John Ashmead

Ashmead became acquainted and friends with a circle of authors including Masao Kume and Yasunari Kawabata who he met and befriended during the Occupation of Japan in mid-1940s, G.V. Desani and P. Lal who he met in 1964-1965 while teaching on a Fulbright in India and working for the Asia Society and the Indian Studies Center then at the University of Pennsylvania to produce an Anthology on Modern Indian Short Fiction, Wright Morris and later L. Sprague de Camp, and Isaac Asimov, and the Scottish poet Iain Crichton Smith, among others.

John Ashmead (1917–1992) was an American novelist, Naval Intelligence officer, and professor of English. His writings include The Mountain and the Feather about his experiences in the Pacific in World War II as a United States naval intelligence officer and translator. He received a commendation for obtaining information that helped Navy fliers shoot down the plane of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who had masterminded the 1941 surprise attack on the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor, HI, which brought the United States into the fighting. He co-authored The Songs of Robert Burns in 1988 with Professor John Davison. His PhD thesis was The Idea of Japan 1853-1895: Japan as Described by American and Other Travellers from the West. * Ashmead was a graduate of Navy Japanese language program at the University of Colorado, Boulder and Berkeley. His work as a translator for Naval Intelligence aided in the assassination of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. He was a professor of English at Haverford College from 1948 to 1988. At Haverford, he pioneered the use of computers in education and research. He spoke as Fulbright lecturer in Osaka and Kyoto, Japan, Taipei, Varanasi, India and throughout India, and also taught in Athens, Greece at Athens College for Boys.

Ashmead was born on August 22, 1917 in New York City. He was the son of John and Mildred Ashmead nee Hinkel. He married Ann Harnwell on October 15, 1949. They had five children: John Ashmead, Graham Gaylord Ashmead, Gaylord Harnwell Ashmead, Louisa Harral Ashmead and Theodora Wheeler Ashmead. They divorced in 1976. Dr. Ann Harnwell Ashmead was an expert on Greek Vases of the 5th Century BC. Ashmead graduated from Loomis Institute in 1934 (Loomis Chaffee). In 1938, he graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts having lived at Lowell House. He studied Japanese at Harvard since his grandfather Albert Sydney Ashmead have worked in Tokyo, Japan as a doctor during the 19th century. After college, he worked as a reporter for the Hartford Times. He was a member of the Modern Language Association. He was vice-chair of the School and College Conference on English. He was also a member of the Association for Asian Studies, Authors League of America, Authors Guild, American Studies Association and Phi Beta Kappa. He was a member of the Trap Door Spiders He was a frequent contributor to The Atlantic, and also wrote book reviews for The Philadelphia Bulletin. Ashmead published on Bernard Malamud, Mark Twain, among several American authors. He died of lymphoma on February 7, 1992 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and was buried in Windsor, CT.