So are you Tokyo's ultimate foreign veteran?

I'm not sure, but as far as I know . . . yes. Maybe there's some Catholic priest somewhere in Japan who has been around longer, but I haven't heard of him.

Some press clippings I found have you born here. Is that correct?

No, I was born in Pennsylvania. I came over at the age of two with my father, who was a Protestant missionary who taught at Gakushuin. But my younger sister was born here.

If you met a foreigner on the street then, you always stopped and talked. Now everyone just passes by. Tokyo was so very different: no high-rise buildings, no stores with foreign supplies. And I was always a novelty to the Japanese. Old women would stop and touch my hair, because it was curly then. And children would shout "Hebi!" (snake) when they saw my curls.

Was there such thing as a gaijin ghetto?

We lived in what is now called Yotsuya. We called it Wakabacho, and it was right across from the Imperial Guesthouse next to the Gakushuin Elementary School. But it wasn't a gaijin neighborhood. There wasn't one really, except for some foreigners congregated around Tsukiji.

Your family arrived as Japan was going through all kinds of convulsions following the Meiji Restoration.

We saw many changes. After the Russo-Japanese War, there was a great deal of anti-government and anti-foreign activity. They were burning police boxes all over the country. They even sent soldiers to guard us--they slept in the church next door. And I was here when they killed all the liberals. The most influential of them--I can't remember his name--was killed very near our home.

What sort of exposure did you have to the people and the culture?

We didn't have much to do with Japanese children. Mother was afraid, you see, because of the worries about diseases in those days.

So what was your education like?

At first I went to the American School kindergarten. But I had to go by rickshaw and it was just too much effort. For a few years I was taught at home by my parents. Then there were a lot of little private schools I attended and I went back to the American School as a first-year high school student. All I really remember now is trying to do Shakespeare. I loved drama.

And your social life during your childhood?

Once a year there was a party for the children at the American Embassy. Once in a while we might go to see some other American children, but there was very little social life in Tokyo. Foreigners from all over Japan, though, went to Karuizawa for one and a half months in the summer. That's where we did our socializing.

Did you spend your whole childhood in Japan?

We went back to America on father's leave, but I never liked America much because I had to do dishes when I was there. In Japan, we had help in the house. Oh, maybe you shouldn't write that down. My father was intensely patriotic, and my mother was very clever at making our house seem American. My father would even fly the American flag on all the holidays. I used to think America was like heaven, that there were no evil people there.

Were you allowed to date Japanese?

That was taboo . . . from both sides. Americans looked down on it and so did the Japanese.

Then you finally decided to spend some years back home.

Around 1918 I went to the U.S. and graduated from a small girls' college in Missouri: William Woods College. Then I went to Oberlin in Ohio. Before going back to Oberlin to graduate I spent a year in Canada at a school for educating Canadian children to be English people. We were all called mistresses.

Was living in North America liberating for you?

Well, I always had plenty of friends everywhere.

I mean liberating in the sense of meeting those of the opposite sex?

Well, remember I went to a girl's college. Once in a while we had socials with the Westminster Boys' College but that wasn't a great success from my standpoint.

You never met anyone you wanted to settle down with?

I've always been busy with my work, although I always had plenty of male friends. I had a lot of good friends who wanted to settle down with me, but I never seemed to want to settle down. You don't need to talk about my private life.

So no kiss and tell stories?

Those are things I like to keep private.

Where were you at the time of the Great Kanto Quake of 1923?

I was overseas and had a difficult time getting news about it. It was some time before I found out that my parents had been in Karuizawa and that our house was not damaged.

Did you live anywhere else?

In the late 1920s I went to China to teach music at the North China American School. It was quite an experience because it was during the civil war period. There was great confusion, with warlords over-running the country. When I traveled my chauffeur had to carry a gun to ward off bandits. And in Peking you had to be careful because of the camels walking down the street carrying coal from Manchuria. They didn't like people and they would spit at you. But I loved China in those days because it was so beautiful.

Have you ever gone back?

No, it would be so different. I want to remember it as it was--the old China with the walled cities. I used to go to the Chinese opera. I have always had an affinity for drama of any kind anywhere. What I remember most vividly was the flying towels. The Chinese always ate when they went to the opera, especially sunflower seeds. And they would call out for towels.

Like oshibori, you mean?

