life, Reischauer was afflicted by a variety of ailments and illnesses related to the hepatitis infection he had contracted from tainted blood following the attempt on his life while serving as US Ambassador to Japan. As a result of these ailments, Reischauer had to withdraw from active teaching and lecturing. Finally, in 1990, Reischauer succumbed to complications of hepatitis-C. Impact on US foreign policy Reischauer promoted US foreign policy both in public and in government on Japan and the rest of Asia after World War II and during the Vietnam War. World War II and afterward On September 14, 1942, three years before the end of World War II, Reischauer, then an instructor in Far Eastern languages at Harvard University, wrote the "Memorandum on Policy towards Japan." It laid out a plan on how the US could attain its postwar objective of "winning the peace" in Asia. According to late 20th-century Japanese historian Takashi Fujitani, the memo revealed a "condescension toward Japanese people" and a "purely instrumentalist and manipulative stance." In the abstract to his article, "The Reischauer Memo: Mr. Moto, Hirohito, and Japanese American Soldiers," Fujitani wrote: Myth of saving Kyoto During the war, Reischauer served as a Japan expert for the US Army Intelligence Service. A myth developed after the war that he had prevented the US from a nuclear bombing of Kyoto. Robert Jungk, in his memoir about the war and atomic scientists, claimed that Reischauer convinced his boss to persuade Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson not to bomb Kyoto, and to have it crossed off the black list of potential sites. Reischauer specifically denied that popular myth: US bases in Okinawa A secret memorandum, declassified in 1996, detailed a conversation among top US military and civilian officials on July 16, 1965 in Tokyo. Reischauer, then serving as the US Ambassador to Japan, proposed a plan to enable the US both to keep its military bases and to introduce nuclear weapons in Okinawa after the reversion of the US-occupied islands to Japanese sovereignty. Reischauer based his strategy on the symbolic political importance of reversion for Japan's conservative ruling party, but argued that the US did not have to "give Japan any real say in the use of our bases." He said that "if Japan would accept nuclear weapons on Japanese soil, including Okinawa, and if it would provide us with assurances guaranteeing our military commanders effective