About Eleanor Hadley
Eleanor Martha Hadley (July 17, 1916 – June 1, 2007) was an American economist and policymaker. Because of her relatively rare research specialization in Japanese economics, during World War II Hadley was recruited first into OSS and then the State Department to support the United States' war effort while she was a doctoral candidate in economics at Radcliffe College. Hadley helped draft the United States' plans for dissolving zaibatsu business conglomerates as part of a planned effort to democratize Japan after the war, and she participated in implementing this economic deconcentration program when the postwar occupation brought her to Japan to work for SCAP as an economist. After ending her time with SCAP in the occupation of Japan, Hadley completed her dissertation, earning her doctorate at Radcliffe College. Although interested in continuing a career in working for the United States, she discovered that she could not obtain meaningful work in government because Charles A. Willoughby, an ultraconservative military officer in the occupation, had blacklisted her, resulting in the denial of necessary security clearance. Hadley turned to academia, and she taught at Smith College and George Washington University. After Hadley finally cleared her name and achieved clearance, she worked in government for the U. S. Tariff Commission and General Accounting Office from 1967 to 1981. In 1970, Princeton University Press published Hadley's monograph Antitrust in Japan. Economist George Cyril Allen called Antitrust "undoubtedly the most comprehensive and authoritative" study on zaibatsu and their dissolution available in the Western world. Hadley received the Order of the Sacred Treasure, third degree, from the Japanese government in 1986, and in 1997 she received the Association for Asian Studies' Award for Distinguished Contributions. Upon arrival, in addition to being one of the first women professionals to work at SCAP, Hadley soon played what economists Patricia Hagan Kuwayama and Hugh T. Hadley's first memorandum, written to Major General Courtney Whitney in June 1946, pointed out the Yasuda plan's deviation from the Basic Direction, which called for dissolving business combines as well as holding companies.
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