This problem is fixed by putting (setq semantic-load-turn-useful-things-on t) before the call to load <cedet>/common/cedet.el.
Presumably this means that the default, which loads the minimal functionality of semantic, does not work quite right. Since I don't find all the 'useful-things' as useful as the author, I turn several of them off with customizations, but the syntax highlighting still works ok in all the java buffers I visit. Jeff
