Eleanor Harz Jorden oral history interview

1981-04-24

Jorden, Eleanor Harz; Mayo, Marlene J.

Oral history interview with Eleanor Harz Jorden conducted by Marlene Mayo on April 24, 1981. Eleanor Harz Jorden (1920 - February 18, 2009) was a linguistics scholar, author, and professor. She was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1920. In 1938, she started her undergraduate studies at Bryn Mawr College, receiving her degree in Latin. She then attended Yale University, where she received a master’s in Latin and Greek and a specialization in classics. During her time studying at Yale, Jorden was offered to work with American linguist and Professor Bernard Bloch, implementing and running a program called the Army Specialized Training Program at Yale, which aimed to teach enlisted men the Japanese language. Jorden, at the time, knew little about the Japanese language, but helped train the Japanese instructors to teach the men. Whilst assisting with the program, in 1943 and 1944, she was exposed to Japanese through visiting the classes and started to take an interest in the language. Eventually, she and her husband themselves taught sections of the program at Yale. Soon after, she received a fellowship to go to Japan in order to complete her dissertation about the Japanese language. She arrived into Yokohama in 1949 and interacted with many locals to conduct her research. She received her PhD in Linguistics from Yale shortly after in 1950 and since has written many books on the Japanese language and has taught at many renowned educational institutions. Eleanor Harz Jorden passed away in 2009 at the age of 88.

University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)

Oral histories

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

Japan; Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)

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: 01:12:00 (audiocassette; mp3); Transcript: 30 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-087557