One Marine's War and the Robert Sheeks-George H. Kerr connection

I got curious about Robert Sheeks because of some correspondence he had with George H. Kerr over some materials he was helping Kerr transfer to the Shikiya Memorial Library at the University of the Ryukyus in 1958. The Asia Foundation, for which Sheeks worked, was in charge of purchasing the collection on behalf of the University. This correspondence is located in the Kerr collection at the Hoover Institute. (My thanks to Dr. Yukari Yoshihara of the University of Tsukuba for sharing these documents with me!)

Also in the Kerr papers is a note from "rbs" (probably also Robert Sheeks) to "Mr. Stewart" regarding a 1955 letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle in which Kerr traced a history of US-Taiwan-Chinese relations up to that time and predicted "a violent crisis within Nationalist ranks at Taipei" that the US needed to be prepared for. In his note to Stewart, RBS characterized Kerr's letter as "a wonderful gift to the communists." He continued, 

His bitterness has grown, as much because the Department of State did not take his advice as for [sic] reasons connected with the uprising and its violence. Aside from this increased bitterness, he is back in Formosa of 1947 --- as he happened to view it in those days. He viewed everything for the I.P.R. at that time.

Kerr is supposed to be a scholar; he has the whole Hoover Library setup at his disposal. He omitted mention that Formosa was ceded to Japan as part of the spoils of the Sino-Japanese War.  I am sure that this is intentional, and it helps paint the kind of picture he wants to portray of the Formosan, Mainlander, and Japanese roles.

Incidentally, Art Goul [a reporter who worked in China and Taiwn] phoned me this morning to ask about Kerr's background. I gave him a few items of past history which are fairly well known. 

I am curious about the "items of past history" that RBS told Goul about, of course, so I looked up Sheeks and came across this website about him. (I should note that Dr. Stephen Craft of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University told me about Sheeks and the website several years ago, but for some reason I never followed up on that, which will probably be to my eternal regret.) Anyway, the website about Sheets got me interested in the book about him by Gerald Meehl, One Marine's War, and I just finished reading it today after receiving it yesterday. (It's a quick read.)

The book mostly focuses on Sheeks' career as a Japanese Language Officer (JLO) during World War II and his attempts to convince the Marines to let him try to persuade Japanese soldiers and civilians who were holed up in caves on the islands where the Marines had landed to give themselves up rather than fight to the death or commit suicide. It's a fascinating story, but there was only a little in the book about his postwar years, including his time in Taiwan as director of the United States Information Service. That's what I'd like to know more about, as well as his work for the Asia Foundation in the 1950s. Well, I can't criticize a book for not covering what it wasn't intended to cover! Maybe I'll try to contact Sheeks now and see what he can tell me about his experiences in Taiwan (and about his memories of Kerr).