"Representing Taiwan in DC: How Taiwanese Americans Can Bridge Culture and Policy"

This looks interesting...

Finished reading John Brown, Abolitionist

I wanted to read a biography of John Brown for some reason, so I asked my brother and sister-in-law for one for Christmas. I finished reading it today. I thought John Brown, Abolitionist by David S. Reynolds was a good study of Brown, the historical context in which he grew up and became an anti-slavery and anti-racist advocate, his effect on the Civil War, and how he was remembered in both the North and the South. Reynolds clearly admires John Brown, and he suggests that had Brown not attacked Harpers Ferry, the Civil War might have taken place much later and been much bloodier. 

Here's a good interview with Reynolds about the book from 2005.

Twenty-year-old thoughts on yesterday's election

They don't all apply, but they're food for thought:

"One thing a lot of Democrats are thinking about these days" (11/7/04)

"Faith and rhetoric in the U.S. election (and beyond)" (11/7/04)

"A note from an Ohio 'Blue'" (11/11/04)

'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.

George Kerr, Formosa Betrayed, and the "America Skepticism Theory"

I watched a video of last August's Global Taiwan Institute panel discussion, "'America Skepticism Theory': Anti-American Propaganda and Its Impacts on Taiwan's Information Environment." 

The first speaker, GTI Deputy Director John Dotson, traced the theory back to 1979 when the US changed recognition from the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the People's Republic of China. While he doesn't say this is the origin of the theory, he does suggest that the theory has its origins partly in Taiwan's own feelings of being betrayed by the U.S. His main focus, though, is on how the CCP is using and amplifying this theory to drive a wedge between Taiwan and the United States. IORG Co-Director Chihhao Yu also spends a lot of time on PRC propaganda in relation to US skepticism, but he also suggests that the Taiwanese abandonment narrative has its roots in Taiwan's history as a colony, going as far back as 400 years ago. 

One thing that I haven't heard so far is the possible connection between skepticism about America's actions/stance toward Taiwan and what George H. Kerr argued was the US "betrayal" of Taiwanese during the early postwar years. Kerr's argument in Formosa Betrayed is not just that the Kuomintang takeover of Taiwan was a betrayal of the hopes of the Taiwanese people for a just and equitable post-war society as they became part of the Chinese nation; it was also that the United States betrayed Taiwan by allowing the KMT to continue to rule Taiwan despite its corruption, incompetence, and authoritarian rule during the White Terror period. Kerr argues that the US took a hands-off position toward what was happening in Taiwan; as he relates, after he met with the director of Office of Far Eastern Affairs in March, 1947, the latter showed him the door "with remarks to the effect that no one in the United Nations and certainly no one in Washington would ever be interested in Formosa." 

Kerr watched as the US government continued to support Taiwan's KMT rulers ... until it didn't. When Nixon and Kissinger visited China, Kerr told Richard Koo that he thought Chiang Ching-kuo would use the opportunity to sell out Taiwan and that "Nixon will welcome any arrangement Chiang Ching-kuo will make -- or probably has made -- to hand Formosa over to Peking without a public international intervention or conflict of any sort. ... The interests of the Formosans are of no importance to him [Nixon] if they stand in the way of his ambition" (3 Aug. 1971). Later he described US/China interactions to Mark Mancall as the US presidents "go[ing] hat in hand to 'pay tribute'" (9 Feb. 1975). 

And I have quoted many times Chen Rongcheng's afterword (1973)/preface (1991) to the Chinese translation of Formosa Betrayed, where he wrote, ｢人不先自救，誰會救我？｣(“If we do not first help ourselves, who will save us?”) To Chen, it seemed that one of the messages of Formosa Betrayed was not to trust the US too much. 

This is not to deny anything that the panelists had to say. It's interesting, though, to speculate on whether the "America Skepticism Theory" might have some of its roots among people who themselves were advocating for Taiwan independence, and who feared being betrayed once again if they depended too much on the US. And that included Kerr himself, who increasingly despaired of the chances that his country would do the "right" thing for Taiwan.

