Visiting Japanese Professor Denies Red Membership

Professor Tsuru Shigeto '35, visiting lecturer on Economics, told Senate investigators yesterday that he has never been a Communist, but that he had made some mistakes in his associations as a student here.

Tsuru, who is a professor at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, told the Senate Internal Security subcommittee that some of his associates in the pre-World War II period were Communists or close to the Communist party.

He transferred to the University in 1934, after three years at Lawrence College in Appleton, Wis., and remained here until 1942, when he was repatriated to Japan. He returned to Harvard this fall under the American-Japanese Intellectual Interchange Program.

Tsuru testified that he had been criticized in Japan during the post-war period as "anti-American," but he stated that, despite his criticism of U.S. policies, "I am not anti-American."

He said that in the 1930's he was "very critical" of the Japanese government because of its expansionist policies in China, and associated with many people who shared his opposition to the Japanese conquest of Manchuria and the invasion of China.

Among them, he continued, were some who were Communists or left-wingers. "I'm sure I overstepped the limits of propriety in my associations," he said.

Tsuru swore several times, in response to direct questions, that he had never joined the Communist party either in the United States or in Japan.