5 THE PEOPLE 



£L 109 



Sears Crowell and Emperor Hirohito 

 e^iamine some hydroids and 

 nudibranchs, 1975. MBL Archives. 



Japan had been a strictly closed country, and Dan told Costello that his father 

 and uncles were brought up to believe that they would be beheaded if they 

 went into a foreign country. Japan was opened when his father was about 

 sixteen, however, so he was sent to study engineering in the United States, 

 where he and his brothers attended Harvard and MIT. They then returned 

 to introduce American engineering and mining methods to Japan. When 

 Katsuma Dan arrived in turn years later, he and Costello shared a lab at the 

 University of Pennsylvania. They drove together to California one year, in a 

 car that boiled over at every hill, and they then went on to the MBL together. 

 At the University of Tokyo Dan later taught cell biologist Shinya Inoue, now 

 a leading year-round MBL researcher. 



After the Dan era, the emperor came to the MBL. In 1975 Emperor 

 Hirohito proposed to visit the United States. Where did he wish to go? To the 

 Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, undoubtedly leaving a host of 

 diplomats scratching their heads and scurrying for their Massachusetts 

 maps. A marine biologist himself, he wanted to see the famous laboratory. 

 But the MBL is not accustomed to fancy dress and formal company. They 

 fixed up the men's room, which had languished away for years and had 

 acquired a layer of grime and intellectual graffiti. They polished the floors 

 and covered them with red carpets. They prepared tea for the honored 

 visitor and presented an impressive array of fancy local cookies. The em- 

 peror came, took part in formal receptions of WHOI and the MBL, and 

 graciously signed his name in a guest book and in one of his own publica- 



