diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
index bf9d8245b7..f0ad171c64 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
@@ -16,6 +16,9 @@ Trunk (Unreleased)
     MAPREDUCE-6336. Enable v2 FileOutputCommitter by default.
     (Siqi Li via gera)
 
+    MAPREDUCE-6613. Change mapreduce.jobhistory.jhist.format default from
+    json to binary (rchiang via rkanter)
+
   NEW FEATURES
 
     MAPREDUCE-778. Rumen Anonymizer. (Amar Kamat and Chris Douglas via amarrk)
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/jobhistory/JHAdminConfig.java b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/jobhistory/JHAdminConfig.java
index 86dfad3f7b..2277ef6843 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/jobhistory/JHAdminConfig.java
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/jobhistory/JHAdminConfig.java
@@ -227,5 +227,5 @@ public class JHAdminConfig {
   public static final String MR_HS_JHIST_FORMAT =
       MR_HISTORY_PREFIX + "jhist.format";
   public static final String DEFAULT_MR_HS_JHIST_FORMAT =
-      "json";
+      "binary";
 }
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/resources/mapred-default.xml b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/resources/mapred-default.xml
index efbbf534ee..d87085fbd3 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/resources/mapred-default.xml
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/resources/mapred-default.xml
@@ -1754,7 +1754,7 @@
   values are "json" for text output and "binary" for faster parsing.
   </description>
   <name>mapreduce.jobhistory.jhist.format</name>
-  <value>json</value>
+  <value>binary</value>
 </property>
 
 <property>