From the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center homepage
http://www.umt.edu/mansfield/index.htm

Mike Mansfield’s remarkable career as teacher and public servant is rooted in the state of Montana and its people. He grew up in Great Falls, Montana, entered the Navy at the age of fourteen until the end of World War I. He then joined the Army and later the Marines, visiting the Philippines and China, until 1922, with an honorable discharge, he returned to Montana and worked in the Butte mines as a mucker and mining engineer until 1930. Not yet completing grade school or high school, he was admitted by examination to the Montana School of Mines in Butte where he studied from 1927 to 1928.

Mike met Maureen Hayes, a Butte high school teacher, who was impressed with his unusual talents and urged him to complete his education. He quit work and with her financial and moral support transferred to Montana State University, now known as The University of Montana, in Missoula and received the bachelor’s degree in 1933 and completed the master’s degree in history in 1934, writing on Korean-American diplomatic relations. He was invited to stay at The University where he worked in administration and taught Latin American and Far Eastern history until 1942. He has remained a Professor of History at The University on permanent tenure for over five decades.

Encouraged by Maureen and his students to run for political office, Mike Mansfield was elected to the United States Congress in 1942 a year after Pearl Harbor and served five terms as Representative of Montana’s First District. He represented President Roosevelt in a fact finding tour of China before the end of the war with Japan. Barely surviving attacks at the height of McCarthyism for his views on China, Mike was elected Senator from Montana in 1952. His interest in Vietnam spanned twenty years, from an earlier support for Ngo Dinh Diem in 1954 to the leading voice in Washington by the late 1960s to stop the war in Vietnam. While serving as Senate Majority Leader from 1961 to 1977 Mike Mansfield also played a leading role in the rapprochment between Washington and Beijing and was invited by Zhou Enlai as a guest of the Chinese government first in 1972 with other visits in 1974, 1976, 1977, and 1978. It was his appointment as the American Ambassador to Japan from 1976 to 1988, under Presidents Carter and Reagan that he is perhaps best known in Asia.

Mike Mansfield turned ninety-five in March, 1998 and lived in Washington D. C. with his wife Maureen. There he continued to advise American and Asian leaders on the large questions of the Pacific Rim and American-Asian relations."

"Mike Mansfield is one of those rare leaders who lead by the quiet force of mind and character...Soft of voice but strong of will, he leaves a gentle but indelible impression upon this institution [the Senate]."

Senator Adlai Stevenson, September 16, 1976

"...Mike’s greatest contribution—to me as President, to President Carter before me, to the people of Montana he represented so ably in the Senate, and to all Americans—has been as a citizen-statesman, one who knows his people and who conveys their values and aspirations in everything he does."

President Ronald Reagan, October 12, 1988