Chinese and Area Studies, 1941-1970

An era that began with tragic war in Asia and the Pacific ended with a renewed focus on Asian studies in the US. Substantial federal funding for Asian language studies as well as humanities and social science research precipitated the move towards what became called Area Studies.

The stresses and deprivations of war caused the UH administration to shutter the Oriental Institute in 1940. However, student and faculty interest in Asian languages, history, and culture renewed by the late 1940's. An important exchange program was established with Yenching University, now continued with successor institution Beijing University. Federal funding of the National Defense Language Act in 1958 provided resources for higher education institutions to teach "critical languages," including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi-Urdu, Japanese, and Russian. In 1960, the Mutual Security Act authorized the State Department to build a Center for Cultural and Technical Interchange Between East and West, now the East-West Center, funded by a $10 million allocation by President Eisenhower.

The boom in Asia-focused research and teaching created resources for Asia experts to be hired by many departments in the humanities and social sciences. The study of Asia could be encountered throughout a methodologically diverse array of courses. At the high point of institutional support, for example, History had five China specialists, perhaps the greatest number of any US history program. Area studies approaches also broadened the chronological range of the curriculum, introducing greater content on 20th century literature, history, philosophy, and other topics.

New UH units also emerged via the institutional priority on Asia. Just as the Oriental Institute grew out of a summer program in the 1930's, an Asian Studies summer program in the late 1950's led to the founding of an interdisciplinary Asian Studies program in 1959, relying on affiliated faculty whose primary tenure homes were in disciplinary departments.

The increasing numbers of international students at UH, often funded by East-West Center scholarships, led to the creation of an American Studies Institute, now the American Studies Department. Just as US students came to UH to learn about Asia and Oceania, so too could international students come to UH to learn about the US.

Wartime and Recovery

After the Oriental Institute closed, Gregg Sinclair rejoined the English Department. Then in 1942, he was tapped by the Board of Regents to become President of the university, a position he held throughout World War II and until 1956.

Left: Sinclair giving a speech on the steps of Hawaii Hall. Below: students in a UH campus bomb shelter, 1943.

In 1947, UH established a faculty exchange program with Yenching University (later absorbed into Beijing University). Yenching philosopher Feng Youlan 馮友蘭 (1895–1990) was one of the first visitors, coming to UH in 1949. UH still has an important exchange program with Beijing University. Above: Feng with Oriental Literature Society students; right: in the UH yearbook.

Commercial jet flight connecting Honolulu with the continental US and Asia transformed life in Hawai'i and at the university, as shown in this photograph from 1948.

Area Studies and the Cold War

Starting in the late 1940's, US funding agencies began prioritizing what they termed Area Studies. The approach emphasized identifying and solving problems in contemporary society, rather than utilizing the text-based study of literature, philosophy, and religion to offer greater intercultural understanding, as had been the goal of an early generation of Asian Studies. One definition developed by Charles B. Fahs (1908-1980) at the Rockefeller Foundation in 1949 (below) compared the area studies approach to resolving "specific human problems," to a primary care physician diagnosing patients by drawing on "all branches of medical knowledge."

Before the US extended diplomatic recognition to the People's Republic of China in the late 1970's, most guests at UH representing China at came from the Republic of China on Taiwan. Left: Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong Mei-ling 宋美齡, 1898–2003), shown with Regents Chair Philip Spalding, was the distinguished speaker at the 1959 Commencement ceremony.

In the late 1950's and early 1960's, funds for international student programs and scholarships were seen as weapons in the Cold War "struggle for the minds of men" who would then become leaders in their own countries. In 1960, with funding from the US State Department, UH hosted a summer Afro-Asian Student Seminar, which brought to campus several dozen students from Africa, Asia, and other developing nations to discuss "the role of universities in national development." History professor John Stalker, who also led the campus's Peace Corps training program, presided over the cohort's graduation ceremony. During this period UH offered substantial scholarships to students from developing nations.

By the end of the 1960's, over a thousand international students participated in East West Center programs, with a third of them on US government-funded EWC scholarships. As Senator Daniel K. Inouye noted in Congressional testimony, evidence of the effectiveness of UH programs is that many students chose to study in Hawai'i instead of accepting an invitation to study in Moscow.

Hawai'i saw its share of Vietnam War protests, with marchers including faculty like Oliver M. Lee (above), whose photo appeared in the 1966 yearbook holding a "ban the bomb" sign in Chinese.

By the late 1950's, multiple programs in Hawai'i and nationally reflected the growing interest in Asian Studies. In the Spring of 1959, Hawai'i state Senator John G. Duarte (D-Maui) introduced a bill to start a program in Asian Studies in the University. That summer, the university's summer programs included an Asian Studies Institute, with scholarships available to bring students from the continental US. By 1960, UH created an Asian Studies program, with courses offered by faculty in multiple departments. The first chair was UH economist Thomas H. Ige, who noted the interest in regional study was in part motivated by the perceived threat, as it was understood at the time, from Communism. An American Studies Institute was created to give international students an opportunity to learn about "the specific problems, values, and institutions of American life."

