Asakawa Kan’ichi: A Desperate Effort To Avoid The War

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Fig. The Asakawa-Warner draft of a letter from Roosevelt to emperor. This is a schematic picture. Interested reader can visit Fukushima Prefecture Library for real image at

https://www.library.fcs.ed.jp/?action=common_download_main&upload_id=470

Permission by the library.

In November 1941, Langdon Warner proposed a scheme to Asakawa of asking President Roosevelt to send a letter to Emperor not to go for a war. Asakawa and Warner wrote a draft and sent it to Roosevelt.


Langdon Warner (1881–1955) was an American archaeologist and art historian specializing in East Asian art. He was a professor at Harvard and the Curator of Oriental Art at Harvard's Fogg Museum. He and Asakawa prepared a draft of a letter from President Roosevelt to the Emperor not to go for a war. 

 Fig. Warner

Image Number: 18560, Accession Number: 1973.30

 Artist: Arthur Pope

 Title: Langdon Warner (1881-1955), Date: 1951

 Credit Line: Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum,

Gift of Arthur Pope, Copyright: © Arthur Pope

 Photo Credit: © President and Fellows of Harvard College

 Citation: Arthur Pope, Langdon Warner (1881-1955), Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum,

 Gift of Arthur Pope, © Arthur Pope, Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1973.3

Fig. Asakawa Kan’ichi

"Kan'ichi Asakawa Papers (MS 40). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library."

https://japanesehistory.yale.edu/about 

Asakawa Kan’ichi (1873 –1948) was a Professor of History at Yale, a peace advocate, and a curator at the Yale Library. Born in Japan as the son of a samurai, he spent the majority of his life in America.

[1] Wikipedia site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor

[2] Yabuki, S., “Haisen, Okinawa and Tannno”, Kadensha, Tokyo, 2014




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