Charlotte Burgis DeForest was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1879. Her parents were pioneer missionaries and her father, John Hyde Deforest was decorated by Emperor Meiji for efforts to promote international friendship and for relief work during the 1906 famine. Charlotte earned an A.B. (1901) and A.M. (1907) from Smith College, and received an honorary degree from Smith in 1921. In 1903, she volunteered for service with the American Board of commissioners for Foreign Missions to work in Japan . She spent ten years on the faculty at Kobe College in Nishinomya, originally a missionary school and now the oldest Christian College in Japan. In 1915 she became President of the college, a position she retained until 1940. She was awarded the Sacred Cross by Emperor Hirohito in 1940. During World War II, DeForest returned to the United States and taught Japanese at Pomona College. She was also a counselor at the Manzanar Relocation Center, a Japanese internment camp in California, 1941-45. In 1950, DeForest was decorated by the Japanese government for "services in the education of Japanese women." After her retirement in 1950, she resided in Claremont, California. She published several books, including Evolution of a Missionary (1914), a biography of her father; Poems Down the Years; The Prancing Pony (1968), a book of Japanese nursery rhymes translated to English that won the Chicago Tribune book award; and History of Kobe College, compiled for the 75th anniversary, 1950. Charlotte DeForest died in 1973.