One chapter down, two to go...

I sent to the other authors the first of the three chapters that I'm responsible for in the GHK biography. It's actually the second of the three, that covers Kerr's advocacy for Taiwan during the late 1940s-mid 1950s and the effects of McCarthyism on his academic career. It's interesting writing about this with a Taiwanese audience in mind because I have to make sure that I discuss the American historical context in more detail than I might have to with a US audience. (Then again, as I was reminded by a colleague, I should probably not expect the US audience to be that much more informed about the McCarthy era, unless they have studied it. I think folks today would consider it ancient history. Which they shouldn't, for some very pressing reasons... But I digress.)

The other concern I have is about my style/tone. It's going to be translated into Chinese, so I tried to write with that in mind, but I had some trouble figuring out how academic vs. how popular I should sound. I'm afraid I might have erred on the side of sounding academic. That might need some work depending on what the editors and publishers expect. To me, it's interesting stuff, but it might sound a bit dry and boring to readers. Perhaps I should spice it up a bit. I tried to include quotes from Kerr and others to bring their voices into it, but of course the results will depend on how it gets translated. 

One extended quote that I liked was from a political science professor at Stanford who was interviewed by the Civil Service Commission about Kerr's loyalty when Kerr was applying for a contract position at the Hoover Institute that was funded by the International Cooperation Administration. He appears to have responded rather testily to the interviewer's questions:

In the last few years I have been interviewed by Government Investigators at least three or four times concerning George Kerr. I have always given George the highest recommendation and my opinion of him has not changed since the last time I was interviewed about a year or a year and a half ago. If I had any reason to question him either securitywise or from the standpoint of loyalty, I would surely inform the proper government agency. 

I first met George while we were both assigned to the Formosa Research Unit at Columbia University while serving with the United States Navy around 1944. I have known him ever since. Last semester at Stanford University he taught a course in my department. He has been out at the University for a good number of years now. I think that any man who has served as a Naval Attache and a Vice-Consul for this government does not have to be investigated every time he turns around. 

George’s character, habits and morals are beyond reproach. He is completely honest and trustworthy and a gentleman of the highest integrity. I can only reiterate all the statements I have made in the past. I cannot question his loyalty to this country. I feel the government is lucky to get his services and I would recommend him highly for work involving our national security program.

I'd love to know who this was, but unfortunately, his name has been redacted. I suppose I could figure it out pretty easily, though, if I did a little searching to find out who was at Columbia and then went to Stanford. 

But I have those two other chapters to work on now... due 8/15! Wish me luck!

Source: James M. Murtha, investigator, Report of Investigation, George Henry Kerr, CSC [Civil Service Commission] Case Serial No. 5.22.55.5235, 2nd Regional Investigations Division (New York, NY: U.S. Civil Service Commission, Intermittently 24 June-12 July, 1955). (FOIA request).

Currently reading: Cold War Deceptions

I dithered about for a while thinking about what I should read after finishing Studying Taiwan Before Taiwan Studies, but I settled on David H. Price's Cold War Deceptions: The Asia Foundation and the CIA because it went along with the general time period of the previous book and it also relates to that Kerr paper that I'm supposed to be finishing (I'm almost done with it, I promise!). 

As I indicated in the previous post about the book, I was able to identify the Committee for a Free Asia president, George H. Greene, Jr., that Kerr was talking about in a 1951 letter to Philip Horton, assistant editor of The Reporter. In that letter, Kerr was criticizing the CFA propaganda plans in Asia, which amounted to a repetition of the 'America great, Communism bad' rhetoric of the USIS, which he saw as pretty useless when he was in Taiwan (partly because the actions of the Americans in the aftermath of the 228 Incident didn't live up to that rhetoric). 

Cold War Deceptions has already helped me identify some other people, too, who were working for CFA (the precursor to the Asia Foundation). I already knew that Robert Sheeks, who I wrote about here, worked there, but I hadn't yet identified the "Mr. Stewart" Sheeks was writing to in 1955 in response to a letter Kerr had had published in the San Francisco Chronicle. Sheeks criticized Kerr's letter, calling it "a wonderful gift to the communists." Based on my reading of Cold War Deceptions, "Mr. Stewart" probably refers to James L. Stewart, who Price describes as having "deep roots in Asia--having been born to Methodist missionaries in Kobe, Japan, and grown up in Hiroshima. He studied journalism at Duke University before the war. He then served as a CBS war correspondent in China and Burma from 1939 to 1944, later working in Korea for the US Army and the US embassy in Seoul. He joined CFA staff in 1951, remaining with the Asia Foundation until 1985" (p. 9). So he might be someone to look up. 

I also mentioned interest in Sheeks' comment to Stewart that he had given "items of past history" about Kerr to a reporter named Art Goul. I Googled (Goulgled?) Goul, but didn't come across much. There was one interesting item in the Foreign Relations of the United States from 1950, though, where the Chargé d'Affaires in Taipei, Robert Strong, mentioned Goul in relation to the arrest of 19 members of the Formosan League for Reemancipation (Thomas and Joshua Liao's organization--the Liaos were out of Taiwan by then, though). In the telegram, Strong notes,

UP correspondents Art Goul and Bob Miller yesterday tried get information from member of my staff reference FLR, obviously with intent make headline story of machinations of US officials here with Formosans against Chinese Government. Seems to be their intention seize any opportunity discredit this office and Department.

I'll have to see what else I can come up with re: Goul. It doesn't appear that he was the kind of journalist whose papers would be stored in a university archive, but I would like to dig around and see what kinds of stories he might have been writing about Taiwan (and possibly Kerr?).  [Update: Finding more about Goul after I realized I should search for "Arthur Goul" instead of "Art Goul." Rookie mistake.]

