Journalist, Author. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he wrote seminal books on Japan, helped expand Encyclopedia Britannica's operations in Asia and began a research organization focused on trans-Pacific relation. While studying Latin and Greek at Yale University,the Navy recruited him for his language abilities, required him to master Japanese and sent him to the Pacific to interrogate Japanese prisoners of war for naval intelligence during World War II. Naval experience and his cultural relations with the Japanese in the postwar occupation formed his later career. He then became Tokyo bureau chief for Time and Life magazines and saw firsthand the pivotal events of East Asian life during the mid-20th century. While with Time Life he was an early news correspondent in South Korea when major conflict arose there in 1950. His first book, "Five Gentlemen of Japan" (1953), was among the first to depict humanely the wartime enemy through verbal portraits of a journalist, a naval officer, a steelworker, a farmer and Emperor Hirohito, posthumously called Emperor Showa. His other works include "Japan: The Fragile Superpower" (1976), which contrasted U.S. and Japanese cultural and business traditions, and "The Pacific Century" (1992) charting the rise of Pacific Rim culture and became a 10-part public television series won an Emmy as a documentary in historical programming. He later became president of the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Journalist, Author. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he wrote seminal books on Japan, helped expand Encyclopedia Britannica's operations in Asia and began a research organization focused on trans-Pacific relation. While studying Latin and Greek at Yale University,the Navy recruited him for his language abilities, required him to master Japanese and sent him to the Pacific to interrogate Japanese prisoners of war for naval intelligence during World War II. Naval experience and his cultural relations with the Japanese in the postwar occupation formed his later career. He then became Tokyo bureau chief for Time and Life magazines and saw firsthand the pivotal events of East Asian life during the mid-20th century. While with Time Life he was an early news correspondent in South Korea when major conflict arose there in 1950. His first book, "Five Gentlemen of Japan" (1953), was among the first to depict humanely the wartime enemy through verbal portraits of a journalist, a naval officer, a steelworker, a farmer and Emperor Hirohito, posthumously called Emperor Showa. His other works include "Japan: The Fragile Superpower" (1976), which contrasted U.S. and Japanese cultural and business traditions, and "The Pacific Century" (1992) charting the rise of Pacific Rim culture and became a 10-part public television series won an Emmy as a documentary in historical programming. He later became president of the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Bio by: Fred Beisser
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