John S. Service Oral History Interview, Chap XII-XIV

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

[397]

CHAPTER XII

XII FROM FIRING TO REINSTATEMENT
[Interview 11:October 24, 1977]

Some Addenda:Transcripts, Personal Relations, Effects on the Family, Finances

LEVENSON:Was it normal practice for transcripts of loyalty hearings to be given to the subject of the review?

J. SERVICE:It was at that time, but they changed all this almost immediately.There was a great furor because the State Department published the rationale of the Loyalty Review Board in their decision.

When the Republicans came in, and maybe before that, I think they tightened up everything and stopped giving you transcripts.I'd had the transcript of my hearings before the Loyalty Security Board in the State Department.I also got transcripts of the Loyalty Review Board.

When I had new hearings later on, in 1958, after I came back to the Department, there was no transcript.I think it was to prevent such things as giving them any publicity that they stopped doing it, although, it was a hindrance to the man who was being accused, making it more difficult for him.

LEVENSON:What other circulation if any did it have, to your knowledge?

J. SERVICE:It didn't have any that I know of, but as I mentioned last time, an employee of the Loyalty Review Board was leaking stuff to McCarthy, so that we don't know what further circulation it may have had through means like that.

LEVENSON:Were you personally ostracized at this time?

J. SERVICE: After the firing there were a certain number of people in the State Department, because of their positions, who felt that they had to discontinue contact.But, they were very few.

[398]

J. SERVICE:I wasn't pursuing anybody anyway.I had made it a point in New York, for instance, not to look people up.I thought that if they wanted to see me they would look me up.

Then there were some people that I didn't want to see.Jaffe and people that had been associated with Amerasia, some of them made tentative gestures and I indicated, I thought pretty clearly, that I didn't want to maintain any of that relationship.

People like Brooks Atkinson said to me afterward, "Why didn't you look me up?" [chuckling] Well, I thought that it was really up to them to take the initiative, you know.

LEVENSON:Then, you found for me this Saturday Evening Post article by Drew Pearson, "Confessions of an S.O.B.," 1956.How much validity do you think there was in his comment?

"Despite all my precautions I feel that I was responsible for a serious injustice being done to two government servants.One was John Service, a State Department Foreign Service officer, who was fired on the charge of being a poor security risk because he had talked to newspapermen and others. One of those newspaper men, I suspect, was I, for on at least one occasion I went to Service's apartment and talked with him about Patrick J. Hurley with whom he had served. . . Later, I learned that microphones had been planted in Service's apartment."

J. SERVICE:I talked to Pearson a good many times.As I recall that particular incident, at least what I think was that incident, he called me and came around and picked me up.Then we went riding in his car, which I assumed was caution on his part.But, it's true that if our phones were tapped, why, it was known that he called me.

But, he was simply asking about the story that Hurley and [General Robert B.] McClure had almost come to blows at some sort of a gathering in Chungking.He wanted to find out if a story which, he'd already heard had any basis in it or not.

LEVENSON:Had it?

J. SERVICE:Yes.

LEVENSON: How did you maintain your spirits through this long ordeal?I don't know how you date it, whether you call it a twelve year ordeal, from '45 to '57, or shorter than that.But the strain
of it must have been overwhelming at times .

[399]

J. SERVICE:Well, I don't think it was a strain for most of that period. The tough period was these eighteen months or so, from March, 1950, till after I was established in New York. You might call
it two years, I suppose.

After we were established in New York I had a job.Then the matter just had to rock along through the courts.We were sort of used to living with it, and it wasn't very much on our minds.

I don't know.I think probably the fact that I was steadily engaged, busy, most of the time--There were long periods when there wasn't anything to do, but as I said I managed to try to keep myself occupied one way or another.

It was much more difficult in many ways for Caroline than it was for me.We were separated, in '45 [Japan] and again in 1950. She went on to India and I went to Washington, so that she was isolated and I wasn't very good then or ever at writing letters.So that certainly was difficult for her.

But even when she came back to Washington she very sensibly, I think, kept out of the day to day legal work that we were doing.I think she just decided to leave the details to us, which was a good thing because she and Ed [Rhetts] rubbed on each other a little bit.

Ed's methods of work are more like mine, dilatory but then working very hard to a deadline, doing very little work in the morning but getting progressively more efficient or effective--or at least you think you are--as the day goes on, so that we did a lot of work at night and times like that.

Caroline likes definite and specific answers.She wants to know when is something going to happen, how long it s going to take, what is going to be the likely result, which of course was the sort of answer no one could give.We had no way of knowing when Humelsine was going to act, or what was going to be the next move.So, as I say, it was probably tougher on her than on me.

It was hard to know how much the children were affected.I don't know whether Caroline mentioned or, not, but the day after the firing we told them they didn't have to go to school if they wanted to stay home.But they went to school and apparently had no problems.At least they said no problems.

Ginny finished second in her class and got an award.We were in northwest Washington, with a lot of other government people.I think many of them were sympathetic.A lot of them were fairly sophisticated by this time on this sort of thing.

[400]

J. SERVICE: After we got to New York, as I say, things were much less tense.We actually lived a fairly normal life.

LEVENSON:What about your mother?

J. SERVICE:She lost some friendships.Some China people, particularly missionaries, tended to stick to the Kuomintang and consider me to be of the devil.With those friends, Mother just broke offrelations.But she had a good many staunch people that stuck by her.

I went out to see her in October 1950, just after the hearings were all over.My brother, Dick, was in Moscow, and his wife was living in Washington.He got a vacation from Moscow and came out to Germany, I think, and Helen went over and spent some time in Germany, a couple of weeks or something.

Helen let me use her car, and I drove across the continent, saw my mother, and we had a very fine visit for a few days in Claremont.

Then I got word that Helen unexpectedly had returned to Washington which meant that she wanted her car.So I drove from Claremont, California to Washington D.C. in three days.

LEVENSON:Before freeways.

J. SERVICE:[laughter]Here's a card