Oral Histories/United States Foreign Service
October 7, 2014 9:25 AM   Subscribe

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training has an extensive archive of oral histories by and about individuals in the foreign service and also about countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
posted by josher71 (18 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is a really interesting read. What I've noticed in speaking with US diplomats is they have this agreeableness to them- whatever you say, no matter how negative or shocking, they still smile and nod. Reading these comments is interesting in that you can see how these diplomats really felt.
posted by JiffyQ at 9:50 AM on October 7, 2014


What I've noticed in speaking with US diplomats is they have this agreeableness to them- whatever you say, no matter how negative or shocking, they still smile and nod.

Yes, um, I think there's a term for someone like that, "diplomatic".
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 10:19 AM on October 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


Hey, my dad is in here! Woot. He has, no doubt, totally forgotten.
posted by DoubtingThomas at 10:34 AM on October 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


Fascinating! Thanks!
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:47 AM on October 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Here is a similar site for those who have served with the British Foreign Office. The former mandarins discuss their area of expertise with a great deal of candor.
posted by just another scurvy brother at 11:14 AM on October 7, 2014 [3 favorites]


No John Paton Davies, Jr, regrettably, but they do have John Service! No one tell me if this was accessible in 2005, cause gosh darn it, I did my best when researching my thesis!

Service was one of the American China Hands who was fired for what amounted to "reasonable doubt" as to his loyalties (despite flying through every loyalty commission/hearing thrown at him). He actually went to court over his termination and won at the Supreme Court and the Department of State was forced to accept him back - and then promptly sent the China expert to a consul in England to finish out his years of service. Part of the reason firebrands like McCarthy didn't care for him was his involvement in the Dixie Mission, a US Army Observer Group to Yenan in 1944, a political/military mission to establish contact with the Chinese Communists (there was also the Amerasia Affair). When asked in the interview about his eight hour interview with Mao Zedong, he responded:
I had notes on all these things, but when I came back from Japan in '50 for the McCarthy hearings, why--Caroline, I think, had always felt that these notebooks were bad things to have around--she threw them all overboard.
Caroline was his wife, I believe.

Thanks for the link!
posted by Atreides at 11:24 AM on October 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Hey, my dad is in here! Woot. He has, no doubt, totally forgotten.- DoubtingThomas

Ha! Mine too. I forwarded it to him, and he indeed had forgotten as well. Nice find.
posted by jetsetsc at 11:27 AM on October 7, 2014


If you don't mind, I'd like to read the one's by Mefite's relatives if you link them.
posted by josher71 at 11:40 AM on October 7, 2014


> Hey, my dad is in here!

Mine too! Just mentioned; I wish to god he'd provided one of the interviews—how I'd love to read it, and how I wish he were still alive so I could send him this link... But if you search on "Dodson" you'll get a couple of hits, e.g. from the Richard S. Welton one: "Our friend Joe Dodson was one of his assistants in Japan during that time. Joe was later an Attaché in Tokyo, wasn't he?" (He was in Tokyo in the early '50s and as Attaché in the early '60s; in between he was in Bangkok and afterwards in Buenos Aires, and those are the places I grew up.) Many thanks for this intensely nostalgic post.
posted by languagehat at 12:09 PM on October 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oh, and this, from the Dorothy M. Emmerson interview, gives an idea of the horrors of the diplomatic life (especially for the wives):
When the King of England died, the Diplomatic Corps went into mourning. We went to a function - I don't remember where - and the senior wife came up to me and asked why I was not in mourning. I told her I did not have a black dress - I was wearing a dark brown dress. She told me to go home and stay there until I got a black dress.
posted by languagehat at 12:11 PM on October 7, 2014


This is a fantastic resource, thank you. Can I ask how you found this?
posted by Think_Long at 12:15 PM on October 7, 2014


I found it just dicking around on Twitter. I wish I had a better answer than that.
posted by josher71 at 12:23 PM on October 7, 2014


It's interesting how much dirt people are willing to spill. I haven't found my parents in any of the histories, but I've run across people they knew. I was just a kid, so I don't know how much isn't being told, but there's some good gossip in there.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:57 PM on October 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


My dad: http://adst.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Irvine-R.-Allen1.pdf
My Mom, who was the officer, hasn't done one.
My second cousin and his wife: http://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Seelye,%20Talcott%20W.toc.pdf
http://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Seelye,%20Joan.toc.pdf
posted by jetsetsc at 1:24 PM on October 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Emmerson, the husband to Dorothy, was part of the Dixie Mission, too. Regrettably, he appears not to have done an interview.
posted by Atreides at 1:30 PM on October 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


This is amazing!!!!!

Atreides, I'd be really interested in reading that thesis. Or anyone else's, if anyone else has a thesis relating to pre-war China and International Shanghai specifically, with a lot of personal stories.
posted by chainsofreedom at 5:41 AM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


An old diplomat I knew isn't there, alas. He worked, inter alia, in Cairo during the war and in some interesting places thereafter, but parted company with the service on bad terms because, he said, he was asked to do things he thought improper. He was no prude, either, so I can only imagine...

We had some fascinating conversations before he died (yes, I know, it's harder afterwards). In particular, he said a lot that strengthened my suspicions about the Bletchley Park story we've all been told since the secrecy war removed, in particular the notion that the Germans didn't know about it. The standard narrative is that the product was carefully distributed with sources obscured, but according to my friend, in Cairo and Alexandria at least, 'BP' was a verb - as in "Has this been BP'd?" meaning, has this been confirmed with Bletchley? Combine that with his relatively junior position then and the (thoroughly corroborated) stories he told about Cairo leaking like a lace teapot... well, there are a few things like that.

But, like all good diplomats, he knew when to stop talking.
posted by Devonian at 5:50 AM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


One recent publication, which killed me when I saw it came out (for soon to be obvious reasons) is a memoir by John Paton Davies, Jr, China Hand: An Autobiography. Davies was born to American missionaries in China and later returned to China in the Foreign Service and as a result, was one of our country's best diplomatic officers regarding the country. He's a great writer and offers wonderful glimpses of politics in action, be it the intrigue in Chungking to meeting with Gandhi and other Indian nationalists at the outset of the war, not to mention the build up toward the Cold War. Even after he fell foul based on his service General Stilwell and the China Lobby, and was effectively kicked out of China, Containment Theorist, George Kennan, requested Davies be sent to the American embassy in Moscow. He had printed an earlier book, Dragon by the Tail, which focuses more on the Asian diplomacy.

Thanks to folks like him, Jack Service, etc, I valiantly took the Foreign Service Exam about ten years ago and didn't pass. I hadn't a clue how many questions there were going to be about answering the phone. Doh.

For those interested in reading declassified memos and reports from decades ago, hunt down a copy of the Foreign Relations of the United States, which are collected volumes of reports and memos from the Department of State. The link is to a digitized edition

Chainsofreedom, Mefi mail me your email address and I'd be happy to send you a copy of the thesis.
posted by Atreides at 6:56 AM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


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