The book is also interesting for its discussion of projects like Radio Free Asia, which of course has been in the news recently as a results of the Trump administration's termination of funding for the organization. (It appears they're still operating, though in a reduced capacity.) It's interesting to me that RFA was often criticized as a tool of US propaganda by people on the left of the political spectrum, but it ended up having its budget taken away by a far right administration due to (if I remember correctly) its "wokeness." Haven't seen anything in The Nation about this story, though Mother Jones reported on it (though they focused more on Voice of America). I'm not connected to the X-sphere or the BlueSky-sphere, so I don't know if there are any celebrations going on on the left. 

Finished The Great Exodus from China

I just finished reading Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang's The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan. I can't say I enjoyed the book--it's about trauma, after all--but I appreciated Yang's work on it and especially his generous use of Taiwan scholarship in the process. I've complained elsewhere about English-language books on Taiwan that don't cite Taiwanese scholarship as much as I think they should; I'm glad to see that Yang took that scholarship seriously. (My one complaint is that in his bibliography, the titles of Chinese-language books and articles are only written in pinyin--I'd prefer characters. But perhaps that's an editorial decision that Yang had no control over.)

The book is an interesting combination of archival work, interviews, readings of fiction and non-fiction from the time periods discussed, along with some statistical information (as when Yang argues that the numbers of mainlanders coming to Taiwan during and after the KMT defeat was less than usually assumed). I appreciated the variety of sources he brought to his study. I also appreciate his reflections on his own positionality in relation to his subject. I think it was an important (but probably controversial) move. I'll have to look at some reviews of the book later on to see how reviewers responded to this approach. (I am having trouble accessing NU's library databases right now, so I'll come back to this later.)

What's the next book on my list? I'm not sure right now. Yang's discussion of Long Ying-tai's 《大江大海1949》 makes me want to read that book just to get my own impression of it. We'll see, though... Maybe I want to read something less traumatic!

Update, 9:33 p.m. I found some reviews of the book. Here are a few:

Qian, L. Behind the History and Sociology of Memory: A Review of Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang’s The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan (2021, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Int J Polit Cult Soc 37, 291–298 (2024). https://rdcu.be/eagUR  

Yang, D.MH. A Reply to Licheng Qian’s “Behind the History and Sociology of Memory: A Review of Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang’s The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan (2021, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)”. Int J Polit Cult Soc 37, 299–307 (2024). https://rdcu.be/eagVZ

A couple of quotes from Yang's response to Qian that caught my eye--they expand on the question I had above regarding his discussion of his positionality in relation to his topic:

My family immigrated to Canada from Taiwan when I was a young teenager. Taiwan is located in the strategic contact zones between Chinese, Japanese, and American empires. I learned about my home island’s painful and multilayered history of migration and colonialism belatedly as a graduate student returning from Canada. This history included my family’s anguish and sorrow caused by the arrival of the mainlanders in the mid-twentieth century, a past that my grandparents and parents had kept largely silent. Faced with the complexity and nuances of different but interconnected traumatic experiences on the island, I was absolutely overwhelmed. My [305||306] conflicting emotions of loyalty toward my own victimized family members and the profound empathy that I gradually developed for the hundreds of thousands of waishengren families through my archival research and fieldwork had tormented me. Given my positionality, I did not know how to tell the waishengren story adequately and “objectively.” How should a descendent of the colonized and victimized write about the trauma of the former colonizers and victimizers? (305-306)

...... 

Many are going to be skeptical about the modality, as well as the sincerity of my transformation. The skepticism is understandable. Building empathetic understand-ing and rapprochement among communities, people, and nations holding serious grudges against one another is easier said than done. It is a long and difficult “working through” process where all parties have to be wholeheartedly committed. I have been told in private by a number of colleagues in Taiwan that intellectuals in certain local circles on both ends of the mnemonic divide do not really appreciate what I am doing. A second-generation mainlander professor told his German colleague who was attending one of my talks in Taiwan: “Who does this guy think he is? We don’t need his sympathy!” (306) 

Harrison, H. (2021). [Review of the book The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory and Identity in Modern Taiwan, by Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang]. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 52(2), 306-307. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/803869. 

Yung, K. K. (2023). Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan. International Journal of Taiwan Studies, 6(1), 209–211. https://doi.org/10.1163/24688800-20221258

Gustafsson, K. (2023). [Review of the book The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan, by Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang]. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 83(1), 231-235. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jas.2023.a922635.

Rebecca Nedostup talk, “War Being” in Mid-Twentieth Century China and Taiwan

Need to watch this video sometime.

I don't know if it's my computer or their set-up, but the audio is terrible.

[Update 10/31/24: Uh oh...]

'Tis the season (evidently) to buy books, even if I don't have time to read them

Just picked up (well, was sent) a new book from the University of Washington Press on the CIA and the Asia Foundation, a Cold War-era nonprofit/CIA front (that is now evidently not funded by the CIA, I guess). The book is Cold War Deceptions: The Asia Foundation and the CIA, by David H. Price. 

One thing I'll be reading this book for is how it extends or differs from Emma North-Best's long article on the CIA and the Asia Foundation on the MuckRock website. I remember reading that article a few years ago after I came across a 1951 letter from Philip Horton, assistant editor of The Reporter, to Allen Dulles, who was "Deputy Director for Plans" at the CIA at the time (if Wikipedia is correct). 

