V. H. Viglielmo

Valdo H. Viglielmo (December 11, 1926 - November 14, 2016) was a prominent scholar and translator of Japanese literature and works of Japanese philosophy.

Viglielmo was born in Palisades Park, New Jersey. He grew up in a small rural community in the Hudson Valley of New York State, completing both his primary and secondary school education and beginning his college studies in that state. Being of draft age during World War II and knowing he would have to serve, he chose to volunteer, serving in the ASTRP (Army Specialized Training Reserve Program). He was eventually drafted in January 1945, undergoing basic training in Florida. The European phase of the war ended in May 1945 while he was in training, but the Pacific war was still raging.

Toward the end of his training Viglielmo responded to an appeal for enlisting in a Japanese language program being conducted under the auspices of the ASTP (the word “Reserve” no longer applied) and was sent to the University of Pennsylvania where he began an intensive nine-month course of study, almost exclusively in the spoken language. After the end of the war in August 1945, his training was then directed toward being an interpreter during the Occupation of Japan, and he served as such in the 720th Military Police Battalion in Tokyo from April to September 1946.

In October 1946, after his military discharge, Viglielmo transferred to Harvard University to continue his study of Japanese in the then-Far Eastern Languages Department. He received his A.B. degree magna cum laude in June 1948. He was accepted into the Harvard graduate program for Fall 1948, but chose instead to go to Japan for a three-year position teaching English as a foreign language at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo.

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