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Executive Editor, Journals Dept. University of Hawai‘i Press
by | 4 October 2005 · 9:32 am

Cambodian Gen. Lon Nol’s Worst Enemy: Vietnam

During a meeting with one of our agents in a safe house [in Hong Kong], we obtained information that told of huge Chinese arms shipments going through Cambodia and into South Vietnam to help the Viet Cong. We also learned that the head of Cambodia’s armed forces, Lieutenant General Lon Nol, was overseeing the shipments and taking a cut of the arms for the benefit of himself and his own army. In the late 1960s at the time when the arms shipments were at their highest levels, Lon Nol was a favorite of Peking. He was said to have a big picture of Chairman Mao over his desk in Phnom Penh. But we knew that Lon Nol was also a Cambodian patriot. Like their Laotian neighbors to the north, the Cambodians were strongly against Vietnam, whom they saw as the regional bully. Lon Nol was particularly upset that, in their effort to prosecute the war in South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese Army had occupied areas of eastern Cambodia. Our source told us that when the Cambodian Defense Minister traveled to Peking in the fall of 1969, he made a strong appeal to the Chinese to help him get the Vietnamese out of Cambodia. Lon Nol said he was willing to help supply the Viet Cong, but he insisted that Vietnamese troops belonged in Vietnam, not in Cambodia. The Chinese demurred. In Peking’s eyes the North Vietnamese were fighting a war of national liberation against the American imperialists, and it was China’s socialist duty and in the country’s own interest to support its communist brethren.

The tiff between Lon Nol and Peking turned out to pay off, at least temporarily, for the U.S. Just six months after visiting Peking, in March 1970 General Lon Nol, in part bitter and disappointed at being rebuffed by the Chinese, staged a coup along with First Deputy Premier Sisowath Sirik Matak against Prime Minister Sihanouk and seized power. From Hong Kong we reported to Washington the first signs of a coup when we picked up information that commercial flights from Hong Kong to Phnom Penh were being canceled because the Phnom Penh Airport was closed. Once in power, Lon Nol turned from a supplier to the communist cause in Southeast Asia into an adversary. In an attempt to hinder the Vietnamese communists in their fight to take over South Vietnam, he tried to cut weapons supply lines through Cambodia to Vietnam. Then he cooperated with the U.S. military in its incursion into Cambodia in the spring of 1970, which hurt the North Vietnamese but did not drive them out. In this backdrop to the war next door in Vietnam, thanks in part to the reporting from our source, the U.S. briefly gained the upper hand at China’s expense.

SOURCE: China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia, by James Lilley with Jeffrey Lilley (PublicAffairs, 2004), pp. 149-150

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by | 4 October 2005 · 9:00 am

Half a Life as a Haafu

AP Writer Natalie Obiko Pearson describes her life as a “haafu” in Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun.

I’ll always remember the feeling of liberation upon arriving in America. My appearance drew no attention, I spoke English with the neutral American inflections picked up at the international school — I could pass.

Then came the pitfalls of my complete unfamiliarity with America: I knew none of the references to popular culture; I wasn’t used to interrupting people so I never got a word in edgewise. I thought a Subway sandwich was something sold in the subway.

In Australia and the United States, countries of immigration built on diversity, I can pass as a native. In Japan I can only do it over the phone. The game is up the moment they see my face or hear my name — Pea-ya-son, as it’s pronounced in Japanese.

Trapped in a culturally ambiguous haafu land, I find kindred spirits in people who have grown up as immigrants or so-called “kikoku shijo” — Japanese partially raised abroad who don’t carry an ounce of foreign blood, yet are marginalized once they return.

Still, the fact that such people exist in Japan means there’s an end in sight — the makeup of the country is changing.

