Private Philanthropy and Foreign Affairs: The Case of John D. Rockefeller 3rd and Japan

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ASIAN PERSPECTIVE, Vol. 8, No. 2, Fall-Winter 1984, pp. 268-284. PRIVATE PHILANTHROPY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS: THE CASE OF JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 3rd AND JAPAN John Curtis Perry* I. Introduction The Rockefellers were early internationalists. Their Foundation, flagship for the family’s philanthropy, was established in 1913 with a commitment to the betterment of mankind everywhere, not simply in the United States.1 Before the second World War, half of Rocke­ feller Foundation disbursements went overseas. John D. Rockefeller was an entrepreneur. Earning money was his chief interest, not giving it away. But Rockefeller’s strong Baptist faith nurtured a conscientious attention to the principle of good works. And he would later observe: “From the beginning, I was trained to work, to save, and to give.”2 Having earned more than anybody else, he applied that genius for organization so spectacularly exhibited in the oil business to the then ill-defined field of philanthropy. His Foundation and other similar charitable endeavors would become models for future givers.3 John D. Rockefeller, Junior, writing to his grandson in 1953, calculated that his father’s gifts and the income derived from them had produced one billion dollars for the public good.4 Other American * Dr. John Curtis Perry is Henry Willard Denison Professor of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, U.S.A. 1. Raymond B. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation (New York: Harper’s, 1972), p. 20. 2. Ibid., p. 4. 3. Allen Nevins, Study in Power, John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philan­ thropist (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), II, p. 436. 4. Rockefeller Family Archive (hereafter cited as RFA), Record Group 2 (here­ after cited as RG 2), JDR 3rd, Box 19, JDR, Jr. to John Rockefeller, December 24, 1953. PRIVATE PHILANTHROPY AND FOREIGN..... 269 families, the du Ponts or the Mellons, to name two, might be richer; none has been more generous than the Rockefellers.5 Response to Rockefeller giving has been mixed: laudatory, cynical, harshly critical, but rarely objectively analytical. Who could sound anything but praise for the enormous Rocke­ feller-financed campaign to eradicate hookworm in the United States, or for the discovery of a yellow fever vaccine by Rockefeller scien­ tists? But other endeavors have been more controversial. Educating Blacks, for example, offended poor Whites. Although Colonial Williamsburg has attracted tourists by the million, it provoked the scorn of purists for being overly restored. Creative philanthropy, the Rockefeller aim, is inevitably controversial. The Rockefellers may have been sincerely devoted to directing their philanthropy toward the public interest, toward the curing of fundamental causes of social want, but these phenomena are, after all, as the Rockefellers define them. Moreover idealism is susceptible to corruption by self interest—conscious or unconscious. American tax laws, for instance, do affect patterns of giving. Jacques Barzun argues that philanthropy impedes intellectual creativity. “Philanthropy,” he says, “is manipulation. . .anxiously contrived, timidly eager for approval, and therefore seeking love and publicity.”6 Were the Rockefeller millions disbursed for essentially the same reason that John D. Rockefeller would give anyone a dive! Some historians argue that international philanthropy has favored capitalism, the privileged, the existing social order.7 Populists decry the “elitism” of organized philanthropy; from the other side of the spectrum, conservatives bemoan its “excessively liberal” character. Let us simply say that organized private international philanthropy is as yet insufficiently studied in its particulars to make universal judgments upon it. Hence the preliminary attempt below to examine one man and one cause, John D. Rockefeller 3rd and Japan. 5. For a discussion of this, see Waldemar A. Nielsen, The Big Foundations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972). 6. Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect (New York: Harper’s, 1961), p. 198. 7. See, for example, Robert F. Amove, ed., Philanthropy and Cultural Imperial­ ism, the Foundations at Home and Abroad (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1980), especially E Richard Brown, “Rockefeller Medicine in China: Professionalism and Imperialism,” pp. 123-146. 270 JOHN CURTIS PERRY II. John D. Rockefeller 3rd's Interest in Japan Sustaining the public myth, what John D. Rockefeller, Jr., thought the public should expect of the Rockefellers, was as important a...

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