Elbert Duncan Thomas (17 June 1883-11 February 1953) was a Democratic US Senator from Utah from 4 March 1933 to 3 January 1951, succeeding Reed Smoot and preceding Wallace F. Bennett.
Biography[]
Elbert Duncan Thomas was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1883, the fifth of twelve children. He served as a Mormon missionary to Japan from 1907 to 1912 and later as a professor at the University of Utah, and he served in the US Senate from 1933 to 1951 as a Democrat. He defeated the Republican Reed Smoot for re-election, and he was an internationalist (fluent in Japanese and acceptant of the decline of the British Empire and white imperialism), an interventionist, and a free trader. He served in the Senate until 1951, and he died in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1953 while serving as High Commissioner of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.