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 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 taught at various public schools and a private university. He married in September of 1980 and has four children. In July 2002 he returned to the United States along with his family.

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 near 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 webpage 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. Archives and other non-Japanese sources -- Fukuoka history during World War II seems to be a huge blank. His work will certainly contribute to filling that void.

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