At the same time that UH was developing programs to raise knowledge and awareness of Asian affairs, the campus was also engaged with the problems of nuclear proliferation and the war in Vietnam. Political Science professor Oliver Minseem Lee (1925-2017), born in Shanghai to a Chinese poet, sculptor, and diplomat father and a German painter mother, became the face of faculty activism. A graduate of Harvard and the University of Chicago, as well as a veteran of the US armed forces, Dr. Lee was also co-chair of the Hawai'i Committee to End the War in Vietnam. His tenure was denied after an antiwar statement was released (and retracted within hours) by some members of a student group for which he served as faculty advisor. The case sparked a 1968 student sit-in at the administrative building on campus before Dr. Lee's tenure was granted.

East-West Center and Program Growth

In 1959, artist and UH faculty member Murray Turnbull (1919-2014), then Acting Dean of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, proposed that there be an international institute "to bring people from other cultures, from various parts of Asia," to "exchange ideas" at UH. This became one of the seeds of the East-West Center and received federal funding in 1960. Construction started soon thereafter on new buildings adjacent to the UH campus, including a conference center, guesthouse, and theater designed by architect Ieoh Ming Pei 貝聿銘 (1917–2019) . Within five years, over 500 international students from 26 countries attended programs at the EWC Institute for Student Interchange, taking classes, living in student dorms, and otherwise participating in UH student and academic life. The ISI led to the creation of the Department of American Studies as well as programs to study Asian and American cultural interaction, which included field trips to the continental US, and English as a second language programs for the benefit of ISI students. Other programs, such as the Institute for Technical Interchange, brought short-term visitors to study skills like radio broadcasting. ISI students were also encouraged to learn broadcasting and to participate in Voice of America radio programs.

Teaching Asian languages to schoolchildren was once politically fraught in Hawai'i. However, starting in 1958, the US federal government, via the National Defense Language Act, began to encourage greater teaching of Chinese as well as Japanese, Russian, and other languages in K-12 schools. The push for second language learning was a boon to UH, which found Asian-language majors in demand as second language teachers statewide and nationally.

Below: Throngs of World Civilizations students took classes at Varsity Movie Theater in the 1950's and 1960's. Right: a second language student in a language lab, 1960's.

Beijng-born painter and art historian Tseng Yu-Ho 曾佑和 (1924-2017), also known as Betty Ecke, joined the UH faculty in the early 1960's. Tseng was a prolific artist who experimented with many visual techniques including collage. Her husband, Gustav Ecke (1896-1971), was curator of Asian Art at the Honolulu Museum from 1949-1971. Tseng served as chair of the UH Council for Chinese Studies, the precursor of the Center for Chinese Studies, from 1977-1983.

Reengaging with Mainland China

UH China specialists were often consulted by the local media on political affairs. In 1972, four faculty were profiled by the Honolulu Advertiser for their views on President Richard Nixon's planned visit to China, a visit which is now viewed as a landmark in US-PRC relations. The scholars interviewed included two History faculty, intellectual historian Daniel W.Y. Kwok and Stephen Uhalley, an expert on Mao Zedong; Political Scientist Oliver M. Lee; and linguist John DeFrancis.

In an era of normalization in US-PRC relations, Hawai'i gained more prominence as a leader in Asian Studies, including in the performing arts. In 1972, the UH production of Black Dragon Romance, based on a translation by University of Colorado faculty Dr. Daniel S.P. Yang 楊世彭, was invited to be performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Yang noted that he was not surprised that the production was chosen, as UH had "the best theater department in the whole country for Asian Studies."

Left: Dr. Daniel W.Y. Kwok 郭穎頤 (b. 1932) joined the UH History Department in 1961, served as Chair, and was the first director of UH's Center for Chinese Studies, established in 1987. In 1974 he was photographed with House of Representatives Speaker Tadao Beppu (left) welcoming a member of a martial arts delegation from the People's Republic of China. The US recognition of the PRC brought increased opportunities for travel and academic exchange between Hawai'i and Mainland China.

Below: In 1980, the Council for Chinese Studies brought to campus an exhibit of export paintings of Canton in the 1800's, borrowed from the Museum of the American China Trade in Massachusetts. The exhibit showcased the fact that "China in the first half of the 1800s was as remote and off limits to Westerners as China between 1949 and the death of Chairman Mao in 1976." This implied that after détente with the PRC, Americans had to learn about China anew, and specialists at UH were there to help in that process.

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