diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index 02baf9bfad..bcd48c4c55 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -187,6 +187,9 @@ Release 0.23.1 - Unreleased
 
    HADOOP-7854. UGI getCurrentUser is not synchronized. (Daryn Sharp via jitendra)
 
+   HADOOP-7870. fix SequenceFile#createWriter with boolean
+   createParent arg to respect createParent. (Jon Hsieh via eli)
+
 Release 0.23.0 - 2011-11-01 
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/TestSequenceFile.java b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/TestSequenceFile.java
index af0fc3ae1d..18bc8df651 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/TestSequenceFile.java
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/io/TestSequenceFile.java
@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@
 
 import org.apache.hadoop.fs.*;
 import org.apache.hadoop.io.SequenceFile.CompressionType;
+import org.apache.hadoop.io.SequenceFile.Metadata;
 import org.apache.hadoop.io.compress.CompressionCodec;
 import org.apache.hadoop.io.compress.DefaultCodec;
 import org.apache.hadoop.util.ReflectionUtils;
@@ -516,6 +517,29 @@ protected FSDataInputStream openFile(FileSystem fs, Path file, int bufferSize, l
     assertTrue("InputStream for " + path + " should have been closed.", openedFile[0].isClosed());
   }
 
+  public void testRecursiveSeqFileCreate() throws IOException {
+    Configuration conf = new Configuration();
+    FileSystem fs = FileSystem.getLocal(conf);
+    Path name = new Path(new Path(System.getProperty("test.build.data","."),
+        "recursiveCreateDir") , "file");
+    boolean createParent = false;
+
+    try {
+      SequenceFile.createWriter(fs, conf, name, RandomDatum.class,
+          RandomDatum.class, 512, (short) 1, 4096, createParent,
+          CompressionType.NONE, null, new Metadata());
+      fail("Expected an IOException due to missing parent");
+    } catch (IOException ioe) {
+      // Expected
+    }
+
+    createParent = true;
+    SequenceFile.createWriter(fs, conf, name, RandomDatum.class,
+        RandomDatum.class, 512, (short) 1, 4096, createParent,
+        CompressionType.NONE, null, new Metadata());
+    // should succeed, fails if exception thrown
+  }
+
   /** For debugging and testing. */
   public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
     int count = 1024 * 1024;