Denzel Carr oral history interview

1981-06-05/1981-06-06

Carr, Denzel; Mayo, Marlene J.

Oral history interview with Denzel Carr conducted by Marlene Mayo on June 5 and 6, 1981. Denzel Carr (December 26,1900- October 4, 1983), a polyglot and well-known linguist, was born near West Liberty, Kentucky. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Oklahoma, a Master of Philosophy at the University of Krakow, and a PhD in Linguistics from Yale University in 1937. From April 1924 until March 1929, he taught English at a higher boy's school in Kyoto.  In August 1933, he began teaching French and Spanish (and later Russian and Japanese) at the University of Hawaii.  He lived in Hawaii from 1933 until 1948 and was there during his naval service. He served as an advisor to the District Intelligence Officer for the Fourteenth Naval District, where he advised that Nisei should be sent to the European theatre rather than the Pacific during World War II. From 1945 to 1948, Carr worked as Chief of the Language Division in the International Prosecution Section for the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. He was sent in 1950 to serve as Officer in Charge of the Language Division at the U.S. Naval School. In 1948, he began teaching at University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Oriental Languages, where he remained an important influence for many years. In 1955, he was awarded a fellowship to complete study in Indonesia. He passed away in 1983.

University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)

Oral histories

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

Japan; California; El Cerrito

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: 06:10:00 (audiocassette; mp3); Transcript: 147 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-087517