Many here believe that Japan, with its rapidly graying population, has no choice but to open its doors to a massive influx of foreign labor within the next couple of decades. Japanese society will doubtless endure some painful teething. But, frankly, I can’t wait.

via Japundit

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by | 3 October 2005 · 10:09 am

The CIA Role in the Laotian Elections, 1967

One of my biggest operations involved ensuring a “favorable” outcome in the elections to the National Assembly in 1967. With more attention being focused on the war in Southeast Asia and with the National Assembly in Laos starting to play a larger political role in the country, we thought it was important for Vang Pao to have more of a say in the political governing of the country. We figured out whom to support without letting our fingerprints show. As part of our “nation building” effort in Laos, we pumped a relatively large amount of money to politicians who would listen to our advice. In the election, “friendly” politicians won fifty-four of fifty-seven seats. Ambassador Sullivan referred to me as Mr. Tammany Hall, an allusion to New York City’s prodigious Democratic vote-getting machine of the late nineteenth century.

With the CIA’s mission expanding so rapidly, our intelligence gathering and reporting efforts boomed. As CIA personnel, we had better access to parts of Laos than our State Department colleagues. In fact, few Foreign Service officers were even allowed to visit places like Long Tieng. The major exception was Ambassador Sullivan, who oversaw the whole military effort in Laos. But other than him, during my time in Laos, only a handful of State Department personnel made it up to Long Tieng. Sometimes, we were in the awkward position of “outreporting” our State Department colleagues in the embassy, who were supposed to be the experts in designated fields such as the Lao economy, politics, and culture. In some cases, their best sources for information turned out to be our paid agents. We had to be discreet in handling such touchy situations. Since I had worked with many of the Foreign Service officers at other posts in Asia, I was given the job of smoothing ruffled feathers. Sometimes I succeeded. Sometimes I failed.

SOURCE: China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia, by James Lilley with Jeffrey Lilley (PublicAffairs, 2004), p. 120

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by | 3 October 2005 · 9:57 am

Ethnic Museums: Educating Others or Preserving Selves?

I used my ten days on Hokkaido to examine my idea that Ainu museums present Ainu ethnicity to a larger public, and are run with the goal of asserting Ainu ethnic identity in a way that challenges the majority Japanese conception of Japan as an ethnically homogeneous nation. This is when the emphasis of the Ainu on preserving their culture and participating in Japanese life as Ainu became clear to me. Ainu-run museums did in fact try to combat popular ideas about the Ainu (such as that there are no Ainu left, that the Ainu language is dead, that the Ainu are particularly hairy, etc.) through signs and information in brochures. At the Shiraoi Poroto Kotan (Ainu Village), guides also tried to make visitors aware that the Ainu are both Ainu and Japanese. For instance, a younger guide (dressed in Ainu clothing) tried to explain that the Ainu aren’t entirely different from the Japanese today, but that they still have a special culture, by saying “I’m the same as everyone else. I only wear these clothes from 8 to 5. Do you know any Ainu? These foods came from the Ainu…these place names are Ainu names….”

However, a researcher at the Shiraoi Poroto Kotan museum explained to me that of necessity, Ainu museums can only go so far in trying to explain Ainu ethnicity as well as traditional (and no longer existing) Ainu culture. She agreed with my feeling that it’s impossible to attempt to show Ainu culture and history in the same way that Japanese history is portrayed, because there are no records of Ainu history from the Ainu point of view. She also pointed out the impossibility of exhibiting a culture or identity that is currently in the process of being re-defined, and explained that “Ainu culture today is changing. People have a Japanese lifestyle, and they can no longer do things like take bears from the mountains, and it is unclear to them how to include their own feelings and lives in the ceremonies.” As a result, she informed me, the main goal of the museum was not to teach others about Ainu culture; instead, it was to focus on cultural preservation for the Ainu themselves.

