Adolf A. Berle and in the expansion of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1944. After the war, Berle served as Ambassador to Brazil from 1945 to 1946. In October 1945, two days after the deposition of president Getulio Vargas, Berle pledged for the freedom of the Brazilian communists who were being incarcerated by the government since the beginning of the month. He then returned to his academic career at Columbia. Berle was a founding member of the New York State Liberal Party, a breakaway faction of the American Labor Party,
Jorge B. Vargas country in 1941, Vargas was designated to the Department of National Defense as its secretary. A few weeks later, he was appointed by President Manuel Quezon as mayor of the Greater Manila area in 1941. His responsibilities included administering the open city upon the arrival of occupational troops of the Imperial Japanese Army on January 2, 1942. By 1942, Vargas became chairman of the Japanese-sponsored Philippine Executive Commission. During the collaborationist Second Philippine Republic, he was once asked by the Japanese to assume the Presidency, but he declined. He instead served as the regime's Ambassador to Japan. In that position,