Here's the video of the panel discussion:

Another new book in the former native speaker's library

I mentioned this book in a previous post as a "future book" in my library, and now it has arrived. 

Wendy Cheng, Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism (University of Washington Press, 2023)

Here's the summary of the book from the website:

Island X delves into the compelling political lives of Taiwanese migrants who came to the United States as students from the 1960s through the 1980s. Often depicted as compliant model minorities, many were in fact deeply political, shaped by Taiwan's colonial history and influenced by the global social movements of their times. As activists, they fought to make Taiwanese people visible as subjects of injustice and deserving of self-determination. 

Under the distorting shadows of Cold War geopolitics, the Kuomintang regime and collaborators across US campuses attempted to control Taiwanese in the diaspora through extralegal surveillance and violence, including harassment, blacklisting, imprisonment, and even murder. Drawing on interviews with student activists and extensive archival research, Wendy Cheng documents how Taiwanese Americans developed tight-knit social networks as infrastructures for identity formation, consciousness development, and anticolonial activism. They fought for Taiwanese independence, opposed state persecution and oppression, and participated in global political movements. Raising questions about historical memory and Cold War circuits of power, Island X is a testament to the lives and advocacy of a generation of Taiwanese American activists.

As Cheng points out at the beginning, the book takes its name from the way that Taiwan was identified by US Navy Intelligence during World War Two, when, as George Kerr describes in Formosa Betrayed, there were plans to "island-hop" from Taiwan to invade Japan. (As I recall, Kerr says that those plans were scuttled mainly because MacArthur wanted to keep his promise to the Philippines that "I shall return.") I'll be interested to see what connections Cheng makes between the "Island X" plans and "Taiwanese student migrants, campus spies, and Cold War activism." 

I want to see how this book supplements some of what I've already read about Taiwanese independence activists in American universities in books like 《一門留美學生的建國故事》, edited by 張炎憲 and 曾秋美, and parts of 《一個家族·三個時代：吳拜和他的子女們》by 吳宏仁. I see that Cheng hasn't used either of those books, though she does cite Wang Chih-ming's Transpacific Articulations, which I've read parts of.

Not sure when I'll get to reading this, though, since I have a lot of reading and writing to do before the end of my "sabbatical" and courses to prepare for next semester...

 [Update, 11/25: I noticed that although Cheng doesn't cite Wu Hung-jen's book, she does cite an essay written by Suy-ming Chou (周烒明), the husband of Grace Wu Chou (吳秀慧), who is Wu Hung-jen's aunt. The Chous were part of the Formosan independence movement at the University of Wisconsin and lost their Taiwanese (ROC) passports as a result.] 

Heather Cox Richardson on the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade

Heather Cox Richardson is a history professor at Boston College.

Barbara Tuchman on politics

First 10 minutes, in particular:

"I have to confess that I am neither philosophically nor politically a Republican" got applause!

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. 

Another new book in the former native speaker's library

One thing that I've been thinking about recently, first with the COVID-19 pandemic and then with the demonstrations for racial equality that came in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, is the relations among minorities in the US--in particular Asian Americans and African Americans. My wife and I have talked about this a lot, and I've tried to do some reading, too, on the different ways Asian Americans are reacting to or are involved in this struggle for racial justice. Admittedly I'm a privileged outsider to both of these groups and their struggles, but that's why I'm trying to learn more. And as a colleague mentioned at a webinar on Juneteenth today, I shouldn't be trying to corner my friends and colleagues of color and expect them to teach me everything I need to do without me doing my homework first.

I bought Living for Change, the autobiography of Grace Lee Boggs. I had seen the PBS film about Boggs a few years ago and was impressed by this documentary of a Chinese American woman who was intimately involved with the struggles of African Americans for decades. I've read through the first four chapters so far. I'll probably post some thoughts on it (or quotes from it) once I'm done.

