The (1960s)
C S E PUNN M O A C (C
) N O I T
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IN THIS (ISSUE) News from your class agent News From Your Class Agent 1 What’s New With You? 2 Classmate Updates 2 25 Years of Graduate Education 2 Athletic Hall of Fame Inductees 3 Inauguration Date Announced 3 More News From Your Agent 3 Spring Alumni Events 4 From the Desk of Lisa Tilma 4
Sherrie (Lindstrom) Andersen, G’68 1960s Class Agent pirsqrd24@hotmail.com You are invited to the inauguration of President Dr. T.J. Arant.
Here we are at the beginning of another new year. What have you got planned for 2012? Will there be special trips to far away countries or across America? New inspirations, gaining some new knowledge, an opportunity to help others, or just time to sit and wonder at our many blessings? It doesn’t seem to be as big a transition as when I was younger but it is still exciting to anticipate the months ahead.
Army at the end of World War II. It was at the Sugamo prison located near Tokyo that he saw and met some of WWII’s most infamous war criminals, including Iva Togori D’Aquino, otherwise known as “Tokyo Rose”. She was the broadcaster who taunted American servicemen with her program, “Zero Hour.” She had been imprisoned in the jail and Johnson, who was then 23, working at the jail, decided he wanted to meet her.
2011 was the 150th year for the State of Kansas. A daily column by Beccy Tanner in the Wichita Eagle has given some trivia about the state or someone in the state. One of our own from Friends University was the subject of one of the those columns. He taught in a room in A Hall to the south of Watkins Hall and I was always a bit suspicious of what was going on in that Physics classroom. I remember a Chapel service when he made David Quick’s hair stand on end! Yes, the column was about Robert W. Johnson.
“GI’s were not supposed to talk with war criminals,” he said. “But I wanted to make some kind of contact and so I managed to talk with Tokyo Rose in her cell. I managed to not have the light go on in her cell. And being the prison electrician, I had to go fix her light. That’s when I was able to talk with her.”
Professor Johnson was a Quaker from western Kansas and an electrician with the 144th Operations Detachment of the U.S.
He took a small step ladder with him into the cell and had a short conversation with Tokyo Rose while he changed the light bulb. His conversation revealed that she had studied entomology in the states and spoke perfect English. Granted it was small talk, he said, but that’s all the conversation he was able to have before the prison’s military police came to the cell to check on him. (Continued on page 3)