and published a 1958 volume, Okinawa: The History of an Island People. Academic career Kerr was a lecturer at the University of Washington during 1947–1949; and he was a lecturer at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley in 1949–1950. For the next five years, he was a research associate at the Hoover Institution. The open sections of Kerr's papers are available at the Okinawa Prefectural Archives in Haebaru, others at the Stanford, Taipei and Ryudai libraries. Later life Kerr's publications on Taiwan are numerous. He championed the cause of Taiwan independence from China, thereby making himself a high-profile enemy to both Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. (Chiang complained and Kerr lost his job at Stanford University.) He also drafted a long book on 19th century Hawaii, thus making his life's work of a piece: the history of Pacific Ocean marine frontiers. He is an author of many books and of numerous articles concerning Japan, Okinawa and Taiwan. Among them are the Formosa: Licensed Revolution and the Home Rule Movement, 1895-1945, Formosa Betrayed (1965), Descriptive Summary: George H. Kerr papers, 1943-1951, Okinawa: The History of an Island People (1958), and The Taiwan Confrontation Crisis (1986). Formosa Betrayed was one of the most influential books about Taiwan's transition from Japanese colonial rule to the rule of the Kuomintang (KMT, Chinese Nationalist Party) administration. George Kerr was working for the American Foreign Service at the time of the transition and was present in Taiwan for the KMT occupation and resulting aftermath. Formosa Betrayed made a sharp rebuke of the Nationalist administration and made arguments in favor of Taiwanese independence. The book was republished in 1976 by Da Capo Press. In 1992 a second edition was published by Taiwan Publishing Co. The book is now legally available online (see link below). Okinawa: The History of an Island People covers the legendary past to the Battle of Okinawa in 542 very read-able pages. Eleven years before he died, Kerr wrote that 13,000 copies had been sold. The book was out of print for a time, but Tuttle, the original publishers, reprinted it in 2000, adding a new introduction and an appendix by Okinawa history scholar Mitsugu Sakihara. He died at the age of 80 on August 27, 1992, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Selected works reprinted in References Citations Sources A. P. Jenkins, 'G.H. Kerr's Okinawa: The History of an Island People and Beyond', The