing power of such countries as Burma, Thailand and Indonesia is indirectly a service to Japan in the end.

Our Point Four program has been doing a great deal in this direction but I don't know how much the MSA has taken the place of Point Four, nor do I know at the moment how much we actually are able to do under Congress' new economy budgets.

After this talk I visited the Mainichi Press which has published my column during my stay here and then I went to a curio shop, Noboru Azuma, recommended to me by Mr. Raymond Corry. There were beautiful things there and I did not wonder that he had suggested that I stop in to look at them.

In the evening I had a round table discussion with publicists and journalists which proved very interesting as two of the guests have just returned from the U.S. One of them was discussing McCarthyism when I came in. He wondered whether McCarthy would not do to us in the U.S. what Hitler had done to Germany. The impression created by our valiant Senator is that he desires to become a dictator, deciding what should be said and thought by all the people within the borders of the U.S.

Before going to this dinner I went to Mr. Griffith's house and was fascinated by his collection of Chinese horses of every period, some of them very old. He also has a beautiful collection of ceramics.

I had a visit in the afternoon from some people who are deeply disturbed by the use the Communists are making of certain Pacific war films which are being exported from the U.S. and shown here. They are money-making films, but, unfortunately, the reaction is anything but helpful to friendly relations between Japan and the U.S. More of these films are going to be produced in the near future, I am told. I don't question but what our Hollywood producers will make money but I doubt if it is a service to the U.S. to remind people of what has divided us in the past when we are trying to build friendly relations for the future.

E.R.


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Geographic
  • Nikko (Japan) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, June 29, 1953

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
    [ ISNI ]
  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ISNI ]
  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]

Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

XML master last modified on June 9, 2017.

HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.

Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
TMs, AERP, FDRL