In Tennessee, a bastion of fading Americana, the military school, surrenders to Japanese preppies.

For more than a century, the red-brick Tennessee Military Institute overlooking this rural town turned out an elite, dedicated corps of young Americans, many of whom went on to success and fortune as soldiers, politicians, doctors and lawyers.

Then, like many military schools, it went bust. But now the fortress-like facility is set to turn out a new generation of future leaders--for Japan.

Last summer, the 13 buildings and 144 rolling acres that composed the old school were purchased for $2.4 million by the Presbyterian-affiliated Meiji Gakuin (pronounced MAY-gee GAH-kwan) University of Tokyo and converted into the first fully accredited Japanese high school for the sons and daughters of Japanese businessmen on assignment in the United States.

Renovated for an additional $2 million and rechristened Tennessee Meiji Gakuin High School, it opened this spring for the Japanese school year, which begins in April and goes nearly year-round. Its initial enrollment is 24 Japanese youngsters--13 boys and 11 girls, all 10th graders.

Thoroughly Japanese

The school is Japanese in virtually all aspects. Classes are taught in Japanese. The dozen teachers have been imported from Japan. The administrators are Japanese. A dozen Americans will work only in support roles, as cooks, custodians and in the business office.

There is little resentment of that in this town of 5,310 in the foothills of the Great Smokies.

Sweetwater, which one legend says takes its name from the early settlers’ descriptions of the local springs, nestles in a scenic valley surrounded by rich farmland. Agriculture has been the mainstay of the economy, but the town also has several small industries, including a stove plant, hosiery mill and chemical factory.

The townspeople are neighborly by instinct. This is their first big exposure to a foreign culture, and “it’s going to be a culture shock both ways, for us and the Japanese,” said Charles Chamberlain, president of the Monroe County Chamber of Commerce. “I was trying to communicate with one of the teachers at the school the other day. She writes terrific English but speaks zero. I found another teacher who does both, though, and we got over the problem.”

Many Tennesseans welcome the school as an addition to the growing Japanese investment in the state, which includes the Nissan truck plant in Smyrna, the largest Japanese-owned automobile facility in the nation.

But the historic message of the TMG opening has not been lost. Americans used to open their own schools overseas when they found local education inadequate. Now it is happening here.

University President

Speaking at the opening ceremony at TMG, University of Tennessee President Lamar Alexander said U.S. graduation rates and standardized test scores have failed to improve and that American parents and educators should be “looking to the Far East for help.”

He compared the course of study at TMG with the curriculum at his own alma mater, the well-regarded public high school in Maryville, a community of 17,480 about 40 miles northeast. Students at TMG will take as many courses in three years as Maryville students will in four, will go to school 230 days a year compared to 180 days, will go to school one more hour each day, take home three times more homework and take harder courses.

“They go to school on Saturdays while our doors are closed,” he said.

Sensitive to the symbolic importance of the opening of TMG, officials of the school and Japanese parents go out of their way to praise U.S. education. Masayuki Furugori, an executive with a Japanese-owned firm in Ohio who enrolled his 15-year-old daughter, Keiko, in TMG, said “American schools are good.”

But obviously not good enough. “If she stayed in school in Ohio, she may never get into a Japanese university,” he said.

Out of the first 24 students at the Sweetwater school, Keiko is the only one whose parents are living in this country. The rest are all from families who are in Japan and want their children to have an international experience.

But more American-based Japanese students are expected to enter this fall, and by 1991 the enrollment is expected to reach its capacity of just over 200 students in grades 10 through 12.

Another Campus

Keio University of Tokyo also plans to open a similar fully accredited Japanese high school in 1990 on the campus of Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y., north of New York City. Other campuses also may be opened.

In Sweetwater, American students are welcome to apply for admission. But few are expected to try. Only one class will be taught in English--English as a foreign language. And tuition will be $17,000 a year for boarders, plus a one-time registration fee of $2,000.

Still, it’s worth thinking about. “If I had kids, I’d send them here,” said Helen Hagood, TMG’s American business manager.