Totten, George Oakley III, March 27, 1983

George Oakley Totten III (July 21, 1922 – March 2, 2009) was born in Washington, D.C. and attended Columbia University but left during his junior year to enter the Military Intelligence Service Language School at the University of Michigan. He volunteered to study Japanese in the Army in 1942 and became one of two officers of a Japanese language detachment in Southeast Asia during World War II. He went on Japan to serve as a language officer for Military Intelligence during the Occupation. He then returned to Columbia to receive his bachelor’s and master’s and then his PhD from Yale in 1954. Totten went on to author, edit, and translate several books and articles on politics in Japan, China, and Korea. He also went on to teach, spending several years at Stockholm University and joining the Political Science Department at the University of Southern California from 1965-1992, serving as the Director of the East Asian Studies Center and Chair of Political Science. He became Emeritus in 1992. In 2009, George Oakley Totten III passed away. He was 86 years old.