diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
index 75dec90b85e..b8f2b9c1f0a 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt
@@ -307,6 +307,9 @@ Branch-2 ( Unreleased changes )
     HDFS-3641. Move server Util time methods to common and use now
     instead of System#currentTimeMillis. (eli)
 
+    HDFS-3633. libhdfs: hdfsDelete should pass JNI_FALSE or JNI_TRUE.
+    (Colin Patrick McCabe via eli)
+
   OPTIMIZATIONS
 
     HDFS-2982. Startup performance suffers when there are many edit log
diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/native/hdfs.c b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/native/hdfs.c
index ad78d7f7094..e61e1a8892d 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/native/hdfs.c
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/native/hdfs.c
@@ -1455,7 +1455,7 @@ int hdfsDelete(hdfsFS fs, const char* path, int recursive)
     //Delete the file
     jvalue jVal;
     jthrowable jExc = NULL;
-    jboolean jRecursive = recursive;
+    jboolean jRecursive = recursive ? JNI_TRUE : JNI_FALSE;
     if (invokeMethod(env, &jVal, &jExc, INSTANCE, jFS, HADOOP_FS,
                      "delete", "(Lorg/apache/hadoop/fs/Path;Z)Z",
                      jPath, jRecursive) != 0) {