1946.01.05 “Japanese Schoolboy"
by Frank Williams (1913-1992)
13 x 15 in., ink on heavy paper
Coppola Collection
Francis “Frank” Louis Williams was born in Bay City, Michigan, on June 28, 1913, according to the Social Security Applications and Claims Index, which also had his full name, and the Detroit Free Press, April 18, 1992. The application named his parents who were John Williams and Frances L. Ward.
In the 1920 U.S. Federal Census, Williams, his widow mother and younger brother Claude were in his maternal grandmother’s household which included Williams’s uncle and aunt. Williams’s father was a Michigan native and mother a Canadian emigrant who was a stenographer at the Readi-Cut House Manufacturing Company. The families resided in Bay City at 220 Stanton Street.
Williams’s mother remarried to William W. Rehmus. According to the 1930 census, the couple lived at the same Bay City address. However, Williams and his brother were not there; they have not yet been found in this census.
In the postwar setting, Douglas MacArthur, acting as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), is imposing rules. In the early occupation of Japan, the country was being rhetorically reframed as something to be re-educated. The “3 Rs” are recast as “Rigorous Rules, Regulations.”
An AP report from Tokyo, January 4, 1946, was about Douglas MacArthur inviting American educators to “gear” Japan’s schools toward democracy. This is when MacArthur becomes widely seen as rewriting Japanese society, not just administering surrender.
