George H. Kerr

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George H. Kerr (November 7, 1911 – August 27, 1992), also known in

postwar Chinese rule, Taiwanese rebellion against Chinese rule in 1947, and U.S. foreign policy toward Taiwan."[1] His works also include "information about economic and political conditions in Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands after World War II."[1]

Early life

Kerr was born in

Japanese Taiwan, during 1937 through 1940.[1]

Military career

As a lieutenant in the

U.S. Navy as a Taiwan expert and instructed future military government officers during the Pacific War. In 1942–1943, Kerr was an analyst and consultant on Formosa in the U.S. Department of War.[1] In 1944–1946, he was the director of the Formosa Research Unit at the Naval School of Military Government and Administration for the U.S. Navy at Columbia University in New York.[1]

Diplomatic career

After the war, Kerr returned to Taiwan in 1945 as an assistant

February 28 Incident
in 1947.

It was not till the early 1950s that he realized his wish to visit

Okinawa
, and with it a military commission to write a history, the purpose of which was to revive an independent Ryūkyūan identity. An able team of researcher-translators scoured Japan for historical sources on Okinawa. Then Kerr synthesized the material into the book Okinawa: Kingdom and Province (1953), and then in Japanese as Ryūkyū no rekishi (1955). In the meantime, Kerr began a revision based on additional research as well as criticism of the first two books and published a 1958 volume, Okinawa: The History of an Island People.

Academic career

Kerr was a lecturer at the University of Washington during 1947–1949; and he was a lecturer at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley in 1949–1950. For the next five years, he was a research associate at the Hoover Institution.[1]

The open sections of Kerr's papers are available at the Okinawa Prefectural Archives in Haebaru, others at the

Stanford, Taipei and Ryudai
libraries.

Later life

Kerr's publications on Taiwan are numerous. He championed the cause of

Taiwan independence from China, thereby making himself a high-profile enemy to both Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. (Chiang complained and Kerr lost his job at Stanford University.) He also drafted a long book on 19th century Hawaii
, thus making his life's work of a piece: the history of Pacific Ocean marine frontiers.

He is an author of many books and of numerous articles concerning Japan, Okinawa and Taiwan. Among them are the Formosa: Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement, 1895-1945, Formosa Betrayed (1965), Descriptive Summary: George H. Kerr papers, 1943-1951, Okinawa: The History of an Island People (1958), and The Taiwan Confrontation Crisis (1986).

Taiwanese independence. The book was republished in 1976 by Da Capo Press
. In 1992 a second edition was published by Taiwan Publishing Co. The book is now legally available online (see link below).

Okinawa: The History of an Island People covers the legendary past to the Battle of Okinawa in 542 very read-able pages. Eleven years before he died, Kerr wrote that 13,000 copies had been sold. The book was out of print for a time, but Tuttle, the original publishers, reprinted it in 2000, adding a new introduction and an appendix by Okinawa history scholar Mitsugu Sakihara.[2]

He died at the age of 80 on August 27, 1992, in

Honolulu, Hawaii.[1]

Selected works

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o "Register of the George H. Kerr Papers". Online Archive of California. Regents of The University of California.
  2. ^ "Okinawa: History of an Island People". Tuttle Publishing. Archived from the original on 12 April 2013. Retrieved 8 Feb 2013.
  3. JSTOR 29781163
    . was issued in only about 50 mimeographed copies as an alphabetical listing by author of both monographs and serials, with a separate section for manuscript material.

Sources

  • A. P. Jenkins, 'G.H. Kerr's Okinawa: The History of an Island People and Beyond', The Ryukyuanist, No. 52, Summer 2001, pp. 3–8 (on which significant parts of this article are based but without due acknowledgement)

External links
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