Tōgō studied naval science in England from 1871 to 1878.
He graduated from the United States Naval Academy, where he later worked as a naval science and navigation instructor.
The bridegroom, 28, is stationed at the Georgia Institute of Technology Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps in Atlanta, where he also serves as an assistant professor of naval science.
He was a Navy lieutenant, serving from 2004 to 2008 on the nuclear submarine Cheyenne in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and later was an assistant professor of naval science at Notre Dame, where he is now a trustee.
He briefly studied naval science at the University of Southern California through the Navy's V-12 program for officers but was discharged in 1946, after the war ended and before he had graduated.
Itō's talents were apparent even before the restoration, and the leaders of Chōshū sent him to England (along with his friend Inoue Kaoru) to study Western naval science (1863).
Lieutenant Van Buren, also 29, is now a Navy submarine officer assigned to the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps unit at George Washington University, where he is both an assistant professor of naval science and a candidate for an M.B.A.
The bridegroom, 29, is an assistant professor of naval science at the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine and at the University of Maine in Orono, where he is also the officer in charge of the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps.
His 20 years in the Marines took him all over the world, but he said he was excited to return to his alma mater as a naval science instructor in September.
At The Citadel, Ms. Lovetinska said she delighted in studying political theory -- "from Plato and Aristotle, all the way to Marx and Hegel" -- as well as taking classes in naval science and history.