Notes on the June 2 Webinar, "The Challenge of COVID-19: The Taiwan Experience"

Wow--how did it get to June 16 already?

I listened to that webinar on COVID-19 in Taiwan on June 2. I'm not sure if anyone was waiting with bated breath to get my impressions of the discussion, but I'll mention a few things.

In the meantime I see that Evan Feigenbaum from the Carnegie Endowment interviewed some "senior health and epidemiology figures" from Taiwan, including Steve Kuo from National Yangming University (who also participated in the webinar). Feigenbaum comes to the same conclusion that Steven Goldstein came to at the webinar concerning the lessons the US can learn from the Taiwan experience. Goldstein even suggested that the Taiwan experience would be used as a negative example in the US, particularly in terms of the single-payer argument. He said that you can't even get some people to wear masks here, and any kind of single-payer system in which the government was able to compile the health information of Americans would be more of an argument against a single-payer system like Taiwan's for many of these Americans. (Which once again leads me to the conclusion that I wish I were in Taiwan right now...) Feigenbaum says the same thing about American views of the Taiwan model:

Mask-wearing? Fuhgeddaboudit. Large-scale integration of personal databases? No way. Centralization of messaging and coordinated efforts across levels of government? Whoa, hard. Political culture matters a lot. What worked there is easily ignored and trashed by many here.

Depressing...

Another interesting part of the discussion on June 2 centered on the question of whether Taiwan's exclusion from the WHO was an advantage or a disadvantage. Steven Kuo was pretty clear that it wasn't a disadvantage (though he didn't say it was an advantage). He felt that Taiwan could get information from other allies (even if the US withdrew from the WHO). My notes on what Kuo said (not exact quotes!):

For this outbreak, I won’t say being outside WHO has had any significant impact on our ability to respond. We’ve been trying to get into WHO as observers for a long time (20 years). SARS served as wake-up call, learned a lot, collaborated with other countries like US CDC, which improved disease control system. 2009, joined WHO as observer. Had some experience as observer. It would be wonderful if Taiwan could be part of WHO, but if we can’t “it’s not really a big deal.” We work double-hard. Some people think we’re lucky not to be in, but he doesn’t think so, though he doesn’t think it mattered in this case. Not an official gov’t point of view (he emphasized)!

In the end, he felt it was more a political issue than a health issue.

William Hsiao, on the other hand, who was one of the people who set up Taiwan's National Health Insurance program, felt that it was "an issue of respect" whether Taiwan was part of WHO or not. He admitted, though that Taiwan wouldn't gain much benefit from membership.

There are other things I could mention, but I have to get back to grading now...

Finished reading Before the Storm

So I decided that instead of feeding my rage over what's going on currently, I'd give myself a chance to rage about the past. I just finished Rick Perlstein's 2001 history of '60s conservatism, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus.

Like the other two Perlstein books that I've read (Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge), this book was packed with historical details of famous, infamous, and little-known events and people, seemingly culled (by Perlstein or his research assistants) from newspapers of every size across the US. In with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the candidacy of Maine senator Margaret Chase Smith (the first woman to run for president as part of a major party), and the murder of Kitty Genovese are such details as the number of African American journeymen in the Brooklyn plumbers' local ("three ... out of several thousand members" [236]), the rise of businesses and products catering to fears of nuclear war (like "'Foam-Ettes--the Toothpaste Tablet You Can Use ANYTIME, ANYWHERE--WHEREVER YOU ARE, even in a family fallout shelter' [143]"), and the origins of the boysenberry and its relationship to the growth of conservatism.

