Footnote [24]:
A few years before, my father arranged an interview with a professor of the University of Tokyo for a teaching job. After interviewing with him, I was accepted. I reported this to Rector Shigeru Nambara of the university, one of my family friends. He said to me with a bitter face, "Don't come here. It is so stifle that nothing would be interesting." (Rector Nambara was a friend of James Conant, President of Harvard University, and the person who introduced American education system to Japan after the World War II -- it previously emulated the German system).

When I was working on my Ph.D. thesis under Dr. Donald F. Othmer (*) at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in late 1950s, my Japanese employer, Asahi Chemical Industries, Ltd., ordered me to return to Japan. Dr. Othmer stopped me saying "Finish your Ph.D., then you can deal with the whole matter of Japan." (This was realized with my effort of introducing the U.S. packet-switching data telecommunication networks to Japan -- more later.)

After serving General Chairman of the SCSC in Boston in 1971, I thought it would be the time to return to Japan. I reported a job offer from MRI and bid a farewell to Dr. Othmer. He then said to me with a sad voice "Haven't you graduated from Japan yet?"

As a metaphor, his suggestion in 1950s seemed me to encourage my climbing to the top of Mt. Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan, instead of Mt. Hoei which is located just below the summit of Mt. Fuji, and his words in 1972 were to direct me to climb Mt. Everest, the highest mountain on the world.

Our GLOSAS projects (e.g., establishments of Globally Collaborative Environmental Peace Gaming and Global University System, etc. -- more later) may correspond to the climbing up Mr. Everest. They are formidable, but challenging tasks -- Professor Clarke of Amherst left his famous words at his farewell, to students (including Kanzo Uchimura) of the University of Hokkaido, "Boys, Be Ambitious!!" They may last millennium as many of universities in Europe (e.g., Coimbra University in Portugal, etc.).

These incidents obviously changed my life course, and I have been grateful to those great educators for their guidances -- they taught me wisdom more than knowledge.

(*) Dr. Othmer was the world renowned educator, chemical technologist and philanthropist. While at Eastman Kodak, he invented a process which can concentrate acetic acid (vinegar) and it was the inevitable necessity to produce Celluloid for photographic film. Kirk/Othmer Encyclopedia (more than 10 volumes) can be found at libraries of almost any chemical firms. He hold more than 100 patents, and gave away tens of millions dollars to hospitals, libraries and churches.

Right after the war, he was one of the team members who investigated the status of Japanese chemical industry during the war. He was surprised to find that Japanese produced aviation gasoline in North Korea out of rocks with abundant hydroelectric power from a newly constructed dam on a river between North Korea and China (then, Manchuria) (i.e., from calcium carbonate to acetylene and to butanol by isomerization, the so-called Reppe (Czechoslovakian chemist) Process), compared with German's production from coal (i.e., by reaction of carbon monoxide with hydrogen by Fisher Tropsh Process). He then became fond of Japan and made many trips there.