George H. Kerr - Diplomatic Career

Diplomatic Career

After the war, Kerr returned to Taiwan in 1945 as an Assistant Naval Attaché, escorting the newly appointed Chinese Governor-General Chen Yi to the Japanese surrender of Taiwan on 1945-10-25 (Retrocession Day). George Kerr was present in his official capacity as a civil affairs officer of the U.S. Navy Attache's Office to the Republic of China government in Chongqing. He ensured that the English version of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender did not exclude the official role of the U.S., unlike the Chinese translation. Later, he became a diplomat at the U.S. embassy in China. He was a Foreign Service Staff Officer and Vice-Consul in Taipei. He has written about his eyewitness account of the 228 Incident in 1947. One critic has alleged Kerr actively participated in the Incident.

It was not till the early 1950s that he realized his wish to visit Okinawa, and with it a military commission to write a history, the purpose of which was to revive an independent Ryūkyūan identity. An able team of researcher-translators scoured Japan for historical sources on Okinawa. Then Kerr synthesized the material into the book Okinawa: Kingdom and Province (1953), and then in Japanese as Ryūkyū no rekishi (1955). In the meantime, Kerr began a revision based on additional research as well as criticism of the first two books and published a 1958 volume, Okinawa: The History of an Island People.

Kerr was deeply concerned about the loss of Ryūkyūan history on the ground. So he pursued his Okinawan interests in a survey of the islands' cultural assets (1960–63). Experience in Yaeyama and Miyako told him that his perspective of Ryūkyūan history had been askew. He drafted, but never published, another book on Okinawa that placed far greater emphasis on the southern Ryūkyūs and their early economic interaction with China.