Harry Emerson Wildes


Harry Emerson Wildes an American sociologist, historian and writer who is best known for his biographies of William Penn, George Fox and Anthony Wayne.

History

Born April 3, 1890, Wildes received an undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1913, taught in Japan before 1927, and received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1927.
During the Second World War, Wildes served in the Pacific as a political advisor to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. Wildes was among those who drafted a Constitution for Japan after the Second World War under orders from General Douglas MacArthur. Wildes served on the Civil Rights Committee which utilized the precepts of the U.S Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789, the Soviet Constitution of 1918, and the Weimar Constitution of 1919 to create a strong Bill of Rights for the Japanese Constitution.
Wildes left SCAP in frustration in late 1946 and wrote an exposé for the American Political Science Review charging the new political parties being formed in Japan had all the attributes of hooligan gangs.
Wildes died in February 1982. Some of his papers are at Syracuse University

Partial bibliography

Non-Fiction
Social Currents in Japan
Japan in Crisis
Aliens in the East
Valley Forge
The Delaware
Anthony Wayne: Trouble Shooter of the American Revolution
Lonely Midas: The Story of Steven Girard
Twin Rivers: The Raritan and the Passaic
Voice of the Lord: A Biography of George Fox
William Penn
Typhoon in Tokyo: The Occupation and Its Aftermath
Articles
Press Freedom in Japan
Review of Foster Rhea Dulles: Forty Years of American-Japanese Relations.
Intellectual Progress in the East
The American Occupation of Japan: A Retrospective View