In the letter, Horton quotes a letter he had received from Kerr (who was at the Hoover Library at the time), in which Kerr criticized the Committee for a Free Asia (the precursor to the Asia Foundation). Kerr reported on a visit to Hoover by CFA president George H. Greene, Jr.* (not sure what his first name was). Kerr continued, 

Either the management is extraordinarily naive, or they assume us to be so. The line will be almost unmodified extension of the Voice of America or U.S.I.S. propaganda. "Tell the Asians how wonderful life is in America, how good our institutions are, and how very very wicked and dangerous the Communists are." There is heavy emphasis on the latter approach, with  little ready response to our questions concerning positive content. It was freely admitted that China is the primary concern. Chiang is to be neither praised nor condemned. "Counterpart Committees" will be set up overseas, operating under guarantees that the local government will not influence nor affect the content of propaganda. It was asserted that such a condition was expected to obtain in Formosa, which is to be a principal base of operations. 

It has been pointed out to the representatives of the Committee that (1) most Asians are tired of hearing how good we are, and the history of our representative institutions has little bearing on their problems, for the conditions surrounding their evolution cannot be duplicated in Asia; (2) most non-Chinese Asians fear a strong China, whatever its political orientation, and will hardly respond with enthusiasm to a rally in support of "anti-Communist government" for China, especially if it means support for the Nationalists; (3) Formosa cited as an example of "Free Asia" would be damaging nonsense. 

Those of us who talked with Greene have a troubled sense that the Administration may have decided to switch to all-out support for the Nationalists, hopefully trusting that Chiang may be thrust aside, and that the Committee not only has the State Department's blessing in this attempt to sweeten the picture, but is most actively setting it up. Each of us asks the other if at any point the [China] Lobby may be putting up funds. Odd to conceive, but not impossible in Washington. 

Actually, if the thing were worked out on a realistic appraisal of the American position in Asian eyes, it could do an enormously important job, unhampered by red tape.

Wonder if this letter helped get Kerr in any trouble with the government... 

*All you had to do was look in the index of the book you just bought, Jon... 🙄

Review of A World of Turmoil published

My review of Stephen J. Hartnett's book, A World of Turmoil: The United States, China, and Taiwan in the Long Cold War, is out in the latest issue of Rhetoric & Public Affairs. (Although the issue is dated Fall, 2023, it was published almost a year later!)

While I had a few problems with Hartnett's conclusions and recommendations, I found the book to be a valuable overview of the roles of communication and rhetoric in the history of US-China-Taiwan relations from a Taiwan-sympathetic rhetoric scholar.

Two new books in the former native speaker's library

Got back from a short trip to find these two books that I ordered from 博客來 books:

• 移工築起的地下社會：跨國勞動在臺灣 (Underground Lives: Stories Untold for Migrant Workers in Taiwan), by 簡永達 (2023)
  
  
• 冷戰下的「臺灣研究」：北美人類學家訪問紀錄 (Studying Taiwan Before Taiwan Studies: American Anthropologists in Cold War Taiwan), edited by Derek Sheridan, Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, and Tseng Wen-liang (2024)

The latter is in both English and Chinese, so I'll probably be reading that first. But before that, I have a lot of work to catch up on...

A new (old) book in the former native speaker's library

I got back last Saturday from Yokohama, where I had a great experience talking to a small but very interested audience about George H. Kerr, his process(es) of writing what eventually became Formosa Betrayed, how Taiwanese students at Kansas State University used Kerr's book in their "battle of the pens" with pro-KMT students, and the translations of the book into Chinese. (Some of this is discussed in my 2014 conference paper, "Formosa Translated.") 

While I was there, I also got a chance to talk with my friends Su Yao-tsung, Hidekazu Sensui, and Yukari Yoshihara about a project we're working on related to Kerr. (More details forthcoming.) I also had a lot of conversations with Su about Kerr, the writing of Formosa Betrayed and his other works, the February 28 Incident, the Taiwan independence movement in Japan and the United States, and the Cold War context of Kerr's teaching and writing about Taiwan. 

He also suggested a topic that I might work on researching related to that last point, so I decided to look up some books written about Taiwan during the 1950s. I just got one of them in the mail, Geraldine Fitch's (infamous) Formosa Beachhead (which is also available online). 

Fitch, who died in 1976 at the age of 84, was described in the New York Times obituary as "a consultant editor to The Free China Review and other English‐language publications in Taipei, Taiwan." 

Judging from a quick skim of the book, Formosa Beachhead is less about Taiwan than it is about China and the United States' policies towards China (and Nationalist China in particular). It'll be interesting to read in more detail.

There are a couple of contemporaneous reviews of the book, including the following:

• W. Macmahon Ball, in Pacific Affairs (concludes that "[t]he book should win enthusiastic readers in some sections of the Middle West and in Formosa")
• Karl A. Wittfogel, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (a not-surprisingly glowing review by the professional ex-Communist)

I need to go home to find George H. Kerr's review of the book, but he was not as kind as these two were.

Need to watch: Fareed Zakaria's CNN special about "Taiwan: Unfinished Business"

I saw an ad for this Fareed Zakaria special on Taiwan, but I wasn't able to see it when it was on CNN, so I'm recording it and will watch it later.

I saw that some people on Twitter criticized the title, wondering whose "unfinished business" it was--the CCP's? One poster (Isla Island) wrote, "'Unfinished business' parrots Beijing's propaganda that its planned invasion & annexation of Taiwan is part of a 'unfinished Chinese civil war'."

I thought the title was interesting in light of the fact that one of the early titles for George H. Kerr's Formosa Betrayed was The Formosan Affair: Unfinished Business on the Pacific Frontier--and then just The Formosan Affair: Unfinished Business. Evidently that title was considered by Houghton Mifflin to be a bit too dry, which is why we ended up with Formosa Betrayed (I really think an exclamation point would go well at the end of that: Formosa Betrayed!). 

Anyway, I'm curious to see what Zakaria has to say. Will it be better than John Oliver's masterful piece on Taiwan, in which he compares it to the "Stanley Cup": "different people keep passing it around and and carving their names on it"? We'll see...

[Update, 3/14: I liked John Oliver's version better.]

