Scope and Content Note
The papers of Harold Gould Henderson (1889-1974) span the years 1918-1955, with the bulk of the material dating from 1937 to 1946. The papers consists of correspondence memoranda, military papers, reports, notes, translations, drafts of writings, and printed matter. They document Henderson’s service during World War II as chief of the Japanese Language Section of the Allied Forces South West Pacific Area Psychological Warfare Branch, and later as head of the Education Division of the Civil Information and Education Section, Supreme Command for the Allied Powers, in occupied Japan. Included are reports and notes on wartime propaganda leaflets and on postwar education reform. The papers also contain Henderson’s account of having drafted a clause in the imperial rescript delivered on 1 January 1946 in which the emperor renounced his divinity. The collection further consists of Henderson’s writings on Japanese art and literature, some of which he wrote while teaching Japanese art and culture at Columbia University between 1935 and 1944. Included are his English translations of Japanese haiku poems, principally those of Matsuo Bashō and Yosu Buson. Henderson’s several books on haiku, beginning with The Bamboo Broom: An Introduction to Japanese Haiku (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1934) popularized the poetic genre in America.