Prange, Gordon W. (Gordon William), 1910-1980

Dr. Gordon William Prange (July 16, 1910 - May 15, 1980) was born and grew up in Pomery, Iowa. Prange graduated high school in 1928 and turned a high school track and field career into a scholarship to the University of Iowa where he also played baseball. After graduating with a B.A. in History in 1932, he turned down a contract offer by the Chicago Cubs to continue to study history at Iowa. Prange received his M.A. in History in 1934 and Ph.D. in European History in 1937, both from Iowa. During his doctoral work, Prange was a foreign exchange student at the University of Berlin and University of Vienna from 1935 to 1937.

Prange married Anne Davidson Root in June 1937 and began teaching in the University of Maryland History Department that fall. After publishing a few articles about German National Socialism (Nazism) and his own experiences in Germany, Prange's first book, Hitler�s Words: Two Decades of National Socialism, 1923-1943, was published in 1944. Prange joined the US Navy in 1942, taking leave from the University of Maryland, and after completing classes at the Navy School of Military Government at Columbia University, Prange taught courses in Japanese administrative policy for the Navy at Princeton University. The Pranges' first child, Winfred, was born in 1944. Following the war in 1946, Prange was assigned to the G-2 Historical Division, General Headquarters, Far East Command in Tokyo, under General Douglas MacArthur, as a civilian historian where he eventually became the division director. The Pranges' second child, Nancy, was born while the family lived in Tokyo. While in Japan, Prange began his research on the Japanese perspective of the Pearl Harbor attack, conducting interviews with many former Japanese navy and army officers. He also secured for the University of Maryland, in competition with several other institutions including Stanford University, the records of the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD) of the Allied Occupation. This collection was named the Gordon W. Prange Collection in his honor in 1978.

By the time Prange returned to the University of Maryland in 1951, a third child, Polly, was born and the family moved into a home in nearby University Park. Prange continued to expand his research, working on three major research projects on the attack on Pearl Harbor, the battle of Midway, and the Russian spy, Richard Sorge. Book condensations of all three of these projects were published in Reader�s Digest in the 1960s and 1970s. His Japanese-language book, Tora! Tora! Tora!, was published in 1966 and was later turned into a movie by the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, a project for which Prange served as a history advisor. Prange taught at the University of Maryland until shortly before his death and is still remembered by colleagues and former students as a dynamic teacher who was able to inspire and engage the students in his European History classes. Prange worked steadily on his Pearl Harbor research during his entire teaching career and had two volumes of what was to be a four-volume work in proofs when he died in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1980. Following his death, two of Prange's former graduate students, Dr. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, worked with McGraw-Hill editors to posthumously publish Prange's manuscripts.

From the guide to the Gordon W. Prange Papers, 1866-2002, 1936-1980, (University of Maryland)