Interview with Jonathan Lerner, author of Lily Narcissus, published

bookish.asia has published an interview I did with Jonathan Lerner about his new novel Lily Narcissus. I had fun talking with him about his writing process and how he does research for his writing. As someone who isn't a fiction writer, I'm fascinated by the differences in how their novels come together. Lerner used the word "unconscious" a few times, telling me, “I only found out what was going to happen to these characters as I unfurled the story.”

The interview is accompanied by some nice color slides of Taipei that Lerner's father took between 1957 and 1959, so check it out--and then buy his book!

Something to watch when I get a chance...

The summer is over, so I'm getting ready for the semester that starts next Wednesday. (Yikes!)

I came across this video on YouTube and want to put it here to watch later and share with my reader(s). I thought it looked interesting. It's a debate from 1956 among high school exchange students from the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, and the UK about prejudice.  

What caught me about the beginning of the video (I didn't have a chance to get far into it) is when the moderator asked the students about their own prejudices. When she gets to Raul Contreras, a fifteen-year-old from the Philippines, he directly says he is prejudiced against the Japanese, and glances somewhat furtively at the Japanese girl on his right (Yoriko Konishi) while he explains why. Not surprisingly, his prejudice comes from the Philippine experience under the Japanese during World War Two. He admits he's too young to have really understood it himself, but his feelings come from what older relatives have told him about their experiences. 

Hope I get a chance to watch the whole thing at some point. (Maybe even figure out a way to use it in one of my classes?)

There are some other videos like this, with "debates" from students from different countries. They're from a YouTube channel called ArchiveMC, which has posted a lot of Cold War-era videos.

[Update, 9/4/21: I should add that if you watch the video on YouTube, you'll see in the comments that Raul's daughter has responded to the video and provided more information about his life and subsequent career. It's really interesting! Some information is also given about Yoriko.]

Summer writing project (Day Twenty-One)

I spent today reading instead of writing. I finished reading Stephen J. Hartnett's book, A World of Turmoil: The United States, China, and Taiwan in the Long Cold War. I'll probably have some more coherent thoughts about it later, but right now it's kind of late, so I'll only say a little bit about it (that maybe I'll have to correct later!).

A World of Turmoil is a rhetorical history, which is somewhat different from a "regular" history. Hartnett is a professor of communication rather than a historian, so some of the ways he approaches his topic are different from the way traditional historians would approach the same topic. For one thing, although the book covers the "long cold war" period from the end of WW II to the present, Hartnett doesn't cover the period comprehensively, but focuses on five "case studies" of communicative challenges faced by the US, China, and Taiwan: 

1. the period from the end of the Second World War to 1952 (the end of the Truman administration), when Chiang Kai-shek lost the Civil War with the Communists and escaped to Taiwan and the US separated the Communist and Nationalist forces as part of its involvement in Korea;
2. the beginning of the Eisenhower administration and the first Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1954-5;
3. Nixon's and Kissinger's visits to China and negotiations over the Shanghai Communiqué;
4. Lee Teng-hui's presidency, visit to Cornell, the third Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1996, and the Clinton administration's "Three Noes" policy; and
5. the Tsai and Trump administrations.

For these five case studies, the author focuses on how various communicative strategies (or lack of strategies, in some cases) taken by the parties involved resulted in confusion, mutual suspicion, and other challenges to peaceful relations among the three parties. (I'll say more about this at another point.) 

Another thing that is different from most histories I've read is Hartnett's conclusion, in which he proposes what China, the US, and Taiwan should do in order to have more peaceful and productive relations among themselves. I'm not entirely convinced that all of his recommendations are possible (he seems to think, for instance, that Taiwan should simply stop calling itself the Republic of China and should change its constitution, assuming that the CPC would be OK with that?!); at any rate, I haven't read too many traditional histories that end with recommendations for future action. (Maybe there are some?)

Anyway, that was what I accomplished today. Perhaps I'll get back to writing tomorrow.

Summer writing project (Day Sixteen); another new book in the former native speaker's library

I did some work on the paper today, though didn't achieve as much as I had hoped. I think I made the mistake of looking at the news first before getting into my work, which stressed out and depressed me. Note to self: Try getting into writing before reading the news!

I got a new book over the weekend, which was earlier than I expected to:

Stephen J. Hartnett, A World of Turmoil: The United States, China, and Taiwan in the Long Cold War. Michigan State University Press, 2021.

I started skimming it right away, though. It looks like it'll be interesting and important in the field of rhetoric/communication studies as one of very few full-length books so far about Taiwan. I'll try to post more about it later as I read more of it. 

My copy of Grajdanzev's Formosa Today

Around the time I started posting about Andrew Grajdanzev, I bought a relatively inexpensive copy of his 1942 book, Formosa Today, on Amazon. It didn't click with me at the time, but when I received the book, the name "Harold J. Noble" was written at the top of the cover.

I don't know if this means that Noble owned the book or not. The book used to belong to the College of the Pacific--there's a bookplate on the inside front cover that says, "In Memory of Harold Joyce Noble." Noble, who was born and raised in Korea as a missionary kid, was a major in the Marines during WW2 and later on First Secretary in the US embassy in Seoul in 1950. Before that, he received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley (writing on "Korea and Her Relations with the United States before 1895") and teaching at the University of Oregon from 1931-1934. He was also a member of the Institute of Pacific Relations. He died at the relatively young age of 50 (I can say that now) aboard a flight from Japan to Hawaii on December 22, 1953, when he was on his way home to California.

Missed a spot: More on Grajdanzev and IPR

An update on Grajdanzev's presence in the McCarran IPR hearings. I missed a few spots where he was discussed more in testimony by Owen Lattimore. This was because they spelled his name differently (but inconsistently) in that part, as "Gradjanzev" or "Gradjansev."

