[2] Although JAEAR published its first issue in 1992, its roots date from the late 1960s, when many Americans were concerned about their country's engagement in Vietnam.

Other members were John Fairbank, a sinologist, also at Harvard, whose goal as early as the 1930s had been to educate the American public about the "Far Eastern Crisis," and Dorothy Borg, an Independent Scholar who had worked for the Institute of Pacific Relations in the 1940s.

Younger members of the Committee included Akira Iriye and James C. Thomson, Jr., both students of Fairbank and May, and Warren I. Cohen, then at Michigan State University.

JAEAR also received early moral and financial support from Frank Gibney, who established the Pacific Basin Institute in Claremont, California.

[1] JAEAR first appeared at a time when scholars in American-East Asian relations were confident that their field was on the "cutting edge."