In Peking I came to know American military officers, especially those who were my counterparts in Chinese studies. One of them was Captain Frank Dorn, called Pinky, a nickname given him as a cadet because of his complexion. The Military Attaché at the end of my Peking tour was Colonel Joseph W. Stilwell. Dorn and Stilwell would later play an important part in my life. In command of the Marine Corps detachment assigned to protect the Legation was Colonel A. A. Vandegrift, who later was Commandant of the Marine Corps. One of the lieutenants of the guard was [Lewis Burwell] “Chesty” Puller, now a legendary hero of the Marine Corps. A phenomenally high proportion of the Army and Marine Corps officers stationed at Peking became generals in World War II and the Korean War. This was in part because of their special knowledge of northeast Asia. Also, it seemed to me, they were more talented than the average military officer.
Peking was blessed with many beautiful and bright young women, from the Turgout princess, Nirjidma, to bevies of visiting American and English maidens whose mamas or aunties were exposing them to the glories of old Peking. My three bachelor colleagues and I were consequently fortunate in the range of companionship available. While we gratefully embraced these opportunities, none of us married during our Peking tour of duty. In my case, I felt insufficiently established in my profession to take on so considerable a responsibility.
I left Peking with regret, not only because of fond associations, but also because this ancient, mellow, and noble city was a delight to live in. The symmetries of the great gates and walls, the squares and long vistas, the vermilion, emerald, cobalt, and imperial yellow of gates, pillars. and tiles, but most of all the casual, tranquil cadence of the old capital created an atmosphere of comfortable, well-worn elegance.
Mukden was my next post. It was the economic and transportation center of Manchuria, a coarse and important city. Manchuria was occupied by the Japanese Army, which had set up a puppet government over the region. The American government did not recognize the legitimacy of the Japanese conquest or the puppet regime of Manchukuo. Although the Japanese Army did not overtly treat us as enemies, it was evident that it so regarded us. Our position in the American Consulate General was therefore a delicate one.
Mukden was primarily a political reporting post, informing Washington of developments inside Manchuria, Chinese guerrilla movements along the Korean border, and recurrent clashes between Japanese and Soviet forces along the Mongolian and Soviet frontiers. I found this work much to my taste and at times exciting. It and a handful of American and British friends compensated for the harsh environment.
American journalists occasionally visited Manchuria. Frustrated in their efforts to get the truth from secretive Japanese officials, they called at the Consulate General for information. J. P. McEvoy of the Reader’s Digest was one. William Henry Chamberlin of the Christian Science Monitor and John Gunther were others. The Consul General, Joseph W. Ballantine, made a practice of briefing the visiting journalist orally. Then, if he judged the writer to be reputable and discreet, Ballantine would pile on a conference table a collection of our reports to Washington about Manchuria and invite the visitor to draw on their contents for the enlightenment of the American public. Ballantine cautioned the journalists not to reveal where they got this information and, if asked, to say that they found it in the gutter. John Gunther spent two days with our files; much of his Inside Asia section on Manchukuo was a rewrite of material he had gotten from us.
Most of the documents that Ballantine and I showed to journalists were classified. There were only two grades in those days: “Confidential” and, rather sweetly, “Strictly Confidential.” The latter was then regarded as “Eyes Only” in the subsequent runaway inflation of security. At any rate, we “violated security,” on our own initiative and for reasons that we considered to be in the national interest. We suffered no pangs of conscience over what we did. Quite to the contrary, we felt rather virtuous over making available, through journalists, classified information that we thought the American people had a right and need to know.
Home leave came during the spring of 1937. I traveled in the company of Colonel and Mrs. Vandegrift across the trans-Siberian, this time “soft” class. I stopped off for a couple of days in Moscow where I met several members of the American Embassy staff, including George F. Kennan. Stalin’s great purge was in mid-passage and the atmosphere of Moscow was tense and withdrawn. Kennan had attended the contrived “trials” as an observer and recounted to me in detail the incredible accusations against and self-incrimination of the old revolutionaries. It was a chilling story, one which stayed with me.
CHAPTER IV
HANKOW, THE FAR EAST DESK,
AND PEARL HARBOR
On my way from the United States back to Mukden in 1937 word came of the July 7 encounter between Japanese and Chinese troops near Peking that sparked the beginning of Japan’s attempt to conquer China south of the Great Wall. As Manchuria was already under Japanese control, I had no difficulty in returning to my post through Japan and Korea. But I was not to remain long. In less than a year I was transferred to Hankow, doomed to be overrun and captured by the invading armies. I assumed that I had been so favored because Mukden had conditioned me to living under the heel of the Japanese Army, and because, were misfortune to befall me, as a bachelor, my demise would be less extensively mourned than in the case of a man with wife and children. The dear old Department was considerate in such matters.
I was not so much as scratched, although we were bombed a bit. This was something of a novelty in 1938, unless one were an Ethiopian or a Spaniard. Air raids, troop movements, wounded soldiers arriving from the front, Soviet “volunteer” airmen and German military advisers in the streets, hordes of dazed refugees fleeing before the oncoming enemy, students rushing about the city pasting patriotic posters on walls and calling on everyone to resist the foe, and finally the Communists planting dynamite in key buildings to greet the invaders with a scorched earth—all of these made for a lively scene.
In Hankow I picked up strands of previous acquaintanceships: Colonel Stilwell, who, as Military Attaché, was observing the course of hostilities; Pinky Dorn, serving with him as Assistant Military Attaché; and Edgar Snow, reporting the war and less overtly violent forms of politics. His Red Star over China had recently been published and he had suddenly risen from journalistic obscurity to international acclaim without having been spoiled.
Because of the constricted wartime living at Hankow, with the American and British correspondents and officials concentrated in offices, apartments, hotels, and bars in a short strip along the bank of the Yangtze, and because of a mounting sense of crisis and doom from the approaching Japanese armies, the twenty or thirty Anglo-American newsmen and officials shared a feeling of camaraderie. My apartment in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building became one of the eating, drinking, debating, and recreational centers for the “last ditchers,” as we called ourselves.
A Marine Corps captain, Evans Carlson, whom I had known in Peking, came to Hankow from North China, where he had been observing firsthand the Chinese Communist Eight Route Army. Carlson was fortyish, a lanky, rawboned fellow, less homely than Abraham Lincoln, less handsome than Gary Cooper. He was unpretentious and direct; also a bit wanting in skepticism. Although at President Roosevelt’s request he wrote personally to FDR regarding the situation in China, I do not recall his ever mentioning this unusual relationship. It had begun in 1935 when Carlson commanded the President’s Marine guard at Warm Springs and Roosevelt took a liking to the rugged, idealistic officer, who had already served two stints in China.
Carlson was the first American military man to visit Communist-held areas. He came to Hankow greatly impressed by what he had seen of Communist troops and guerrillas, their exceptional esprit de corps, discipline, and solicitude for the civilian population. The Eagle Scout behavior of the Communist soldiers contrasted