Grajdanzev (spelled correctly) is mentioned briefly in a paragraph about a meeting in a letter from Carter to Holland ("Exhibit No. 53"). The meeting is about "Soviet Policy in the Pacific"; Grajdanzev is said to have attended, along with 12 other people (although Lattimore denied having been there). The context of this testimony is whether Lattimore had met James S. Allen and when he "knew" Allen was a Communist.

He comes up later (as "Gradjansev") in a Feb. 10, 1938 letter written to Harriet Moore of the American Russian Institute about asking Moore and Grajdanzev to write a "rejoinder" to an article to be published in Pacific Affairs by economist L. E. Hubbard (misidentified at times as "L.M. Hubbard") that was critical of the Soviet Union. (This is the article, entitled "A Capitalist Appraisal of the Soviet Union.") Originally Lattimore wanted the Soviet economist, V. E. Motylev, who had protested the Hubbard article to write a rejoinder, but evidently Motylev wasn't willing. So Moore and Grajdanzev were approached to write "the most penetrating and masterly rejoinder that can possibly be produced."

Lattimore stated that a rejoinder hadn't been published, but that an article entitled "The Rate of Growth in the Soviet Union" was published in response to Hubbard's article. That article, written by "Andrew W. Canniff," is here. Lattimore noted that "Canniff" was a pseudonym (and the front matter to the issue of Pacific Affairs identifies the name as a pseudonym),* but he wasn't sure if it was a pseudonym for Moore and Grajdanzev. The Senator questioning Lattimore suggested that Moore was a Communist at the time in question, though Lattimore denied knowing any information about this at that time.

They go on to discuss Grajdanzev ("Gradjansev") for a bit:

Senator FERGUSON. Who was the gentleman there, Gradjansev?

Mr. LATTIMORE. The other was Mr. Gradjansev, who was a White Russian.

Mr. MORRIS. Do you know whether that is the same Mr. Gradjansev who was dismissed from General MacArthur's headquarters for left wing activity?

Mr. LATTIMORE. I did not know that he was dismissed for left wing activity. I know he worked for a while under SCAP.

Mr. MORRIS. Did you know he was dismissed?

Mr. LATTIMORE. Yes; I knew he was dismissed.

Mr. MORRIS. What reason did you believe was the cause of his dismissal?

Mr. LATTIMORE. The reason I heard was that he had given some cigarettes to some Japanese. He was a man who didn't smoke, and he used his cigarette ration to give to some Japanese who were doing some economic work for him, and this was considered, I believe, to be black-marketeering.

This story is slightly different from the one given by Holland (mentioned here) about Grajdanzev selling liquor on the black market to pay his research assistants. Both stories, though, suggest the kind of close observation he was under--as Masuda described it, Grajdanzev was being tailed for some reason.

Lattimore goes on to say that, given the description of "Canniff" in Pacific Affairs as someone who was "studying the agricultural economics of both the Soviet Union and Manchuria," Canniff "was probably Mr. Gradjansev."

Grajdanzev's name (spelled properly this time) comes up again in a 1940 letter from Lattimore to Frederick V. Field that is discussed during Lattimore's testimony. In the letter, Lattimore recalls recommending Grajdanzev to S. Taylor Ostrander (whom Lattimore describes as being connected with the Defense Advisory Commission), who needed "an economist competent to deal with Japanese wartime fiscal policies." "I pointed out that for his purposes the fact that Grajdanzev does not yet have his citizenship might be a barrier, but he told me that in some cases they proceed by appointing someone to a general job, with salary allowances for taking on assistants for such purposes as this."

Going back to the "penetrating and masterly rejoinder," Lattimore says that at the time, he had "no reason to suppose that Harriet Moore was Communist, and I had no reason whatever to suppose that Grajdanzev was Communist, or pro-Communist." (Which makes me wonder if Lattimore is implying that he now thinks Grajdanzev is at least pro-Communist. Unfortunately I don't think he ever answers my question.)

One more time that Grajdanzev comes up in the questioning of Lattimore is when the senators present a translation Grajdanzev did of a Soviet newspaper article praising an article that Lattimore wrote about Soviet treatment of national minorities. Special Counsel Morris asks Lattimore (somewhat sarcastically, I suspect) if it was Grajdanzev's regular practice to forward to Lattimore "favorable references in the Soviet press."  Lattimore's response is that, "as a friend of mine, if he ran across something that would interest me he would send it to me."

Finally, there is Exhibit No. 566-G, which is a 1938 letter from Lattimore to Grajdanzev. It's mostly about Lattimore's response to Grajdanzev's views on the progress of the war in Europe, but Lattimore starts off by writing about what appears to be Grajdanzev's attempts to get US citizenship:

I think you are doing the right thing about trying to arrange your own application to get on the quota. It seems to me that there is a good chance that this will succeed, and if it does it may simplify the problem for Mary. I am assuming, of course, that you will let me know without any delay if there is anything whatever that I can do.

I'm not sure where this exhibit is used in the questioning of Lattimore, though.

The moral of the story: consider alternative spellings of names like Grajdanzev!
--------------------------
* The front matter also identifies "Canniff" as the author of an article entitled "Japan's Puppets in China" that was published in Asia. (This article was published in 1938 in Volume 38, No. 3 of the magazine, pp. 151-153.)

Looking for recordings of the KNBC radio program, "World Affairs are Your Affairs"

A query posted to the ether: I'm trying to find a recording or transcript of a January 20, 1950 broadcast of the KNBC radio program, World Affairs are Your Affairs. George H. Kerr was invited to participate in a panel discussion on "strategy in the far Pacific" along with Captain John G. Crommelin, Staff Commander, Western Sea Frontier. The moderator was Frank Clarvoe of the San Francisco News.

