United States Ambassador to Japan - Nomination of Michael J. Mansfield

The President today announced that he will nominate Michael J. Mansfield, of Missoula, Mont., to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States to Japan. Mansfield was a U.S. Senator from 1952 to 1976 and Senate majority leader from 1961 to 1976.

He was born March 16, 1903, in New York City. He received an A.B. in 1933 and an A.M. in 1934 from the University of Montana. He served in the U.S. Navy in 1918 and 1919, in the U.S. Army in 1919 and 1920, and in the U.S. Marines from 1920 to 1922.

Mansfield worked as a miner and mining engineer in Butte, Mont., from 1922 to 1931. He was a professor of history and political science at the University of Montana from 1933 to 1942.

In 1943 Mansfield was elected to Congress, and he served until 1952, when he was elected to the Senate. He was assistant Senate majority leader from 1957 to 1961 and majority leader from 1961 to 1976. He was a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, the Appropriations Committee, the Policy Committee, and the Steering Committee.

Mansfield was a Presidential representative in China in 1944. He was a U.S. delegate to the IX Inter-American Conference in 1948 and attended the Sixth United Nations Assembly in Paris in 1951-52. He was a U.S. delegate to the Southeast Asian Conference in Manila in 1954.

Senator Mansfield attended the 13th United Nations General Assembly in 1958 and has traveled on Presidential assignment to West Berlin, Southeast Asia, and Vietnam (1962) and to Europe and Southeast Asia (1965 and 1969). He visited the People's Republic of China in 1972 at the invitation of Premier Chou En-lai.