THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 10, 1995 TAG: 9503100322
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Short : 37 lines
As the Japanese try to come to grips with the horrors of World War II, they're getting a helping hand from Norfolk.
James Zobel, an archivist at the MacArthur Memorial, today is shipping out the last batch from a treasure trove of documents to the Japanese National Diet Library in Tokyo. The Diet is Japan's parliament; its library is the Japanese equivalent of the Library of Congress.
The documents, which take up 1,000 reels of microfilm, will be housed in the Tokyo library and made available to researchers. Culled from the personal papers of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of Allied forces in the Pacific at the war's end, they include copies of intelligence summaries, Allied headquarters documents and correspondence between MacArthur and the U.S. War Department.
The Japanese are trying to amass a comprehensive collection of records from the war. The MacArthur archives, which include one of the foremost collections of documents from the Allied occupation of Japan, are expected to provide a substantial component of it.
The cooperative venture has been in the works for almost two years. The massive transfer of documents began in November.
The Norfolk museum doesn't normally share its documents, but decided to make an exception when it got the request from Japan, which reimbursed the museum for reproduction costs.
``We just figured it was good for us and good for them, and would help relations between us,'' Zobel said. by CNB