In a January 12, 1950, letter to Kerr, (Mrs.) Sally Smith Kahn of the World Affairs Council of Northern California described the program as "an informal roundtable type with give-and-take discussion, rather than prepared speeches." "However," she continued, "if you have time, it would be most helpful if you could draw up a brief one-page outline of points which you would like to see covered on the program."

Kerr complied with an outline that emphasized "the gravity of economic and political problems involved," which he argued "appear to outweigh the military and strategic advantages to be gained" by direct US intervention in Formosa. He called Formosa "a military liability" to the US because of the presence of Chiang Kai-shek and argued that Taiwan without Chiang could become "an important training base for the 'Little Marshall Plan' being considered for Southeast Asia."

He also argued that "American policy regarding Formosa has been based on a seriously inaccurate premise, mainly, that Formosa in 1945 and thereafter is indistinguishable [sic] a part of mainland China and must be treated as such."

Anyway, I've made some inquiries to the World Affairs Council, but haven't heard back yet. No luck with various types of Googling and searches in some archives. But maybe I missed something, so I make this plea for help. HEELLLLPP!!!

[Update, 1/8/2020: Wow. Just read the New York Times obituary for Crommelin, who died in 1996. Relevant portions to this post:

In 1949, he was a captain serving at Navy headquarters in Washington when steps toward unification of the armed forces were being discussed and made. But strategic, organizational and personal differences between the Navy and the Air Force -- and also, on a lesser scale, between the Army and the Navy -- exploded into a series of charges, countercharges and public hearings that shook the Pentagon.

Captain Crommelin, as he then was, publicly complained that the Defense Department was scuttling naval air power and showing improper favor to the Air Force. He also asserted that ''a Prussian General Staff system of the type employed by Hitler'' was being imposed on the armed forces under unification.

He was relieved of his duties at the headquarters and publicly reprimanded by Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, Chief of Naval Operations, for making public confidential Navy letters linking top admirals to active opposition against unification.

Captain Crommelin was transferred to San Francisco to be air officer of the Western Sea Frontier. After he continued his criticism in the face of orders to keep silent, he was ordered by Admiral Sherman to be furloughed at half pay, beginning early in 1950. That year, The New York Times's military affairs expert Hanson W. Baldwin wrote that Captain Crommelin was a ''stormy petrel who wouldn't shut up.''

Then, the captain moved to his native Alabama, applied for retirement and ended his three-decade Navy career in May 1950, with the rank of rear admiral because of his combat record.

In later years, he operated part of his family plantation, named Harrogate Springs, in Elmore County, raising a variety of crops. He also ran unsuccessfully for various public offices. He was a candidate in the Democratic Presidential primary in New Hampshire in 1968 and also repeatedly announced himself as a candidate for the United States Senate. The National States Rights Party, advocating white supremacy, nominated him for Vice President in 1960.

And so on... ]

[Update, 1/16/2020: So far, no responses from the World Affairs Council chapters that I've contacted... ]

Hajimu Masuda on Andrew Grajdanzev

In a comment, "yh" pointed me to a book review of Hajimu Masuda's Cold War Crucible, which contains a paragraph about Andrew Grajdanzev. Here's the passage:




For folks who can't see the Google book (users of Google Chrome?):

The case of Andrew Grajdanzev was even worse. Born in Siberia, and having spent almost his entire life in Harbin and Tianjin, China, before immigrating to the United States in the 1930s, Grajdanzev was Willoughby's number one target and had been placed under strict surveillance in 1946. He was tailed, his room was secretly searched, and his letters were read, though there was no substantial evidence that he had done anything wrong. A three-week counterintelligence investigation found that he tended to eat by himself, stay at home, and visit the same places frequently. This last behavior did attract an investigator's interest, but it turned out that he was regularly learning Japanese and teaching English. Nevertheless, when he returned to the United States, he could not find a job in government at all, due to rumors and attacks, despite his work experience in the SCAP, a Ph.D. in economics, and fluency in Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and English. Eventually he studied library science, starting over completely, and got a job at a small local library. (p. 30)

Willoughby, as I mentioned in an earlier post, was a witness during the IPR hearings. But he wouldn't say anything about Grajdanzev because a Presidential Directive and Army orders didn't allow him to (see page 387).

Desperately seeking an early manuscript version of Formosa Betrayed

I have written before on this blog and in my intro. to the Camphor Press edition of Formosa Betrayed about the book's pre-publication history. It's a complex affair that I have not come to the end to. Right now I'm trying to figure out where to track down a manuscript from the late 1940s or early 1950s, titled, variously, The Development of Modern Formosa, Formosa--Yesterday and Today, Formosa: The Five Fateful Years, 1945-1950, and The Formosa Question, 1945-1951. (There are probably other titles I haven't come across.)

I have come across (through Google) two books that cite Development in their bibliographies: It was evidently seen by Jan Erik Romein because he cited it in his 1956 book, De Eeuw Van Azië. It's cited as "Kerr, G. H. The development of modern Formosa, 1950." Romein was a Dutch Marxist historian. His book, whose English title is The Asian Century: A History of Modern Nationalism in Asia, was also published in Japanese in 1961 as アジアの世紀 : 近代アジア民族主義史. Anyway, I wonder if there was a connection between Romein and the Institute of Pacific Relations.

Kerr's book is also cited in The Statesman's Year-Book: Statistical and Historical Annual of the States of the World for the Year 1952, and listed as being published in NY. Wonder if the editor of this book also got a copy of the manuscript. If both this book and Romein cite it as 1950, that means that they had an earlier version of the ms that Kerr eventually withdrew from the IPR.

No manuscript shows up, that I've seen, in any of the IPR archives at Columbia University, U of Hawai'i, or U of British Columbia. Guess I'll keep looking. I'm open to suggestions...

