Goodman, Grant Kohn, 1924-

Member of the U.S. Army Japanese Language School held at the University of Michigan during World War II; and organizer of 1990 reunion.

Professor of history at the University of Kansas, specialist in Japanese history and Japanese-Philippine relations.

Goodman received his B.A. from Princeton in 1948, his M.A. from Michigan in 1949 and his Ph.D. in 1955, also from Michigan. He joined the faculty of KU in the Department of History in 1962, reaching full Professor status in 1967. He retired in 1989.

Grant Kohn Goodman was a student at the University of Michigan's Army Intensive Japanese Language School (AIJLS) from 1943 to 1944. The AIJLS was created by the United States War Department in order to build an elite corps of Japanese-speaking officers, who were to do intelligence work and provide support for combat troops. The school was an intensive course, consisting of intensive Japanese language and culture classes, as well as military drills, inspections, and typical army exercises characteristic of U.S. military training camps.

Goodman's class (Company A, 3651st Service Unit), graduated from AIJLS on January 4, 1944, and continued on to complete further training at the Military Intelligence Service Language School in Minnesota (MISLS). There, they underwent courses in the more technical and complicated aspects of intelligence work, and graduated on November 18, 1944. The soldiers were then sent to basic training at Fort McClellan in Alabama, and went on to join combat units in China, Burma, India, New Guinea, the Philippines, Australia, and Hawaii, where they served as translators and interrogators for Japanese prisoners of war. After the surrender, most of the AIJLS graduates became part of the Japanese occupation forces.

After the war Goodman returned to the University of Michigan where he received his masters degree in Far Eastern Studies under Professor Joseph Yamagiwa in 1939 and a PHD.

Goodman worked as a professor of Japanese history at the University of Kansas for thirty years, and spent time in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Japan.

Goodman is the author of "Amerika no Nippon Gannen (America's Japan: The First Year)", published in 1990.

Goodman was instrumental in organizing reunions for students in the first two AIJLS courses at Ann Arbor. In May 1990 the last major reunion of the Ann Arbor AIJLS students was held in Ann Arbor.