Desegregation at East Carolina is often explained simply in terms of the admission of African-American students to the previously all-white campus. However, Jim Crow bigotry excluded many others as well, including Asians and Asian-Americans. Significantly enough, the first non-white students and faculty at East Carolina were East Asians – Chinese, Korean, and Japanese – who emerged as pioneers of diversity, reconfiguring the human face of the campus.
Clara and Albert Kung, two “foreign students” from National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, appeared on campus in the fall of 1958, having chosen East Carolina via a random drawing from a group of possible universities that would accept them. The East Carolinian ran a piece on the siblings, noting that they were born in Shanghai, but raised in China and Formosa (Taiwan), then known as the Republic of China. No doubt, the Kung family left mainland China following the 1949 Communist Revolution for the island of Taiwan along with the followers of the Nationalist (Guomindang) Party led by Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi, 1887-1975). Claire and Albert’s father, a banker, had assumed responsibilities at the New York branch of the Bank of China, based in Hong Kong. The Republic of China, incidentally, was the only “China” the U.S. recognized at the time, and the Bank of China was, according to Drew Pearson, “the heart and nerve center of the China Lobby.”
1958 coincided with the disastrous “Great Leap Forward” in the People’s Republic of China and the loss of millions to starvation. Strained relations between Communist China and the Republic of China most likely influenced the relocation of the Kung family, known for its extraordinary wealth, to New York, and then Clara and Albert to East Carolina. When the two arrived, Clara, 17, was a sophomore majoring in chemistry, and Albert, 16, a freshman, studying electrical engineering. Another brother, still in high school, lived in New York City. The East Carolinian noted that the two had visited places that “most Americans have never seen, nor ever will see,” including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and many more.”
The fall of 1958 also brought another East Asian “student,” Pie Nio Kam, an ethnically-Chinese college professor from Jakarta, Indonesia, to East Carolina to observe undergraduate instruction. Kam’s stay was coordinated by the Indonesian government and the U.S. Office of Education. Kam had earlier visited universities in Missouri, West Virginia, and New York, and attended a conference at the University of Maryland. East Carolina was her last stop before returning to Washington, D.C. for a final report. While at East Carolina, Miss Kam was occasionally paired with Clara Kong as “foreign students” in interacting with undergraduates.
In 1959, a South Korean scholar, Dr. Yung Juin Yu, joined East Carolina’s Psychology Department. Yu had earlier completed a master’s degree in education at the New York State University College for Teachers at Buffalo, and then a Ph.D. in education with minors in psychology and philosophy at the University of Illinois. A native of Pusan, Yu came to the U.S. in 1954, following the end of the Korean War.
Dr. Yu was followed, in 1960, by the first Japanese student at East Carolina, Hidesaburo Kusama. In 1960, even as Tokyo students stage massive demonstrations protesting the U. S.-Japan Security Treaty, Kusama made history by coming to the United States and enrolling at East Carolina College, thus becoming the school’s first non-white post-graduate student. Kusama’s matriculation marked another crucial departure from Jim Crow segregation prevalent at the school for over 50 years. Kusama contributed to greater global awareness on campus, helping to move East Carolina away from the parochial, Eurocentric curriculum that often served as an academic expression of white supremacy.
Kusama was born in Yatabe, a small-town northeast of Tokyo. As a youth, he saw kamikaze pilots training at an airbase near his home town. He recalled that he hoped never to become such a pilot, but allowed, years later, that he “might be[come] a suicide pilot for the United Nations if that would end war forever.” As a child, he witnessed, from a distance, American B-29’s firebombing Tokyo. In the spring of 1945, he and his brother watched from Yatabe High School, “Tokyo burning – the great sea of fire – in the middle of the air raid of the 334 B-29s. … The school ground was about 30 miles away from Tokyo, and we couldn’t hear the noise of bombs or antiaircraft gun fire, but it was not difficult even for little pupils like [me] to think what was going on there.”
After the war, Kusama studied at Aoyama Gakuin University, a Christian university in Tokyo, majoring in British-American literature. Kusama edited the school newspaper, the Aoyama Trojan, published in English. He later became a Methodist – the only one in his family or hometown to do so. While studying in North Carolina, Kusama stated that he hoped to “become a Christian statesman someday.” Reportedly, Kusama saw Christianity as a teaching that democratic Japan needed in order to achieve a higher level of brotherhood at the national and international levels.
