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Conroy’s use of empirical diplomatic history allows him to check the facts on various claims of those who come from more ideological starting points; also, it allows him to see the possibilities of peacemaking and to spot missed chances and ironies. In looking at the lives of people at the frontiers, operating within the constraints of representing their own countries but exposed to the perspectives of another, he often finds food for learning. Part of this means simply to put one’s self in the other’s shoes; another part means to develop some sensibility for an elevation of conduct, what Confucians might call “the way of the gentleman.” In Conroy’s diplomatic world, real and (creatively) imagined, we see, on one hand, an open commensality—everyone is welcome at the diplomatic table, even (or especially) the marginalized. But on the other hand, one needs to spruce up a little, bring some decorum. If one’s group is fresh out of a mass movement, then it is especially important that one send an appropriate diplomat: a Chou En-lai, perhaps, rather than a Mao Tse-tung. Although some may argue for the purity or righteousness of the people’s cause and its zealous leaders, for example, in regard to the Chinese masses or, say, the indigenous Hawaiians, Conroy would have us note also a different kind of claim in the broader service of peacemaking that requires the representatives themselves to rise from the streets to a level appropriate for the occasion. One could interpret this as elitism on Conroy’s part, were it not for his equal, balancing commitment to the study and appreciation of the much larger group of in-between peoples, those buffeted by the winds of migration: for example, immigrants to Hawaii who came largely from the rather poor agricultural region of Hiroshima. In fact, one of his greatest accomplishments demonstrates empirically how the swings in U.S. policy toward ordinary Japanese immigrants around 1898–1941 deeply affected diplomatic negotiations concerning Pacific geography.