Wes Injerd's Personal Page

A Brief Biography

Wesley Arthur Injerd (IN-YERD) was born on June 3, 1954, in the city of Riverside, California. Moving around to different cities in the area, his family went further west to Pomona and finally settled down in Montclair. In 1974, after two years at a Protestant missionary training school, he found himself in the land of Japan where he served as a missionary in Fukuoka until 1983. After teaching six years at Berlitz School of Languages, he founded his own school and also taught at various public schools and a private university. He married in September of 1980 and has four children. In July 2002, he moved to the United States along with his family, and in 2015 returned with his wife to Japan to continue work in the English education field.

History has always been a fascination to him. He was amazed at the number of ancient burial mounds and archaeological sites in the Fukuoka area, and soon learned about old Chinese histories which mentioned some of these ancient sites. This started him on a study of those Chinese chronicles, the most famous being the Gishiwajinden, and set out to translate this text into English while adding copious commentary. He hopes to complete this work in the future.

Being American, he was intensely interested in the U.S. presence in Fukuoka. He started gathering information on the U.S. bases that were once in the city, and that search has brought him in contact with scores of ex-military personnel and dependents. The hundreds of e-mails and photos and images he has received from them over the years will eventually be put onto a webpage for all to read and view.

This first website is the result of his research on the prisoner of war camp that was once in Fukuoka. All of his data has come from the U.S. National Archives as well as a number of Japanese sources, and also includes vital information on civilian internment camps in Japan. His work has certainly helped to fill a void and shed light on a very dark period in World War II history in Japan. This website was moved to Mansell.com in 2015.

His second website, dealing with the evacuation and relocation of Japanese nationals and their American-born children during WWII, was launched in 2007. Much primary source material was personally transcribed and placed into searchable text format for the benefit of researchers. This website was also moved to Mansell.com in 2015.

Another of his interests is old books, from which he has gleaned a number of interesting selections -- see his Archaebibliophilia pages.

He is also writing a series of enlightening biographies of men and women who had a great influence on the Japanese people, and how they were responsible for what the world knew about the nation of Japan -- Foreigners Who Changed Japan.

Mr. Injerd welcomes your comments and inquiries.

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