Unfortunately, some of Before the Storm is as hard to read as that previous sentence probably was. Like a lot of readers (at least judging from the book's reviews on Amazon), I came to this book last, after having read Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge. Reading the books out of order like this, I can see how Perlstein's style has (fortunately) developed. Like the later books, this one sometimes takes detours in the narrative to bring readers up to date about a figure, trend, or other historical development that is important to the overall story. At times, however, the detours were not accompanied with proper signage and I found myself lost when I was back on the main road. At times I'd be reading along and suddenly come along a sentence like, "By July, ..." and wonder, "July of what year?"

Overall, though, I learned a lot from this book. It even clued me in on a 1953 executive order signed by Eisenhower "demanding homosexuals be fired not just from all federal jobs bur from all companies with federal contractors--one-fifth of the U.S. workforce" (490). This order, Executive Order 10450, was interesting to me as it seems to have formed part of the context in which George Kerr was forced to resign from his work at Stanford with the International Cooperation Administration. (See my brief bio of Kerr in the Camphor Press edition of Formosa Betrayed.)

I see that Perlstein has a new volume coming out in August: Reaganland. I'm looking forward to it, but considering that the Amazon website says it's 1040 pages long, it'll be a while before I get to it...

"A Government of Merchants": GHK (indirectly) on the Trump administration's handling of COVID-19

[Update, 10:48 p.m. Well, this doesn't make any sense, probably  because I've been feeling tired and dizzy all day. The "parallels" are kind of loose. I guess the part I would emphasize here is that both regimes were/are corrupt and that both "leaders" didn't/don't take responsibility for their incompetence and corruption. I didn't go into Chen Yi's role in the cholera and bubonic plague outbreaks, but there's probably some parallel there, too. See this paragraph from Denny Roy's Taiwan: A Political History, where Chen's first director of public health declines to stop dumping sewage from cholera wards into ponds that were used for fishing by saying, "After all, only the poor people are contracting the disease." The only parallel is that reading about what's going on now gives me the same feeling of impotent rage that reading Formosa Betrayed gives me.]

Reading about some of what has been going on with the way the Trump administration is handling the coronavirus reminded me of chapter five of George H. Kerr's Formosa Betrayed. This chapter, entitled "A Government of Merchants," contains descriptions of the Chen Yi government in Taiwan that are sadly evocative of the Trump government's practices. To name a few:

• Kerr: "Next the Governor's own men developed a firm control of all industrial raw materials, agricultural stockpiles and confiscated real properties turned over to them by the vanquished Japanese. By the end of 1946 these huge reserves were fairly well exhausted, and at last in early 1947 the Governor's Commissioners imposed a system of extreme monopolies affecting every phase of the island's economic life. This was Chen Yi's 'Necessary State Socialism' in its developed form and the ultimate cause of the 1947 rebellion." 
• From Raw Story today (4/3/20), we get the news that after Jared Kushner claimed on Thursday that "The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use," the Strategic National Stockpile's website changed the Stockpile's mission statement to reflect Kushner's view. The original mission statement that called the Stockpile "the nation’s largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out" and promised to get "the right medicines and supplies ... to those who need them most during an emergency." The new mission statement removes those assurances and calls the Stockpile "a short-term stopgap buffer" that can be used "to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies." The onus goes to the states to develop their own stockpiles, which is almost impossible to do since, as some governors have complained, the federal government keeps outbidding state and local governments on personal protective equipment (PPE). (It's admittedly not an exact parallel, but the similarity is that the federal government--through Kushner--is claiming "ownership" of the stockpile. Who is Kushner referring to when he says "it's supposed to be our stockpile" (emphasis added)?) Although Trump would never use the term "necessarily state socialism," it's the same kind of graft...
• Kerr: "To loud demands for action [on rice shortages caused by government confiscation] the Government first replied with flowery talk of 'patriotism' and 'food for the Army, defending Formosa from Communism,' and then Chen lost patience with the critics. He sharply denied Government responsibility, countering with charges that the Formosans themselves were selfishly hoarding grain. Undoubtedly some Formosans were, but the quantities in private hands were insignificant."
• While the Trump administration outbids state and local governments on PPE and denies its responsibility to supply them with needed supplies, Trump accuses hospital employees of stealing supplies. As Kerr says about the hoarding of grain, there might be some theft, but as the Vox article says, it's "hardly on the scale the president has suggested, and only what is needed to keep hospitals running given the federal government had not been able to provide them with badly needed supplies."
• Kerr: "After the Transfer [of Taiwan from Japan to the KMT government] few of these stockpiled materials reached the open market through legal channels. In most instances we have records of quantities surrendered (records made by the Japanese), but only the vaguest indication of what became of them. Of 423,000 tons of camphor surrendered, for example, an official report shows that only 400 tons were actually refined in the first half-year of the Chinese occupation. We do know that very large shipments left the island, assigned to private warehouses in Hong Kong. Nearly 3,500,000 cases of matches were surrendered, but an acute shortage of matches developed in Formosa in early 1946. (At the first People's Political Council, in May, the Government spokesman explained this, saying that the Government had been able to distribute only 1473 cases in the first six months 'because of lack of adequate transport.') The match stockpiles, too, had gone to the mainland."
• An April 2 question-and-answer between CBS' Weijia Jiang and Rear Adm. John Polowczyk of the Joint Chiefs of Staff confirms that the "airbridge" the US government has established to bring in supplies from abroad is mainly being used to supply private companies with those much-needed medical materials. In other words, the taxpayers are paying to provide shipping services to commercial companies that then sell those supplies to the highest bidder (among state and local governments)--which means that the taxpayers are paying (at least) twice for the supply of these PPE, ventilators, and other medical supplies. I don't know if this is illegal, though I know it should be...

