Paul Rusch first traveled from Louisville, Kentucky, to Tokyo in 1925
to help rebuild YMCA facilities in the wake of the Great Kanto
earthquake. What was planned as a yearlong stay became his life's work
as he joined with the Japan Episcopal Church to promote democracy and
Western Christian ideals. Over the course of his remarkable life,
Rusch served as a college professor and Episcopal missionary, and he
was a catalyst for agricultural development, introducing dairy farming
to highland Japan. In Paul Rusch in Postwar Japan, Andrew T. McDonald
and Verlaine Stoner McDonald present Rusch's life as an epic story
that crisscrosses two cultures, traversing war and peace, destruction
and rebirth, private struggle and public triumph. As World War II
approached, Rusch battled racial prejudice against Japanese Americans,
yet also became an apologist for Japan's expansionist foreign policy.
After Pearl Harbor, he was arrested as an enemy alien and witnessed
the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. Upon his release to the US in 1942, he
joined military intelligence and returned to Japan in that capacity
during the US occupation. Though Rusch was of modest origins, he
deftly climbed social and military ladders to befriend some of the
most intriguing figures of the era, including prime ministers and
members of the Japanese royal family. Though he is perhaps best
remembered for introducing organized American football in Japan, his
greatest legacy is the founding of the Kiyosato Educational Experiment
Project (KEEP), a vehicle for feeding, educating, and uplifting the
rural poor of highland Japan. Today his legacy continues to inspire
KEEP in the twenty-first century to promote peace, cultural exchange,
environmental sustainability, and ecological preservation in Japan and
beyond.
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Evangelism, Rural Development, and the Battle against Communism
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780813176086
Publisert
2018
Utgiver
University Press of Kentucky
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok