Glen Grant (historian) - Life

Life

Grant was born and raised in the west Los Angeles area near Palms and Culver City. He was the second son of Hollywood special effects wizard Cliff Grant, who worked on such films as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and Forbidden Planet. The elder Grant helped create the extraterrestrial robot Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still and Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet. "Robby eventually became a member of the Grant household, where the younger Grant said he would see the robot, stashed in the family garage, on a daily basis. Though the robot ultimately ended up in a museum, Grant was said to have "often affectionately remembered Robby the Robot as his brother."

Glen graduated from Hamilton High School in 1964. Grant received a bachelor's degree in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and on an invitation from friend and UH professor Dennis Ogawa, took a trip to Hawaii in 1970. He made the move permanent the following year, earning a master's degree in education in 1974 and a doctorate in American studies in 1982. He taught history, American studies and political science for more than 30 years in the UH school system and Hawaii Tokai International College, where he was a vice chancellor until the time of his death.

Grant was a popular instructor, known for a theatrical, lively style of teaching, in which he would wear historical costumes, use stage settings and deliver several lectures in character. This was especially so when he covered such subjects as American studies or classes on Japanese-American experiences.

As Grant's time in Hawaii grew, in addition to studying the cultures and geography of Hawaii and its inhabitants, he began to grow interested in the myths and legends both already present and brought in by other cultures. This, combined with a childhood love of ghost stories, led him to create what he would later call the Obake Files (the word obake being a Japanese word for ghost absorbed into Hawaiian Pidgin).