E. Herbert Norman (1909-1957), Canadian historian and diplomat. Born September 1, 1909 in Karuizawa, Japan, the son of Methodist missionaries, Norman was extensively educated in Canada and the United States, receiving a BA in classics from the University of Toronto, MA in Ancient History from Trinity College of Cambridge University, and an MA and PhD in Japanese History from Harvard University.
Norman returned to Japan in 1940 as an employee of Canadian External Affairs, promoted to third secretary in the Canadian Legation in Tokyo. Interned from December 1941 until mid-1942, he was released in a prisoner exchange.
After the war, he again returned to Japan to work for the Occupation and as head of the Canadian Liaison Mission. During this time, he published several influential books, including Japan's Emergence (1940), Soldier and Peasant in Japan: The Origins of Conscription (1943), and Ando Shoeki (1949). He was widely considered one of the foremost authorities on Japan, and was elected president of the Asiatic Society of Japan.
Dogged by questions about his past association with the Communist movement, Norman returned to Canada in 1950. Appointed High Commissioner to New Zealand in 1953, he continued to write, most of his work later being published only in Japanese. In 1956 he was sent to Cairo as Ambassador to Egypt, where he arrived just months before the Suez Crisis, and was instrumental in convincing the Egyptian president to allow Canadian peace-keeping troops into Sinai.
A victim of the Red Scare, Norman ultimately was not allowed to escape from his past. He committed suicide in Cairo on April 4, 1957 by leaping from a rooftop.