Archives West Finding Aid

Floyd Schmoe was born in Kansas in 1895 and came to the University of Washington to study forestry in 1916. He graduated from Syracuse University in 1921 and returned to the University of Washington for graduate study. From 1918 to 1919, he volunteered with the American Friends Service Committee and American Red Cross for war relief in Europe. He was a ranger and park naturalist at Mount Rainier National Park from 1922 to the 1930s, and an instructor in Forestry at the University of Washington from 1935 to 1942. During World War II, he assisted Japanese Americans who were evacuated. Through his affiliation with the American Friends Committee, Mr. Schmoe worked closely with Bob O'Brien of the UW faculty to place the 550 Japanese on the UW in Quaker colleges at the time of the evacuation. He regularly visited the camps and worked to get jobs and sponsors for the Japanese to get out of the camps. He explained that the Quakers were more radical in their activites than the more middle-of-the-road Council of Churches. After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Schmoe organized a relief committee and traveled to Japan. From 1949 to 1953 he operated Houses for Hiroshima, constructing housing for survivors of the atomic bomb. From 1943 to 1956 he served in Korea, operating Houses For Korea under the U.N. Korean Rehabilitation Agency and worked in Port Said, Egypt, in 1956. He wrote numerous articles and books including "A Year In Paradise" 1959, "For Love Of Some Islands, memoirs of some years spent in the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound" 1964, "What is man: that Thou art mindful of him" 1970, and "Japan Journey" 1950.