She will be publishing a much more extensive story on the China Marines in next year's 2015 edition.
Here is the text of the 2014 story:
On his thirteenth birthday in Greenwich, Connecticut, Jeffrey Bingham Mead (MAT 1990) received a very unusual gift from his father: an Imperial Japanese samurai sword. His father, Herbert Mead who would be one of the postwar “China Marines,” retrieved it at the surrender ceremonies held in Tianjin, China, on September 9, 1945.
Mead has embarked on an independent research publishing project on the history of the post-World War II China Marines stationed with his late-father in Tianjin and Beijing. You can view some of his research findings and the history behind it all at his blog site at http://mydadtheuschinamarine.
“My father never was able to return to China, although he often wanted to,” Mead said. “Dad’s final request for me was to research, write and publish a book about his years in China. It was not intended to be a military history, but rather a human, personal history about what day-to-day life was like for the American China Marines, the Chinese, Japanese nationals and everyone who survived battle.”
A story was published in August 2014 in The China Press about Mead’s China Marine history project. The story has since gone viral in China. “The Chinese really revere my father’s generation. I think Dad and the other China Marines would be touched, but they would also say that they were just doing their jobs.”
Mead also remarked about a chance meeting in Greenwich with renowned American historian David McCullough. “When I mentioned to Mr. McCullough that Dad survived the front lines of the Battle of Okinawa he said that my father was a national hero. I was very touched by those words.” That week was the last time Mead would see his father alive.
In November Mead has been invited to speak at a gathering of the Renwen Society of the China Institute in New York City. It is free and open to the public.
Jeffrey Bingham Mead lives in Honolulu, Hawaii and Greenwich, Connecticut. He was a teacher at the Hawaii campus of University of Phoenix, Hawaii Tokai International College and Kapiolani Community College. He is the Hawaii coordinator of the National Council for History Education and co-founder/president of History Education Hawaii. Mead is the president of the Hawaii-based Pacific Learning Consortium, Inc.
Jeffrey Bingham Mead
P.O. Box 183, Honolulu HI 96810-0183
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