The emphasis on cultural growth was the most common theme I encountered in Ainu-run museums. I had not realized the extent to which Ainu and Okinawans are currently engaged in re-defining their cultural identities for themselves, or that this concern would dominate other concerns about fitting into a larger Japanese society. Museums did not present this concern to tourists in displays; rather, it was only obvious when I looked at the way space was allocated in museums and talked to people working there. At the Kawamura Kaneto Ainu Memorial Museum, for instance, I was lucky enough to see the most famous contemporary Ainu musician (Oki) practicing for a music competition in the museum’s rehearsal hall, and the success of his rehearsal was the main concern of the museum staff. Ms. Fujita explained that she worked at a tourist village (the Gyokusendo Kingdom Village) in Okinawa because she wanted to learn about making Okinawan pottery: it was an apprenticeship, a place where crafts could be taught not only to casual visitors but to those interested in making the practice of those crafts a part of their life. There was also space at the Kingdom Village, as at the Kawamura Kaneto Ainu Memorial Museum, for local dance or music groups to rehearse.

SOURCE: The Myth of Japanese Ethnic Homogeneity, by Catherine Williams, September 1999

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by | 2 October 2005 · 11:13 am

The Hong Kong Listening Post in the 1950s

Hong Kong was the best listening post into “Red China.” It was, as the long-distance telephone ad used to say, “The next best thing to being there.” The island-colony was roiling with action in 1953. Unlike on Taiwan, there were many trade and transportation links to the mainland, and because of its location, Hong Kong was a crossroads for Chinese of all stripes. It was a base for agents from China and Taiwan and, therefore, served as one of the few places where the two sides could rub elbows, and, if the situation called for it, pass on communications to each other’s governments. Wealthy capitalists from Shanghai sought refuge in Hong Kong after the Communist revolution and spent much of their time trying to find a way off the island. Furthermore, refugees were streaming in from the mainland. Since 1949, more than one million Chinese had arrived in the city and its surrounding territories. There were an estimated 300,000 squatters in Hong Kong and its territories. Most of the refugees, the majority of whom were farmers and laborers from southern China, came in search of work and a better livelihood. Amazingly, with its improving economy and free enterprise methods, Hong Kong was able to accommodate most of them….

I started out working with the Pao Mi Chu, Taiwan’s intelligence apparatus. I worked under “deep cover,” meaning that I kept my true identity a secret from the Chinese people with whom I worked. I used aliases when I contacted agents or met with counterparts in Taiwan intelligence. The one I used most often was “John Wright.” I would meet with agents in hotel rooms or in safe houses, apartments that had been scouted beforehand to make sure they were not under surveillance by the Communists’ huge underground apparatus in Hong Kong. We debriefed refugees and travelers to China, placed agents on ships going to Chinese ports, and helped establish a base in Macao to take advantage of the flow of Chinese between Macao and the mainland….

In the course of my work, I was learning that we could accomplish far more by debriefing travelers or people returning from China than we could by planting frightened resident agents in the country. The resident agents naturally tended to be fearful of getting caught. Travelers, on the other hand, moved more freely and without that fear. Using debriefings, I started to gather useful information for the CIA about what was going on in China. Unfortunately, in those days CIA was obsessed with the idea of a resident agent with a radio no matter what the level of his access or his ability to survive. They focused on process over substance.

SOURCE: China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia, by James Lilley with Jeffrey Lilley (Public Affairs, 2004), pp. 84-86

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by | 2 October 2005 · 5:42 am

What Constitutes "Ethnicity" in Japan?

This summer I traveled to Japan as a World Fellow in order to study issues of Japanese ethnic identity first-hand. I was interested in the concept of Japanese ethnic homogeneity and wanted to gain a better understanding of the challenges to this concept that the Ainu and Okinawan peoples in Japan represent. In order to do this, I spent a total of two and a half weeks based in Tokyo, staying with a Japanese family and visiting important “majority” Japanese tourist destinations as well as museums that dealt with both majority Japanese culture and Japan’s ethnic minorities. In the middle of this homestay, I spent two weeks traveling through Hokkaido (where most Ainu live) and Okinawa in order to examine the way that the Ainu and Okinawans present themselves to the outside world and assert their separate identities.

