Donald Keene oral history interview

1982-05-14

Keene, Donald; Mayo, Marlene J.

Oral history interview with Donald Keene conducted by Marlene Mayo on May 14, 1982. Donald Keene (June 18, 1922 - February 24, 2019), born in Brooklyn, NY, was a scholar, historian, and translator of Japanese literature. He received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1942. While at Columbia, Keene studied Chinese, but in 1941, changed his study to Japanese. After this, he joined the Navy language school at Berkeley, where he trained to become an interpreter and intelligence officer. The first time he visited Japan was in December 1945 for about one week. The Navy sent him there by accident, but during this time he tried to locate and visit families of POWs until he had to go back to Hawaii. He did not get to go to Japan as a student until 1953, after the Occupation had ended. In the United States, Keene used his language skills to bring Japanese literature to the West. In the 1950s, he translated and compiled a two-volume anthology to introduce university students to Japanese literature. He taught literature at Columbia University. Keene became a citizen of Japan at the age of 89 and spent his final years in Japan.

University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)

Oral histories

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

Japan; New York (N.Y.); Columbia University

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: 02:00:00 (audiocassette; mp3); Transcript: 49 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-087559