[Update, 3/22/20: I found another reference to The Development of Modern Formosa and also to Kerr's MS Japan in Formosa, 1895-1945 on p. 20 of an unclassified External Research Report by the Office of Intelligence Research of the Department of State. This is from August, 1952. The report is basically a selectively annotated bibliography of non-governmental research on China. Kerr's two books are listed:

5. Kerr, George H., The Development of Modern Formosa, (IPR).

6. Kerr, George H., Japan in Formosa, 1895-1945, (Stanford, 1952). 

It's interesting that Development isn't given a year of publication but Japan in Formosa is. It's not clear I'm assuming that the lack of a date for Development means that a manuscript was circulating at the time.

A later External Research Report from April 1958 also lists Japan in Formosa as "Book, ECD-Indef."--suggesting that the earlier reference to 1952 was perhaps Kerr's idea of when he'd be finishing the manuscript and that by 1958, he wasn't sure. (ECD means the scholar's own "Estimated Completion Date.")

Evidently the Department of State didn't receive manuscripts; according to the preface to the 1958 report, the information about works in progress was "furnished by private scholars throughout the United States." I'll have to look more into these lists in the future...]

Heart in Taiwan

I was watching an interview the other day between Dan Rather and Ann & Nancy Wilson of Heart, and I was surprised to hear them mention that the Wilson sisters had spent some time in Taiwan as children. Their father was in the Marines, and they were stationed in Taiwan for 3 years. At the time, according to their memoirs, Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock and Roll,* Ann was six years old, and Nancy was "only a few years old."

In 1956, Ann, Nancy, their older sister Lynn, and their mother took a troop ship from San Francisco to Taiwan to meet their father, a major who had already gone to Taiwan a few months earlier. Ann Wilson recalls that as the ship left San Francisco, they stood on deck to wave goodbye, and "Nancy was wearing a tether harness tied to a railing on the ship to keep her from falling into the sea. She pretended she was a wild horse."

Ann Wilson describes their three years in Taiwan as "an innocent time, but always one of tension." She recalls the typhoons and frequent trips to air raid shelters, but also remembers how her mother tried to make life normal for them, decorating the house and organizing the Girl Scouts.

They don't have much else to say about their three years in Taiwan (perhaps not surprising since they left when Ann Wilson was 9 years old). They don't even mention where they were living in Taiwan. It would be interesting to know where their father (Major John Wilson, USMC) would have been stationed there. (Ann Wilson mentions that Wilson's father had been a general in the Marines. Their grandfather was the Brig. Gen. John B. Wilson that Camp Wilson at Twentynine Palms, California was named after.)

I'm not sure they ever went back to Taiwan (perhaps for a Heart concert), but I do recall that during my first trip to Taiwan in the summer of 1990, ICRT (the English-language radio station in Taiwan) was playing that awful song, "All I Wanna Do (Is Make Love to You)"--don't worry, Ann Wilson hates it, too, calling it "hideous" in the interview with Dan Rather:

* Link is to a 2012 interview on WBUR radio.

More on Andrew Grajdanzev, from Michael Cannings of Camphor Press

Michael Cannings of Camphor Press found some more information on Andrew Grajdanzev on Ancestry.com. (I guess I should subscribe to that service--looks like I could access a lot of info that way.) Here's what he had for me:

The first entry is a passenger manifest for the SS President Grant, sailing from Shanghai to Seattle, WA in 1937 – he is listed as a teacher with his last residence in Tianjin. I've attached it here. His name is listed as Andrew Jonas (note the "s" but it's almost certainly the same guy).

He is listed as resident in Oakland, CA in 1939.

According to his US naturalization records Andrei Iona Grajdanzev (anglicized as Andrew Jonah Grajdanzev) was born in Ussolie (now known as Usolye-Sibirskoye) in Russia, 10 November 1899. Here's his certificate recording his application for naturalization:

Naturalized 26 June 1945 in New York. Spouse named as one Mary Grajdanzev (née Jakov).

From 1945–1949 he's listed in the NY phone book.

Then there are two index cards from the Associated Press records, attached here.

His name in Russian is Андрей Ионович Гражданцев – running it through Google (plus Google Translate) shows a bit more info, along with someone who says he's his great-great-nephew.

https://m.ok.ru/group52677088247981/topic/64410290451885

Moved to Harbin 1924, later taught at Nankai University in Tianjin. A Russian speaker would be able to tell you more. And there's a picture:

I hope that's of some help!

Michael

It is indeed! I looked at the link to OK.ru, which is, according to Wikipedia, sort of a Russian version of Classmates.com. At first I tried to read it with my rusty high school Russian, but gave up pretty quickly and used Google Translate to get these results:

Letter of the day
Andrei Grazhdovtsev, orientalist-economist
Letter from the Rostov region
Wanted: Information about Andrey Grazhdovtsev  Year and date of birth: 1900
Search geography (spr.): United States
“This is my great-grandfather's brother. My grandfather lost contact with him. I am interested in his fate - where he lived, how he died ...
Citizens (Grajdanzev) Andrey Ionovich (Andrew Jonah), 1898 or 1899 born. - Orientalist economist.
Since 1924 in Harbin. He graduated from the economic department of the RSUF. Private Associate Professor in the Department of Political Economy (1933-34). Then he taught at Nankai University in Tian. "
Application No. 2497373