I could go on, but I have to think about my blood pressure...

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.)

Petition for the White House to support Taiwan's participation in WHO

I just signed this. I don't know if it will lead to any action on the part of the US government, but it's worth a try:

Taiwan owns high-quality medical technology and abundant medical experiences, and has been contributing to medical issues continuously. However, Taiwan has always been precluded from WHO due to China's opposition and pressure, which made Taiwan unable to access timely information from WHO at SARS outbreak. Now, since the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV is spreading and Taiwan is already standing at the first line of defense, to protect the 23 millions Taiwanese people and global safety, Taiwan should not be excluded from WHO due to political reason anymore. 

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... ]

US State Dept Human Rights Reports on Taiwan, 1979-1987

These links are mainly for my own reference, though maybe they'll be useful to someone else, too. These are country reports on human rights practices "submitted to the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate and Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives by the Department of State in accordance with sections 116(d) and 502B(b) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended."

The links go directly to the Taiwan reports:

• 1980 (covering 1979): https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015014188273?urlappend=%3Bseq=538
  
• 1981 (covering 1980): https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015014143476?urlappend=%3Bseq=595
• 1982 (covering 1981): https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015039359891?urlappend=%3Bseq=592
• 1983 (covering 1982): https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015014164753?urlappend=%3Bseq=702
• 1984 (covering 1983): https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015014227832?urlappend=%3Bseq=766
• 1985 (covering 1984): https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015008874342?urlappend=%3Bseq=762
• 1986 (covering 1985): https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015011233270?urlappend=%3Bseq=747
• 1987 (covering 1986): https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015013361749?urlappend=%3Bseq=710
• 1988 (covering 1987): https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015013385052?urlappend=%3Bseq=690
  

There are more, but this goes up to the end of martial law, anyway.

GHK in the McCarran Committee hearings

I've been skimming around in the online volumes from the hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-second Congress, first-[second] session (a.k.a., the McCarran hearings on the Institute of Pacific Relations). George H. Kerr shows up in there, in the form of correspondence from 1942 between Kerr and William L. Holland of the IPR. They're discussing Andrew Grajdanzev's IPR-sponsored book, Formosa Today. Go to p. 393.