Marion Levy oral history interview

1980-06-07

Levy, Marion J. (Marion Joseph), 1918-; Mayo, Marlene J.

Oral history interview with Marion Levy conducted by Marlene Mayo on June 7, 1980. Marion J. Levy, Jr. (December 12, 1918 - May 26, 2002) was a sociologist, professor, and author born in Galveston, Texas. He received his undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard, his master's in economics from the University of Texas, and his PhD in sociology from Harvard, where he took language classes in Chinese and Japanese. During this time, the Navy asked those studying the language to join their Japanese Language Program. Levy signed up and became a Navy Japanese language officer during World War II, reaching the rank of lieutenant, senior grade. While in China, when he had time off from the Navy, he worked for the Office of Strategic Services for about a year. He was then put in the Navy's Intelligence Office and later joined the Office of War Information in late 1944/ early 1945. Following his time with the Navy, Levy joined the Princeton faculty in 1947 as a Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, going on to serve as the Chairman of Princeton’s East Asian Studies as well. He is also noted for his contributions to the modernization theory in the 1960s. In 1989, Marion J. Levy, Jr. retired, and in 2002, he passed away at the age of 83.

University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)

Oral histories

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

Japan; New Jersey; Princeton 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: 01:30:00 (audiocassette; mp3); Transcript: 44 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-087565