Tristan Belpat oral history interview

1979-11-07/1979-12-18

Belpat, Tristan; Mayo, Marlene J.

Oral history interview with Tristan Belpat conducted by Marlene Mayo on November 7, 1979 and December 18, 1979. Tristan Belpat (1912 - 1997) was born in New York City in 1912. He attended the American Institute of Banking where he studied international banking and went on to study management at Harvard University for graduate school. He took courses at the University of Virginia and Harvard about civil administration of occupied areas in 1945 to prepare him for the occupation of Japan. From October 1945 to March 1946, Belpat was the Assistant Chief to of the Foreign Exchange Branch, Finance Division, Economic and Scientific Section (ESS), General Headquarters (GHQ-SCAP), Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. From May 1946 to August 1946, he was the Chief of the Foreign Exchange Unit, Money and Banking Branch, ESS, GHQ-SCAP. Belpat was honorably discharged from the Army in 1946, but stayed in Japan and continued to work for the Army. Belpat created a Manufacturers Hanover in Tokyo which was the first American bank in Japan after the war. He was an important part of the reconstruction of Japan’s economy after the war, helping to increase the value of the yen to 360 a dollar, compared to 2.50 to the dollar before the war. Belpat later returned to the United States and passed away in 1997.

University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)

Oral histories

Japan--History--Allied occupation, 1945-1952

Japan; New Jersey; Princeton

Postwar Japan

Special Collections and University Archives

English

Collection may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. To obtain permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the University of Maryland Libraries at http://www.lib.umd.edu/special/contact/home.

Recording: 04:47:00 (audio cassette; mp3); Transcript: 109 pages (PDF)

This oral history interview is part of the Marlene J. Mayo oral histories. A guide to the full collection of Marlene J. Mayo oral histories is available in our archival collections: http://hdl.handle.net/1903.1/42478.
Accession 2009-209-GWP
An interview transcript is available.

Filename: prange-087507