The question of ethnicity in Japan turned out to be much harder to address than I had imagined. I planned to look at tourism as a means of cultural exchange between different groups in Japan, and I wanted to understand the way majority Japanese sites are experienced by tourists (who are mainly majority Japanese) in order to understand what a Japanese tourist might expect or be surprised by at a minority Japanese site. I visited popular tourist destinations that are important historically or culturally to the Japanese, such as Nikko, a famous temple complex that is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Japan; Hiraizumi, home to another famous temple complex; the Tokyo National Museum; the Asakusa Kannon temple which is the oldest temple in Tokyo; and the Imperial Palace where the emperor and his family still reside….

My host family also constantly reminded me that “ethnicity” is not just the symbols or places that express “Japanese-ness”; to be Japanese is also to live the daily life of a Japanese person. This trip was my first attempt at studying an intellectual construct (ethnicity) by looking for it in the everyday lives of real people and by asking them to help me find it there. During the homestay portion of my trip, I realized that scholarship on Japanese ethnicity paints an incomplete picture. Scholarship focuses on revivals of nationalist fervor or on contrasting pairs of stereotypes (geishas vs. salarymen, calligraphy v. technology, etc.). However, there is more to Japanese ethnicity than revering the emperor or being an expert at flower arranging.

For instance, when I asked for suggestions of where to visit, my host mother urged me to visit my host sister’s middle school, and the afternoon I spent there including ceremonial tea with the principal, dropping in on six, seventh, and eighth grade classes in all subjects for several hours, participating in English lessons, and finally having coffee in the principal’s office again was one of the most memorable of my time in Japan, and not only because of the myths it shattered about the Japanese educational system. My host mother’s suggestion reminded me that although “ethnicity” might not be formally recorded or presented as daily life for majority Japanese, it is still thought of as being important in defining “being Japanese”. This was reinforced by an afternoon I spent with a Japanese woman and her two children, who are half Australian. To the oldest child, being Japanese included celebrating birthdays and Christmas in a Western style (as these holidays are not really “every day” events), but also required using his mother¹s Japanese maiden name in school. His younger brother, less conscious of fitting in and being Japanese, was perfectly happy to use his English first and last names in school. Thus the homestay portion of my trip revealed that while tourist destinations on Honshu might focus mainly on a “high culture,” the “daily life” portrayed in Ainu museums is also a recognized part of Japanese ethnicity.

SOURCE: The Myth of Japanese Ethnic Homogeneity, by Catherine Williams, September 1999

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by | 1 October 2005 · 5:25 pm

Yale and the CIA in 1950

By the 1950s, Yale had a long association with U.S. government intelligence collection. After all, Nathan Hale (“I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”) was Yale’s first unsuccessful spy. Because of their high intelligence caliber and language abilities, Yale graduates were considered attractive candidates for intelligence work. Yale had played a part in the formation in 1942 of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was created to carry out intelligence gathering and paramilitary operations against Germany and Japan. From Yale’s class of 1943 alone, … at least forty-two young men had entered intelligence work, with most going to the OSS. Many of these men stayed on after the war and helped form the core of the new Central Intelligence Agency, which took over the duties of the OSS in 1947.

The connection between Yale and the new CIA started at the top. Yale’s president for most of the time I was there, Charles Seymour, was on close terms with Allen Dulles, a top OSS official in World War II and after 1953 the head of the CIA. Seymour’s daughter actually worked for the OSS in Europe during the war. During my time at Yale, recruiters on campus for the CIA included the varsity crew coach as well as eminent professors.

