![]() They believed, quite astutely, that the best way to strengthen relations between the two nations was to expose their future leaders to both cultures. Church missionary James Ballagh and Rutgers alumnus Robert Pruyn traveled to Japan to establish contact and encourage young samurai to come to New Brunswick as part of an exchange program. Originally founded by leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church in America, Rutgers held tenuous links to the religious institution well into the 19th century. That Dutch influence eventually played a large part in Rutgers and New Brunswick establishing enduring relationships within Japan. More than 200 years earlier, however, the Netherlands and Portuguese had established relations with Japan, and while the Portuguese were eventually told to leave, a small Dutch contingent was allowed to stay on a separate island as a trading outpost. Commodore Matthew Perry's historic visit to the island country marked the beginning of the end of Japan's isolation from the western world. The admission of Japanese students to Rutgers has its roots in the opening of relations between the island nation and the United States in the mid 1800s. How all of them got here is a little more complicated, as are the reasons why so many lay in rest at Willow Grove. The students were among the first to travel to the United States to gain a Western Civilization-style education. One question is easy to answer: only one of the buried people, Kusakabe Taro, attended Rutgers College, though a few of the others had attended Rutgers Grammar School (now known as Rutgers Preparatory School, no longer affiliated with the University). The Japanese section at Willow Grove Cemetery today. I also came upon an interesting American "first" attributed to the university. While getting to the bottom of the story, I discovered Rutgers' little-known contribution to the modernization of Japan in the mid 19th century. Who, then, were these people, and what was their relationship to New Brunswick? I think it's pretty safe to assume that they weren't commuter students. Thing was, a marker in the Japanese section notes that one of the deceased was living in Brooklyn at the time of his death. According to random scuttlebutt around Rutgers, the unfortunate dead were exchange students who had fallen ill during an epidemic. Last week's visit to New Brunswick's Willow Grove Cemetery brought to mind a legend I had heard about seven Japanese citizens who were buried there. ![]()
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