Mayer, Paul Stephen

Paul Stephen Mayer (1884-1962) was a missionary to Japan with the Evangelical United Brethren Church (EUB) from 1909 until 1947. Mayer spent his childhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and attended college at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, graduating in 1907. He then attended Evangelical Theological Seminary at Naperville, graduating in 1909. That year he married Frances Frank, who had just completed her nurses training, and they left together for Japan that November. They lived and worked in Tsukiji until 1914 and then in Shimo-Ochiai, Shinjuku-ku. Mayer taught English for most of his years in Japan at several different schools in addition to his church work. He served as the EUB Japan Mission superintendent from 1926 until 1941. He also served as the chairman of the Japan Forward Movement. of Christ in Japan (UCC Japan) in 1941. When the Japanese government ordered all missionaries home in 1942 the Mayers refused to go, and they were eventually held in separate internment camps for a year. They were released and returned to the United States in 1944. Mayer was part of the reorganization of the Church and in the preparations for new missionaries responding to MacArthur's call for "10,000" new missionaries to Japan. Mayer worked with the Foreign Missionary Conference of North America and the Kyodan, the indigenous church of Japan, as well as his own denomination, in this role. He also helped to begin the work of rebuilding damaged or destroyed church buildings and schools. He served as the associate secretary of the National Christian Council, which replaced the United Christian Church Japan, for five years. Mayer attempted to put together a history of the Japan Mission while in retirement, but it was never finished. Mayer died in Washington, D.C., but his body was returned to Japan for burial.