Author Bio

Child of Tokyo

Edokko,

I was born in Tokyo on January 5, 1931. Both my parents and both my father's parents had lived there, so I took the liberty of calling myself an "Edokko." Being an "Edokko" also implies that you are assertive, straightforward, cheerful and, perhaps, a little materialistic, which are characteristics people often attribute to me.

My Russian - Jewish - Chinese - Japanese Childhood

How did I happen to be born in Japan? That's what most people want to know when they first meet me. The simple answer is that my Russian-Jewish parents fled to relative safety there in the late 1920's to get away from the chaos of war, revolution and growing anti-Semitism then gripping Europe. They were professional musicians and Japan was in the process of introducing Western classical music to its people. The more complicated answer is the subject of my book.

I was the fourth of five sons born to my parents in different cities throughout their intercontinental odyssey. When I was scarcely six months old, my parents separated, and our mother took us to Harbin, China, where she had been raised, to live with her widowed father. After a five-year separation, my parents were reconciled and we returned to Yokohama, Japan. There, we attended English and American schools, before being enrolled in a Catholic parochial school in early 1941. In 1944 the school was forced to close its doors and we moved back to Tokyo, where we briefly attended a Japanese international school called the Waseda International Institute. Our education was finally interrupted for the duration of the war because of the devastating American B-29 bombing raids.

Edo Castle - Tokyo, Japan

After the War I had the good fortune to meet an American Marine colonel from Prescott, Arkansas, John Calvin "Toby" Munn, a decorated hero of the Battles of Guadacanal and Okinawa, who commanded a Marine Air Group at the Yokosuka Naval Base. It was he who brought me to Hawaii as his ward in July 1946. Toby Munn later rose to the rank of Lieutenant-General and served as Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps during the early 1960's.

In Hawaii, I was privileged to attend the Punahou Academy, a private school established in Honolulu by American missionaries in 1841. I received my high school diploma in June 1948 and left Hawaii to enroll as a freshman at Columbia College in New York. In 1950, my college career was interrupted by two years of active duty in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. In September 1951, while serving in the Army, I was sworn in as an American citizen along with 50 foreign war brides.

I resumed my studies at Columbia in the fall of 1952 and received my Bachelor of Arts degree in 1954, after my first year at Columbia Law School, where I had the good fortune to meet my wife, Jacqueline. I received my Bachelor of Laws degree in June 1956 and we were married that September in Teaneck, New Jersey.

Three days after our wedding, we sailed for France, where I studied for a year on a Fulbright Scholarship at the Institute of Comparative Law of the University of Paris. I returned in 1957 to begin a 30-year association with the New York law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, the last 20 years as a partner in the firm. In April 1986, I left the firm to join Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where I now serve as Of Counsel, having retired as a partner in 2001.

During the span of my professional career, I have had the opportunity to pursue a second career in the academic and not-for-profit sectors. One of my mentors at Columbia Law School was Professor John Hazard, an expert on Soviet Law, who encouraged me to become knowledgeable in that field. We co-authored a case-book on Soviet Law and I taught the subject for 15 years at the New York University Law School from 1960 to 1974. Much later, in 2000, I served as an Adjunct Professor of Russian Law at Columbia Law School.

Throughout this same period, I served as a Trustee of several cultural organizations with ties to Japan and Russia. From 1970 to 1977 I served as President of the Japan Society in New York and from 1985 to 2005 as President of the Isamu Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, one of a few one-artist museums established by a living artist. I have also held a number of part-time public positions and have served on a handful of corporate boards.

Our three children and four grand-children were all born in the United States, and it is partly because I wanted to leave a legacy for them that I have written Edokko. Our two daughters lived with us in Japan from 1977 to 1979, when I served there as the resident partner in charge of Milbank's Tokyo office, and that gave them the opportunity to be in touch with my "home town" and to get to know me better.

Looking back at the 63 years I have lived in the United States, I can truly say that my life has been a classic example of fulfillment of the "American Dream."