Kusama completed his undergraduate degree at Aoyama Gakuin in 1959. The following year, he traveled to the United States to begin post-graduate work, first at East Carolina and then at UNC-Chapel Hill. At East Carolina, Kusama studied political science, journalism, and international relations. He also published three articles in the East Carolinian introducing judo, flower arranging (ikebana), and the tea ceremony (chanoyu), as well as the Japanese system of higher education, to the campus. At Chapel Hill, he wrote on Japanese and East Asian political culture for the Daily Tar Heel. In 1963, Kusama completed a master’s degree in political science at UNC.
After returning to Japan, Kusama finished a doctorate at Meijo University in Nagoya. Between 1966 and 2000, he taught at Aichi Prefectural University before becoming a professor at Aichi Gakuin University in the Department of Information and Policy Studies. Kusama published widely on international relations, including one book on Japanese who helped save B-29 pilots downed during WWII. With that book, Kusama explained that he was giving back to the U.S. for his education at the University of North Carolina. Insofar as East Carolina prepped Kusama for study at Chapel Hill, his book was an outgrowth of his pivotal time here as well.
Whether Kusama realized the historic nature of his enrollment at East Carolina is not clear, but he – along with Clara and Albert Kung, Pie Kam, and Dr. Yu – led the way in undoing the parochial ignorance and prejudice that lay behind a half century of segregation. Collectively, they were the vanguard of desegregation at East Carolina. As cosmopolitan, well-travelled and well-educated individuals, they well surpassed the resumes of many, thereby contributing further to the end of illusions of white supremacy.
Sources
- B-29 Superfortress Chronicles. Chapter 8: B-29 Friendship Memorial. http://www.sun-inet.or.jp/~ja2tko/eng/eng.b29/b29no8.html.
- Conway, Bob. “Japan To Stay On Side Of West, Student Believes.” Asheville Citizen-Times. June 26, 1960. P. D1.
- Goins, Fran. “Judo Instructor Finds American Boys Quick To Learn ‘Philosophical’ Sport.” Daily Tar Heel. November 7, 1961. P. 1.
- “Hideo In North Carolina As Student Of Christianity.” High Point Enterprise. March 13, 1960. P. 4C.
- “International Friendship Renewed As Japanese Student Visits Here.” Burlington Daily Times-News. January 29, 1960. P. 6A.
- Kusama, Hideo. “A Japanese Student Looks At His Nation.” Daily Tar Heel. February 9, 1961. Vol. 69, no. 93. P. 2.
- Kusama, Hideo. “Japanese Student Further Describes Aspect of Homeland Culture.” East Carolinian. May 5, 1960. Vol. 35, no. 25. P. 1. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/38660.
- Kusama, Hideo. “Japanese Tea Ceremony Is Big Part of Chanoyu Cultural Heritage.” East Carolinian. Vol. 35, no. 22. April 7, 1960. P. 1. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/38657.
- Kusama, Hideo. “Japanese Writer Says ‘It’s … Hard To Get In, But Easy To graduate.’” East Carolinian. Vol. 35, no. 21. P. 2. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/38656.
- Maynor, Betty. “Indonesian Teacher Likes Southern Friendliness, Books and Fashion.” East Carolinian. Vol. 34, no. 8. November 13, 1958. P. 4. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/38614
- Maynor, Betty. “Psychology Professor Discusses Interests, Educational Systems.” East Carolinian. Vol. 35, no. 1. September 17, 1959. P. 1. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/38636
- Pearson, Drew. “Washington Merry-Go-Round: Kung Manipulates China Lobby.” Evening Times (Sayre, Pennsylvania). June 18, 1951. P. 4.
- Ross, James. “Student From Japan Flower, Judo Expert.” Asheville Citizen-Times. March 13, 1960. P. 8C.
- “They Chose ECC Accidentally But Foreign Students Are Happy.” East Carolinian. Vol. 34, no. 5. October 23, 1958. P. 3. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/38611.
Additional Related Material
Jack Birmingham Jr., Clara Kung, and Pie Kam at a meeting of the English Club, The Buccaneer, 1959.
Albert T. Kung, The Buccaneer, 1959.
Citation Information
Title: East Asian Pioneers of Desegregation
Author: John A. Tucker, PhD
Date of Publication: 2/17/2020