Benis M. Frank

Written by Nancy Pine

Benis M. Frank was a historian for the Marine Corps for over 35 years and chief historian at the time of his retirement in 1997. During World War II he was a Marine stationed in China, Korea and Japan. He was introduced to the CGU Pettus Archival Project through Pedro Loureiro, a historian on the Far East, and was interviewed by Zhang Weijiang. A mutual interest opened up since Pettus and his College of Chinese Studies had over the years trained many military officers including U.S. Marines in Chinese language and Frank had served in the Far East and also carried out oral histories with many Marine officers. As a result Frank entrusted the Pettus Archival Project with his collection of research papers on the Shanghai Volunteer Corps (S.V.C.). It includes many folders of correspondence and information related to his personal investigation of the corps, with special attention to the Jewish unit. The S.V.C. began its operation in 1853 and halted at the time of the 1937 Japanese invasion of Shanghai. The collection includes Frank’s published and unpublished papers about the S.V.C., correspondence with members of the Corps and those who knew about the Jewish unit, and photographs. Also included is a hard-to-find volume, Eighty-Five Years of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, published in 1938. This collection of papers and related materials provides unique historical information about the Shanghai Volunteer Corps in its eighty-five years of history in Shanghai.