An American Asset in Japan

As the director of one of the fourteen American Cultural Centers maintained in Japan by the American Information Agency, Bryan Battey '46, in charge of the Tokyo center, must be not only a good idea man but also the man to translate his ideas into successful action.

In an article entitled They Give Us aGood Name by Theodore S. Repplier, which appeared in The Saturday EveningPost for September 24, Battey's job is described as one requiring ingenuity, tact, artistic ability and energy. He has a flair for scouring the American colony for talent, and among the celebrities he has obtained to participate in programs at the Tokyo Cultural Center have been the author James Michener, violinist Isaac Stern, ballerina Nora Kaye, Joe DiMaggio and the Harlem Globetrotters. In addition he has organized a modern dance group, a symphony orchestra and a group of one hundred voices, made up entirely of Japanese, and has found American leaders to coach them.

He runs a never-idle lending service of twenty film projectors and innumerable films exemplifying American life which are used by all kinds of Japanese clubs and organizations. The book library is called the heart of the center, while the organizing of English classes is an essential part of the director's task. Battey, who lives in Tokyo with his wife and two children, has been unusually successful in persuading Fulbright professors or other scholars touring the area to speak before specially selected groups of Japanese.

Although Battey was elected to Phi Beta Kappa while at Dartmouth, he sometimes worried about his almost equal enthusiasm for music, dramatics, languages and literature, and his inability to choose between them. Now the diversity of his interests is all to the good - including the 14-month course in Japanese which he took in 1946, when an Ensign, at the Navy School of Oriental Languages at Boulder, Colorado.