Project: East Meets West

From Fancyclopedia 2, ca. 1959

A moneyraising campaign to finance the trip of Japanese fan Tetsu Yano from LA to the Philcon II. Tetsu arrived in the USA on May 14, 1953, and was guest of the Ackermans during his stay. Ack and the con committee also footed most of the bill for the trip.

According to Bert Campbell in a loc to Hyphen 5 (November 1953), about efforts to create TAFF, this fan fund was not a big success:

Forry Ackerman was telling me that he has finally given up his faith in American fandom's co-operation for such things. Despite all the publicity he put out concerning Tetsu Yano, he received just one dollar from the great masses of fans. Tetsu's trip was financed by Forry and by generous donations from Bill Hamling and Kris Neville -- and Forry had to part with valuable collectors items at the auctions to raise a very small amount of cash.

Apparently unaware of Yano’s contributions to sf, faned Walt Willis, recipient of the WAW With the Crew in '52 fund, replied:

I don’t think we should be discouraged by the Tetsu Yano affair. After all, I made it. Admittedly,  there was that powerhouse Shelby Vick, and I had to write my guts out over the affair ... but on the other hand that was a purely American project -- British fandom didn’t even hear about it until it was a success -- while this will be worldwide. With all due respect to Forry Ackerman, who is just too generous for this world, the Tetsu Yano affair was fundamentally fuggheaded. Who the devil is Tetsu Yano that anyone should pay his fare to Philadelphia? If he had done something in fandom or even got himself heard of, or if he represented some Japanese fan group that had, I could see some point in it. But the idea that any bloody Jap who chooses to express an interest in science fiction should have his passage paid across the American continent for it is just preposterous. Publicity is not enough -- there has to be some sort of personality interest aroused, enough to produce the, as it were, tension ... capacitance ... that results in flashover. 

From Philcon II Progress Report 4.

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Fanfund

1953

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