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  25 Dec 2015 07:04

  NB

  Hello! Citizen Andrei Ionovich is a cousin of my great-grandfather Mikhail Ionovich Graditsev.
  My great-grandfather was born in 1892 in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Sayan District, the village of Usolye. Education received a secondary. He was one of the officers of Kolchak. After the defeat of Kolchak lived in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Sayan district, the village of Voznesenka. He taught Russian language and literature at school. September 8, 1937 was arrested. Sentenced: Troika at UNKVD of the Krasnoyarsk Territory on October 31, 1937. Shot on November 7, 1937, a week after the sentence was pronounced Verdict: VNS Rehabilitated on December 30, 1958 by the Krasnoyarsk Regional Court. Place of burial Krasnoyarsk. The Grazhdrantsevs had many brothers, two of them lived in Usolye. After the execution of my husband, my great-grandmother left Krasnoyarsk with children for one of the brothers in Usolye and lived there until the end of his days. Relatives of Andrei Ionovich currently reside in Usolye-Sibirskiy. This is his niece, Grantsevtseva Elena Mikhailovna, and many grandnephews. We know that Andrei Ionovich eventually emigrated from China to the USA. He lived there and taught. But where exactly is unknown. Still, at the time of the Soviet Union from
  The United States received a request for relatives of Andrei Ionovich living in the USSR about some kind of inheritance. But because of the repression
  Citizen Mikhail Ionovich
  relatives were denied the interest of the inheritance. Everybody knows this from the words of his niece Grazhdovtsena Elena Mikhailovna. Another of his niece Rudenko (by her husband) Tatyana Mikhailovna died in March 2014, this is my grandmother.
• • Share

  Jan 20, 2016 6:13 pm

  Marina Savostina (Rudenko)

  Call the author of the application
  2497373 from the group "Wait for me" to search for information on Andrew Ionovich Grazhtsevtsov. I would like to meet you. After all, we are relatives.
• • Share

  8 Feb 2016 08:30

  Alexander Fomin

  Hello! I found quite a lot of information about your relative. In America, he was a famous scientist. Read more - on the page "Wait for me" with the same application "In contact"
  https://vk.com/feed?section=comments
• • Share

  8 Feb 2016 08:56

  NB replied to Alexander Fomin

  Thank you very much! I saw the information you found, though I did not have time to read it! I will study tonight! It has long dreamed of finding at least some facts, but here such luck

I don't intend to join VK.com (a Russian social networking service) to find out more about Grajdanzev (this is sort of a hobby, after all), but if anyone reading this reads Russian and happens to be a member of VK, I'd appreciate any help you could give me!

[Update, 6//2/19)] Turns out I didn't need to join VK--I just Googled his name in Russian and came up with this website: https://vk.com/wall-96412344_1807.

Андрей Гражданцев, востоковед-экономист

Письмо из Ростовской области
Разыскивается:
Информация о Гражданцеве Андрее Ионовиче
Год и дата рождения: 1900
География поиска (спр.): США

«Это родной брат моего прадеда. Связь с ним потерял мой дедушка. Мне интересна его судьба - .где жил, как умер...
Гражданцев (Grajdanzev) Андрей Ионович (Andrew Jonah), 1898 или 1899 г.р. -  востоковед-экономист.
С 1924 г. в Харбине. Окончил экономическое отделение РЮФ. Приват-доцент по кафедре политэкономии (1933-34). Затем преподавал в Нанькайском университете в Тянь».
Заявка № 2497373

Жди Меня | Национальная служба взаимного поиска людейpoisk.vid.ru

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Marina Komarova

у семьи довольно много данных Можно попробовать(семье) запросить Международный Красный Крест Организация просит в запросе место рождения Если вот эти сведения о брате разыскиваемого то скорее всего место рождения одно Сайт Жертвы политического террора в СССР Копия Гражданцев Михаил Ионович
Родился в 1892 г., г. Усолье Иркутской губ.; образование среднее; Учитель в средней школе. Проживал: с. Вознесенка Саянского р-на КК.
Арестован 8 сентября 1937 г.
Приговорен: тройкой УНКВД КК 31 октября 1937 г., обв.: КРО.
Приговор: ВМН Расстрелян 7 ноября 1937 г. Место захоронения - в г. Красноярске. Реабилитирован 20 октября 1989 г. прокуратурой КК
Источник: Книга памяти Красноярского края

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9 Oct 2015

Alexander Fomin

Здравствуйте! Ваш родственник - очень знаменитая личность, автор многих статей по Японии, Китаю, Корее, одну из которых я сейчас читаю по профессиональной необходимости (я историк). Во время второй мировой войны и после нее он был одним из ведущих американских экспертов по этому региону.

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8 Feb 2016

Alexander Fomin

Из биографических сведений о нем могу сообщить следующее (из предисловия к статье):
Dr A.J. Grajdantsev first studied Japanese agriculture in 1930 when he made his first visit to Japan. During World War II he was a member of research staff of the Institute of Pacific Relations. During the occupation of Japan he served as Chief of the Prefectural Branch of the Governmrnt Section in General Headquarters, SCAP.

Вот, кстати, ссылка на одну из его статей: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-korea/1..

Желаю успехов!
А.М.Фомин.

Korea in the Postwar Worldwww.foreignaffairs.com

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8 Feb 2016

Alexander Fomin

Впоследствии он публиковал свои работы под именем Grad, Andrew Jonah,

Например вот эту: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015004987..

Land and peasant in Japan : an introductory survey / Andrew J. Grad.babel.hathitrust.org

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8 Feb 2016

Alexander Fomin

Кроме Вас его разыскивают также коллеги - ученые:

http://koreanstudies.com/pipermail/koreanstudies_kore..

[KS] Inquiry about Andrew Jonah Grajdanzev (Andrew J. Grad)koreanstudies.com

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8 Feb 2016

Alexander Fomin

В этом файле см. с. 5.

dinas.pdf

5.8 MB

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8 Feb 2016

Alexander Fomin

Скачал здесь: http://www.uozima.ru/index.php/sovet-po-poiskovo-issl..

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