Esther Hibbard

Hibbard, Esther. (Tokyo, Japan, September 23, 1903). Her father was student secretary of the Y.M.C.A. in Tokyo until they returned to the U.S.A. in 1913 by train through Siberia. She did her undergraduate work at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, and earned her Master's degree in English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 1929, she served under the Congregational Mission Board in Japan for three years at the Doshaissha Christian High School for Girls. After this term of service, she decided to become a career missionary and taught at the Doshaissha College for Girls until 1941, when Americans were evacuated for the duration of World War II. She returned to the U.S., attending the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, to do doctoral work in Asian civilizations. She also taught conversational Japanese there in the Army Specialized Trainee's Program. In 1946, she returned to Japan where missionaries were warmly welcomed at the Doshaissha Junior College for Women, and in 1948 she became the first dean when that institution became a four-year Women's College of Liberal Arts. Upon her furlough in 1949, she resigned the position of dean, but returned as a professor until her retirement in 1968.

She stayed in Japan to teach at the co-educational college, Tohoku Gakuin (Northeast College), affiliated with the Evangelical and Reformed Church. She retired from this position in 1973 and came to Claremont, California at Pilgrim Place, a retirement home associated with the United Church of Christ. She was a member of the U.C.C. since 1929. Besides her translations of Japanese hymns, she did research in Ulysses motifs in Japanese literature.

--Phone conversation between Esther Hibbard and Mary Louise VanDyke, 19 September, 1992, DNAH Archives