Yes, but in China, instead of bringing them over politely and bowing, they would throw them through the air. That's what I remember most.

You came back to Japan in the '30s, when a lot of political changes were going on.

I came back to teach at the American School since more foreigners were coming in. I remember not being able to get home during the Ni Ni Roku uprising on February 26, 1936, because the city was barricaded. Can you imagine Tokyo barricaded?

No, but it might not be a bad idea. Did you have any idea that a big war was approaching?

We really didn't have a sense of what was going on and what would happen. But we weren't fearful of the Japanese. I had decided I wanted to teach in America so I went to teach at a girls' school near Washington. The U.S. government took my passport and wouldn't give it back! That was 1939. They didn't give me any explanation, but they knew something was going to happen. We didn't, but they did.

Where were you on December 7, 1941 and what was your reaction?

I was in the library at Columbia University and I was overcome. My mother was still here, though she was able to get out on the last ship from Japan.

And you? How did the war affect you?

I was enlisted, so to speak, to help the war effort. I worked in intelligence. We worked out of a girl's school in Northern Virginia and it was very hush-hush. We came under great stress because nobody but us knew that the Japanese code had been broken. We were subject to all kinds of rules about security.

What did your section do?

We translated messages from ships--very simple translations but very important. We kept track of all the Japanese ships in the Pacific. We had a chart room and we knew where every ship was. We weren't anti-Japanese but we were trying to wreck the Japanese Navy. We were all for the people but we wanted to overcome the military. [Future U.S. Ambassador Edwin] Reischauer was in the department, too, as was a Rikkyo University professor and others, such as missionaries, who had contacts with Japan.

Did you think the Allies would win?

Toward the end, yes. The room next door got information in a wider sense and, of course, they let us know what was going on.

Your anger at the atomic bombs being dropped is well known. Is it true that you got in trouble for that?

On the day they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, I quit. I got a good talking-to by my superior, who told me that I would never get another job in the Army if I quit. Even the Army hadn't generally agreed that we should have dropped the bomb. But the president was so determined. And why did we have to drop the second one?

That's still being debated. What happened after the war?

I was out of work for a while. I wasn't trustworthy, I guess. I finally got to come back thanks to a man I knew named Svenson who went on to become a general. I had started a madrigal club in Tokyo before the war. Svenson had been part of it when he was posted at the embassy and he knew I wanted to return. The ordinary person couldn't get into the country, so I wouldn't have gotten back if it hadn't been for General Svenson. The madrigal club is still going on, by the way. I don't belong any more. I can't sing now.

How did you do financially when you came back?

I became part of the Occupation force. We were well taken care of although we had to live in a billet. Did you ever live in a billet?

No.

Well, I saved my money and was able to buy this house and move out of the billet. This place was designed by the Czech-American architect Antonin Raymond, who had come over to work with Frank Lloyd Wright. It was the first small building that he had ever done. He did the apartment houses for the American Embassy so this house got a lot of publicity.

But what were you doing here?

My boss had been at West Point and at West Point they say, "If you're smart then you can do intelligence work." Well, they put me in the geography section, working on information about rivers in Russia. The Yenesai River, east of the Amur, was my forte. We were scared to death of the Russians in those days.

That doesn't sound too exciting.

You have to understand there was so little information available back then. Once I walked to the Army library and asked for some information. The soldier found one book and gave it to me. In fact, he made me keep it. He didn't want to have anything to do with Russia and he was an Army man! He was so scared. It all seems so absurd now.

No wonder you turned to music.

I had my Music for Youth plan that I had started in 1939, and I was putting my energies into that. But the Army went all out in support of it. Every department helped me. We put on concerts using Tokyo orchestras, and we were broadcast nationally for two years on Japanese radio and on the Far East Network. FEN was actually interested in classical music back then, if you can imagine. We had two sets of announcers at our concerts, one for Japanese radio and one for English. For a while I had every child from every base of every service coming to my concerts. Even Mrs. MacArthur was a big supporter.

What was she like?

She was very unassuming, very pleasant, a sort of quiet type of woman, but I liked her very much.

You're still very active, both running Music for Youth and its offspring, Young People's Concerts. What do you think of the classical music scene in Tokyo now?

