Martinus E Wolf

Martinus (Marty) E. Wolf currently lives in Sacramento, California and works professionally as consulting environmental engineer specializing in air quality.

Mr. Wolf initially assisted his Japanese wife and mother-in-law in obtaining koseki (family register) documents from various Japanese municipal offices in Shiga Prefecture in support of their family history. Based on that experience, he started teaching Japanese family history classes as part of the California Elk Grove Stake (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Family Discovery Day. This soon expanded to in-person classes at a number of Sacramento-area Christian and Buddhist churches, including the Sacramento Japanese United Methodist Church, the First United Methodist Church of Loomis, the Buddhist Church of Sacramento, and the Buddhist Church of Florin.

Following the COVID-19 restrictions of 2020, Mr. Wolf started teaching a monthly Japanese family history class on Zoom. Between May 2020 and November 2021, he taught over 1,200 students from the United States, Canada, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Japan, Britain, and Finland.

Mr. Wolf has personally helped dozens of people of Japanese descent make requests for koseki documents from Japanese municipal offices and has been directly involved in the resolution of various complicated issues associated with these requests. In many instances, he also provided translation services for the obtained koseki documents. He is currently involved with the ongoing development of content for a website (mykoseki.com) which provides various tools to assist people with Japanese ancestry with their family history research.

Mr. Wolf served as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kobe, Japan from 1988 to 1990. In addition to two civil engineering degrees, he also received an undergraduate degree in Japanese from Stanford University in 1994. He is able to speak, read, and write Japanese fluently.