John S. Service Oral History Interview, Chap III-IV

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview donated to the Harry S. Truman Library. The reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word, although some editing was done.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the Regents of the University of California and John S. Service, dated March 7, 1980.

No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with John S. Service requires that he be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to grant or deny permission.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

John S. Service, "State Department Duty in China, The McCarthy Era, and After, 1933-1977," an oral history conducted 1977-1978 by Rosemary Levenson, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1981.

Opened March, 1980
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

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CHAPTER III

III APPRENTICESHIP OF A FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICER, 1933-1942

Clerkship in Yunnanfu

J. SERVICE: Almost as soon as I got to Shanghai I went around to call on the American consul-general, Cunningham, a very elderly gentleman who had been in Shanghai a long time, and applied for a clerkship .

It wasn't too long--I think it was only about six weeks--when Cunningham asked me to come and see him and said, "Would you like a job as clerk at Yunnanfu?" which in those days was considered the end of everything. I mean to hell-and-gone , a remote and isolated post in South West China. He said, "You don't have to say today." I rushed off and sent a telegram to Caroline.

I didn’t get an answer right away, but I went back to Cunningham I think the next day and said yes, I'd take the job. Then, Caroline's cablegram came in saying, "No, don't go!" But, the die was cast. I had committed myself, so I went to Yunnanfu which is now known as Kunming. In fact, to the Chinese even in those days it was known as Kunming. It was only the foreigners who still called it Yunnanfu because that is what it had been
before 1912. The old Chinese name was Yunnanfu.

LEVENSON: So, that was your first post. What did it pay?

J. SERVICE: The pay was $1800, U.S. dollars, for that day and age, a very fine job. But as soon as Roosevelt came in the Economy Act cut all federal salaries 15 percent across the board. That still didn't bother me. I had plenty to live on. But then they started devaluing the dollar. This meant that our paycheck went down as the U.S. dollar went down.

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J. SERVICE: It was particularly bad in Yunnan because it was in the French sphere of influence and a lot of prices were based on the French Indochinese piaster, which was a gold-based currency. So, we had a very substantial cut in pay.

Eventually the government got around to compensating us, not for the depreciation of the U.S. dollar, but for the "appreciation of foreign exchange." So, it meant I had eventually quite a nice lump sum payment which I promptly proceeded to deposit in the bank, the American Oriental Bank in Shanghai.

Duties

LEVENSON: What were your duties? First off, to whom did you report?

J. SERVICE: When I first got there there were two officers -- two vice consuls actually. The senior vice consul who was in charge was a man named [Charles] Reed. Then, there was John Davies.

Everybody in the Foreign Service was usually sent first to a Mexican or a Canadian border post for a short trial period, usually three months or so. Then, you came to Washington for Foreign Service School which was another three months, sort of indoctrination, orientation, whatever you want to call it. Then you were sent out to the field. So this was John Davies' first field post really. He'd been in Windsor, Ontario, and then Foreign Service School.

Very soon after I got there they decided that with two men there--in other words the chief vice consul and me--there was no need for John Davies. They were cutting down every- where. John then was transferred up to Peking as a language student. You asked who I reported to. Well, there was only one person to report to, and that was the vice consul.

The office, of course, reported to the legation--it hadn’t been raised to embassy status. We always said Peking, but actually the capital of the country was Nanking. In 1928, the Nationalist Kuomintang government made Nanking the capital.

This was very unpopular with the foreigners because, well, they loved Peking and they had their establishments in Peking. They had no lovely buildings in Nanking. So, the ambassador kept most of his office--most of the chancery was in Peking. He would make occasional visits to Nanking to conduct business.

[100]

J. SERVICE: So, we would always say that we reported to the legation in Peking. We generally reported by mail which might take two or three weeks, because the only way to get to Yunnan was a long trip through Hongkong, then down to Haiphong, then by train, the French railway, from Haiphong--which in those days was a three-day trip because they didn’t run at night--up to Yunnan. You could come directly overland but it would have taken you weeks and weeks to make the trip. So the only practical way was this two-week trip around.

LEVENSON: When you say direct--

J. SERVICE: Well, you’d go up the Yangtze to Chungking and then overland to Kunming, but it would take you about four weeks to do it.

LEVENSON: What were your duties there?

J. SERVICE: I did everything. Files, of course. I maintained the files. I did all the filing. I did all the typing and I was not a trained typist. This was to create a lot of grief because Reed was terribly worried about promotions and much concerned about almost everything, social position, everything else.

But he couldn’t stand any erasures or any mistakes on a page. I was always having to retype things so they would go in looking perfect. I myself don't mind little things like that. [laughter]

He had me do trade letters, commercial work. But, there really weren’t any commercial opportunities in Kunming. There couldn't be because the French were not about to let any Americans do business--or anyone else except themselves, any other foreigners except themselves--do business in Yunnan. All goods had to come through French Indochina.

We would get trade inquiries--what is the market for beer, for instance, in your consular district? The only real letter to send them back was just, "There isn’t any." But not my boss! He insisted that we write them a full dress discussion of the market and procedures for importing and the desirability of getting a local agent, the desirability and necessity of getting a forwarding agent in Haiphong, and all the rest of this. Every trade letter had to be a certain number of pages.

I had gotten eventually to do most of the routine consular work, registration of American citizens, issuance of passports, registration of births, marriages, this sort of thing.

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J. SERVICE: After a year I was commissioned as a vice consul with no increase in pay.

LEVENSON: Your first title was what?

J. SERVICE: Just clerk, foreign service clerk. But then they commissioned me a vice consul, which meant that I could perform services like passports since I had signing authority. I could do notarials.

"Bureaucrats are Made, not Born"

J. SERVICE: My chief was not a China service man. We had a Chinese interpreter in the office who was supposed to call attention to newsworthy things in the [Chinese] newspapers and translate them if necessary.

But, my vice consul didn't think he was doing a very good job. So he'd make poor Mr. Hwang sit down beside him, and he would point at the paper, [sternly] "Now, what is this? What’s this?" You know, point at the headlines here and there and make this poor Chinese translate.

Actually, most of his political reporting was from talking to the British consul general who was an old China hand and whose Chinese was excellent. He was eccentric like a lot of British people in remote places. Homosexual and a Mohammedan to boot. He’d served in places like Kashgar.

But he was not alone in being unique or peculiar. In the French consulate, one of their members was a Buddhist.

But, anyway, Charles Reed talked mainly to the British consul general. He'd go to the club and hear the gossip at the club. The commissioner of customs and the commissioner of posts had Chinese coll