William Kenneth Bunce oral history interview

1980-03-18

Bunce, William Kenneth, 1907-2008; Mayo, Marlene J.

Oral history interview with William Kenneth Bunce conducted by Marlene Mayo on March 18, 1980. William Kenneth Bunce (August 31,1907 – July 23, 2008) was the individual primarily responsible for the formulation of the Shinto Directive, which was issued by the Japanese government in December 1945. According to Bunce, his experience teaching in a Japanese high school from 1936 to 1939, informed his work as Chief of the Religious and Cultural Resources Division during the Occupation. He saw first-hand how, "...Japanese emperor worship was inculcated into students in the Japanese education system and the degree of reverence extended to the Emperor and to all things pertaining to the Emperor, most notably the Imperial Rescript on Education and the Emperor's portrait, formed a reasonably good background for my approach to these problems when I served in the Occupation" (p.3 of the transcript). He was commissioned as a Lieutenant in Navy in 1943 and for nine months studied at the Navy School of Military Government at Columbia University. He met Gordon Prange there.  He arrived in Japan in mid-September 1945 and was assigned to the Civil Information and Education Section, Education, Religion, and Arts & Monuments Division. During the Occupation, Bunce worked as Chief of the Religious and Cultural Resources Division under the Supreme Commander Allied Powers in Japan. His work involved demilitarizing Japan’s cultural, religious, social, and academic institutions. In 1945, Bunce wrote the Shinto directive that reformed Japan’s state and no longer held Shinto as the state religion. After his work during the Occupation, Bunce worked for the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, eventually returning to the U.S. while remaining in government positions until he retired in 1971. Bunce passed away in Maryland in 2008.

University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)

Oral histories

Japan--History--Allied occupation, 1945-1952

Japan; Virginia; Fairfax Station

Postwar Japan

Special Collections and University Archives

English

Collection may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. To obtain permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the University of Maryland Libraries at http://www.lib.umd.edu/special/contact/home.

Recording: 02:00:00 (audiocassette; mp3); Transcript: 40 pages (PDF)

This oral history interview is part of the Marlene J. Mayo oral histories. A guide to the full collection of Marlene J. Mayo oral histories is available in our archival collections: http://hdl.handle.net/1903.1/42478.
Accession 2009-209-GWP
An interview transcript is available.

Filename: prange-087515