One of those professors invited me to see him on a fall day in 1950. He ushered me to sit down in his dark, wood-paneled study. It was late afternoon, and the room was in shadows. The walls of the study were lined with leather-backed volumes on Renaissance history, the Chinese classics, and English literature. The professor smoked a pipe. Between puffs, he made his pitch. Even though I barely knew who he was, he clearly knew of me and what I had been doing at Yale. “You were born in China. Your family saw the collapse of China,” he started out. “And here at Yale you are a Russian major?” he asked quizzically. He tried to dissuade me from a career in the diplomatic service or corporate world by mentioning that I hadn’t taken any business or accounting courses at Yale. The State Department, he told me, was stuck in cement. “Look at what you are interested in and consider intelligence. It’s a growth industry.” He then talked about the crucial role intelligence had played in past wars and the exciting nature of the work. He explained that people were needed who had been exposed to foreign environments. I was sold even before he got to my personal qualities. “Besides,” he added, “You are a leader. As captain, you turned the soccer team around.”

Like so many of my fellow students at Yale, including an English major and wrestler from Wallingford, Connecticut, named Jack Downey and a sophomore from South Bend, Indiana, named George Witwer, I was excited by the prospect of an adventurous career and by the idea that I could contribute to efforts to stem the tide of communism. It was a good cause, and I believed that the United States and its values were worth fighting for. In the foreword of that same 1951 classbook in which Peter Braestrup gave voice to ambivalence on campus was a chilling sentence: “We face the realization that the very civilization we have trained ourselves to foster has been placed on the verge of destruction. The challenge to each of us as individuals cannot be over- emphasized.” I quickly signed up for the CIA. So did about a hundred of my classmates.

SOURCE: China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia, by James Lilley with Jeffrey Lilley (PublicAffairs, 2004), pp. 69-71

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by | 1 October 2005 · 7:23 am

California Trading, 1830s

Our cargo was an assorted one; that is, it consisted of everything under the sun. We had spirits of all kinds, (sold by the cask,) teas, coffee, sugars, spices, raisins, molasses, hardware, crockery-ware, tinware, cutlery, clothing of all kinds, boots and shoes from Lynn, calicoes and cottons from Lowell, crepes, silks; also shawls, scarfs, necklaces, jewelry, and combs for the ladies; furniture; and in fact, everything that can be imagined, from Chinese fire-works to English cart-wheels — of which we had a dozen pairs with their iron rims on.

The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves. The country abounds in grapes, yet they buy bad wines made in Boston and brought round by us, at an immense price, and retail it among themselves at a real (12½ cents) by the small wine-glass. Their hides, too, which they value at two dollars in money, they give for something which costs seventy-five cents in Boston; and buy shoes (like as not, made of their own hides, and which have been carried twice around Cape Horn) at three or four dollars, and “chicken-skin” boots at fifteen dollars apiece. Things sell, on an average, at an advance of nearly three hundred per cent upon the Boston prices. This is partly owing to the heavy duties which the government, in their wisdom, with the intent, no doubt, of keeping the silver in the country, has laid upon imports. These duties, and the enormous expenses of so long a voyage, keep all merchants, but those of heavy capital, from engaging in the trade. Nearly two-thirds of all the articles imported into the country from round Cape Horn, for the last six years, have been by the single house of Bryant, Sturgis & Co., to whom our vessel belong.

SOURCE: Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Chapter XIII

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by | 30 September 2005 · 10:02 pm

Lilley Brothers in Pyongyang, 1930s

When my brothers [Frank and Jack Lilley] arrived in Pyongyang [in 1934 and 1935], they found it larger than Tsingtao, with several six- and eight-story buildings and many taxis and streetcars, but it was a gritty, gray city under the heel of Japanese occupation. In Tsingtao we were still somewhat unaware of Japan’s intentions in China, but Frank kept us clued in from his vantage point in Korea, which Japan had annexed in 1910 and which was closer to the center of Japanese military activity in northeast Asia. Frank sensed impending war from his reading of the local papers and his observations of the Japanese military in Korea, and he conveyed his thoughts to us in Tsingtao every week in his letters.

