Dad, I did it!

I heard from daughter Courtney last night. She’s in Okinawa with her husband on spring break from her Master’s work at the University of North Carolina. (Suddenly she’s a basketball fan, but that’s another story.)

Anyway, she’s in her last term, graduation in May, then on to West Point to teach history to the cadets. So of course she’s finishing up her thesis.

The note last night read:

I did it! Dad, I did it!

There followed comments from the professor advising her in the completion of that all important thesis, who wrote in part:

"It's a terrific thesis--your writing is just excellent! It flows smoothly, expressively, and persuasively. Your research seems solid and persuasive. It's a model piece of work.
If you do this, (his suggested revisions) and at some future point condense the text to about 30 pages, you'll certainly have an article publishable in a first-rate journal. And that's what these MA theses are supposed to be. So, success!!!!
So, in sum, with some fixing and strengthening of the introduction and conclusion, you're there!! I'm sure my colleagues will have some useful suggestions, since each one of us reads things differently. But I'm delighted with this, and feel it's a skillful, thoughtful, important piece of work."

Here’s the opening of the draft of this 57 page work:

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend: Okinawan Identity and Military Government Policy in Occupied Okinawa, April 1945

On May 31, 1945, two American soldiers sat cross-legged on the floor of a small hut in the gutted village of Nodake on the island of Okinawa. Their hostess, a middle-aged Okinawan woman, stooped down over them as she poured hot tea into small round clay cups. Many families shared the hut with the woman and some of them crowded into the main room to join in the tea ceremony with the Americans. The bombings, begun in October, 1944, had destroyed numerous homes in the village. Under the direction of the United States Army, several families now lived together in the homes that survived.
Military Government Detachment B-5 had operated Camp Nodake for two months. Outside its perimeter, the Battle of Okinawa (Operation ICEBERG) that began with the invasion of the island on March 26, 1945 still raged as the Japanese prepared to fall back to their second line of defense and the Americans seized Shuri Castle, the headquarters of the Japanese 32nd Imperial Army.