There are too many concerts and I shouldn't say it . . . but they are not all high grade. But there's a good deal of competition. Now I'm reorganizing Music for Youth. And the Young People's Concerts program. Do you know how many people have attended? Five years ago we totaled up the audience over the years and we found that we've played to 50,000 students from international schools, 62,000 from military dependents' schools and 147,500 from private Japanese schools.

Pretty impressive numbers. What are your biggest obstacles?

It's been terribly difficult getting funds. I can't have staff without money. We used to have more than 150 of the biggest firms of all nationalities as sponsors. I would go to an oil firm and then I'd approach all their Japanese affiliates. They were too embarrassed not to help.

Is it the breaking of the bubble that hurt you?

It's not all the fault of the end of the bubble. In order to keep a Japanese sponsor you have to go every year and urge them to renew their membership. We don't have the staff to do that. Though a few, such as the Bank of Japan and Kirin Beer, have always stood by us.

What about the backing of the diplomatic corps?

We have kept the interest of the embassies and I seldom get turned down by the ambassadors when we ask them to take an honorary post. But the American ambassador now doesn't seem to go for these kinds of things.

Are you going to keep doing this? Why don't you just kick back and relax?

I wish I could but there's no sitting back right now! We're in the middle of reorganizing our activities. The symphony concerts are my greatest joy.

How are you restructuring these projects?

From now on I want to do more for the handicapped. I work with all the schools for the deaf in Tokyo and we arrange ballet performances. They learn the story before they come, and go home and write their impressions. They do amazing work, so much with their eyes. And the blind are simply entranced by our concerts. I have stacks of letters from children expressing their joy.

What do you think about the Japanese spirit of volunteerism--or lack of it?

They're beginning to get it. I find that a good number of the Japanese who approach me as volunteers are doing it for the first time.

You are getting some long overdue recognition--both from the emperor and from the Foreign Correspondents' Club.

I didn't particularly deserve it. I was quite overcome, in fact. How active were you as a foreign correspondent?

I was the correspondent for Music America, the leading publication in the music field for many years. They've been incorporated into a record magazine now and they don't go into news from abroad. But in the early days I was lucky. It was before all the newspapers had all these bureaus here, so I got the prize assignments. I covered the London Symphony tour for the London Times, for example, but I would never get those choice assignments today. Being a musicologist helped me a lot.

What do you think of today's music?

I don't particularly enjoy most modern music. I have a particular liking for medieval and renaissance music--Bach and that period.

You're known as an authority on gagaku, Japanese court music. What about other Japanese music?

I sometimes put Japanese music in my children's symphonies. There are a lot of very nice songs from the early 20th century but when I put a Japanese song into the program, many Japanese say "It's not pretty." They want to hear European classical music.

Is there anything you haven't accomplished yet?

Well, what I've done wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do. I wanted to write. I'd like to have more free time to read and write about Oriental music and art. That's one of my great disappointments--that I haven't written as much as I would have liked.

I'm sure you've been asked this a lot, but what is the secret to living so long?

I have no answer to that. I likely inherited a good physique but I haven't done anything special. I do drink a little. I like my sherry before dinner and my saké in winter. I tried smoking but I didn't like it. I have kept myself terribly busy, so I think that's one of the secrets.

Do you plan to stick it out in Japan?

I'm going to stay on here. Nowadays living in America sounds so precarious. My sister lives in Philadelphia and she just had her second car stolen. I can't imagine Americans being as kind and considerate to old people. This is a good place to grow old; it's easier for old people here.

You must have had some interesting conversations with cab drivers. What do they say when you tell them you first came to Japan in 1902?

They can't believe it! When they ask how long I've been in Japan, I just tell them I came here before they were born. They're always very kind, helping me up the steps with my shopping bags.

After all these years, what do you tell people when they ask you what you think of the Japanese?

I will never understand the Japanese. As much as I love them I never know what's going on in their minds. I get terribly frustrated and annoyed because of their inability to stand up for something! They're always on the fence. I'm not like that. I get too obstinate. I get so mad when I need an answer and they can't make up their minds. On a personal level I get along with the Japanese very well. But in a group when you are trying to do something? I don't know how a foreign businessman can stick it out here without having a nervous breakdown!

Don't you think the younger generation is different?

No, they're still the same. But Japanese make wonderful friends. Once they become your friend they are very loyal. But our thinking is so different. I don't think they'll ever get used to me.