Maki, John M.

Government (Political Science), 1966-1980

b. 1909, Tacoma, Wash.

d. Dec. 2006, Amherst, Mass.

Born to Japanese parents in Tacoma, Washington, in 1909, John Maki was adopted as an infant by a white couple and raised on their farm. After receiving both his bachelors (1932) and masters (1936) in English literature at the University of Washington, Maki was persuaded to switch fields to the study of Japan. Following a fellowship from the Japanese government to study in Tokyo in the late 1930s, the war interrupted his plans. After being ordered to internment, he served with the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service of the Federal Communications Commission and in psychological warfare planning with the Office of War Information, and after the war, he took a position with the occupation authority, assisting in the drafting of the Japanese Constitution.

Returning stateside, Maki resumed his academic career, earning his doctorate in political science at Harvard in 1948. After eighteen years on the faculty at the University of Washington, he moved to UMass in 1966, where he served in the Government Department as chair of the Asian Studies Program and in administrative posts, including as vice dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. In recognition of his efforts to promote relations between the U.S. and Japan, he was awarded the Third Class Order of the Sacred Treasure by the emperor of Japan in 1983. Although he retired from the faculty in 1980, Maki remained active as a scholar until the time of his death in Amherst in December 2006.

• 1945. Japanese militarism, its cause and cure. New York, Knopf.
• 1961. Conflict and tension in the Far East: key documents, 1894-1960. Seattle, Wash. : University of Washington. Edited by Maki.
• 1962. Government and politics in Japan; the road to democracy. New York, N.y> : Praeger.
• 1972. We the Japanese: voices from Japan. New York, N.Y. : Praeger. Edited by Maki.
• 1980. Japan’s Commission on the Constitution, the final report. Seattle, Wash.: UIniv. of Washington. Edited and translated by Maki.
• 1996. William Smith Clark : a Yankee in Hokkaido. Sapporo, Japan: Hokkaido Univerity Press.
• 2002. A yankee in Hokkaido : the life of William Smith Clark. Lanham, Md. : Lexington Books.
• 2004. Voyage through the twentieth century. Amherst, Mass. : Modern Memoirs.

• View the collection description for the John Maki Papers