Indeed, at school he and the other students were often very close to demonstrations of Japanese military might. Across the river from PYFS [Pyeng Yang Foreign School], the Japanese had their major military airfield in Korea. Several times a week during classes, Japanese dive-bombers executed dry runs over the school, aiming for the school’s athletic fields as the target for their imaginary payloads. Then, at night, searchlights would light up the sky over Pyongyang for night runs, and students would run to black out their windows.

In downtown Pyongyang, Japan’s oppressive colonial policy was even more evident. When Frank and his friends would wander into town on a free day, they would see harassment of Koreans by the Japanese in the city’s markets. Since Japan’s annexation of Korea, many Korean farmers had chosen to protest the loss of their country by wearing white clothes, the traditional color of mourning in Korea. This practice of silent protest infuriated the Japanese authorities. Periodically, Japanese policemen on horses carrying buckets of red paint would make runs through the produce markets in Pyongyang. Armed with long paintbrushes that they wielded like lances, the Japanese policemen would smear paint on any Koreans wearing white clothes. [Does this paragraph ring true?–J.]

By the time Frank got to Pyongyang, the Japanese were turning their tactics of intimidation on the local community of Western missionaries. In January 1935, Japanese authorities called down two American missionaries, Samuel Moffet, the pioneer Western missionary in Korea, and Dr. Douglas McCune, head of Union Christian College. The Japanese demanded that the missionaries follow Japanese custom and force the Korean students at their schools to pay homage to the Japanese emperor at the city’s Shinto shrine. The missionaries refused. The Japanese threatened to close the Christian schools in retaliation.

SOURCE: China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage, and Diplomacy in Asia, by James Lilley with Jeffrey Lilley (Public Affairs, 2004), pp. 17-18

UPDATE: The bit about white clothes being a protest doesn’t sound right to Kotaji, either (see comments). He concludes, “Anyway, the point is that I’ve never heard of wearing white clothes as a form of protest, but it might just be that the Japanese found Koreans wearing their traditional clothing offensive.” I suspect this might illustrate a weakness of Lilley’s book: garbled memories not carefully cross-checked against external sources. Perhaps it even illustrates the frequently criticized CIA habit of trusting secret informants while mistrusting open sources, publicly available information.

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by | 27 September 2005 · 9:10 pm

Gushy New Pol Wins Jackpot, Catches Flak

Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party won so many Diet seats in the recent election that they had to exhaust their proportional representation lists in the Kanto area. A gushy, 26-year-old political novice was one of the lucky beneficiaries. And now he’s catching a lot of flak from his new colleagues for gawking publicly at all his new perks. Mainichi Shimbun has more.

According to Shukan Bunshun (9/29), the former brokerage worker’s entrance into politics was inspired by, in his own words, “a yearning like girls have to become idol singers.”

Bunshun says that Sugimura was surfing the Net at work one day a few months back and noticed that the LDP was advertising for candidates to run in upcoming elections.

“Oh wow. Oh boy. They’re looking for candidates. Oh wow, wow, wow. Jeepers,” Sugimura recalls his reaction for Shukan Bunshun.

Sugimura promptly whipped out an essay in about half an hour, faxed off an application form and received an endorsement certificate from the ruling party, which he proudly boasted would become a family heirloom for centuries.

When Sugimura was listed in 35th position on the LDP’s proportional representation ticket for the Minami Kanto block, nobody dreamed he’d actually get into office. Sugimura told reporters his campaign consisted of a single speech and he had no campaign office or posters. But the LDP won the election in a landslide, carrying 26 of those listed above him to single-seat victories, which raised Sugimura further and further up the LDP ticket and gave him the seat that sparked such excitement for both him and reporters.

But, all good things must come to an end. Though Sugimura can be comforted in the knowledge that, until the next election at least, he’s going to be showered with a whole truckload of creature comforts, LDP honchos are furious at his over-enthusiastic reaction to becoming a member of the government. LDP Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe has issued a strict order to Sugimura to “shut up.”

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