Browse Items (1041 total)

While Kenneth was in Hanoi, he often asked Ho about Bao Dai, who had been the emperor. Bao Dai had abdicated in favor of Ho Chi Minh. Kenneth told him he wanted to see Bao Dai, so he arranged for Kenneth to meet Bao Dai, who was an educated man, and…

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In that 1946 period in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh expressed great concern about the Chinese. He badly wanted them out of the country, just as he did the French. He couldn't get rid of them. They would manufacture and print phony Vietnamese currency up in…

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The political adviser to General Lo Han, who was the warlord of southern China, was a man named Yuan Tser Quien. Kenneth talked to him for the most part, to find out what the Chinese really expected. Kenneth learned that a French political adviser to…

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Through the entire trip, Kenneth sent a steady stream of telegrams home to the State Department. Some of those messages appeared in the Pentagon Papers. Also, every day at the end of the day, Kenneth wrote a letter to Abbot Low Moffat in the…

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One night in Hanoi, Kenneth and his driver were going along at night in the little "bathtub" car when the driver lost control of the car at a crossroads. They drove head on into one of those sandbag gun embankments. There was yelling and screaming…

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One of the subjects Kenneth talked to Ho about was the many people he saw dying of smallpox. He saw people with pox all over them. People were emaciated. Ho told him that the starvation in Vietnam was terrible. He said that during the war the dykes…

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From Saigon Kenneth traveled to Bangkok and Calcutta to catch a military plane that took him to the Philippines. On the plane from the Philippines there were only two passengers. There was no place to sit, so they simply rolled up in blankets and…

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We begin on Kenneth's 1950 trip to Southeast Asia. The new King, King Phumipol, was going to get married and be crowned, and he was going to cremate his brother, King Ananda, before the marriage and coronation. Kenneth suggested that the US send the…

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Kenneth represented the State Department at the ceremonies. They were very formal, white tie, tails, and top hat. Every morning, during the ceremonies—which went on for several days, first the cremation, then the wedding, which Kenneth didn't attend,…

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Kenneth went over to Saigon with a picture of Harry Truman autographed by the President to former Emperor Bao Dai, who had fled from Hanoi up to Hong Kong, and then later had come down to head up the government of South Vietnam with the French…

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Bao Dai sent an official driver to pick Kenneth up in a big limousine. They went up into the mountain area where Bao Dai was staying, with the road along the edge of a cliff, and it was breathtaking. There were no guard rails or anything! The driver…

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Kenneth took a plane to Hanoi to be the guest of Governor Tri. He was sent in lieu of a man named Phillip Jessup who was supposed to have a special mission on behalf of President Truman to Hanoi, to be Tri's guest and to survey the situation in the…

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Then Governor Tri gave a dinner in Kenneth's honor. The menu was in French, beautifully embossed. The menu didn't mean anything to Kenneth, and Governor Tri laughed at him. There were twenty-some courses, and after each one, Tri would ask Kenneth…

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Kenneth and Governor Tri set out in a convoy of cars with motorcycle escorts and machine guns, because they were going way out into the countryside. Kenneth was astounded as they drove along the road to discover that all of the telephone poles had…

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Kenneth traveled to Saigon, and then to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, where he had a three-day visit with King Sihanouk, who had not yet abdicated his throne in favor of becoming a politician. Sihanouk knew that Kenneth didn't speak French too well, so he…

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Kenneth took off in a plane to meet with the Lao cabinet in Vientiane, Laos. The pilot was nervous about the airport in Laos, which had a very short runway. They made the landing successfully, but it was scary. Kenneth was the first American diplomat…

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The King was the son of his predecessor, whom Kenneth had previously known, if slightly. The two men spoke in Thai, using the common language. The King gave a dinner, and his wife came. He had told Kenneth that she never came to dinners for foreign…

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While Kenneth was in Djakarta he became lonesome, so he called home and heard the phone ring, and then Margaret picked up and said hello. He said hello, and she said, "Kenneth! Where are you?" He said, "Djakarta." And she said, "Oh, where in Kansas…

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Kenneth flew to Kuala Lumpur, and from there to Djakarta. Kenneth was the desk officer for all these areas of Southeast Asia, so here was Ken Landon from the Department of State visiting the new nation of Indonesia. The rate of exchange on the black…

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Merle Cochran gave Kenneth a dinner in which the meat, which was pork chops, was so tough that he could not cut it. Cochran sat there and laughed as Kenneth toiled away on the pork chops. The only way he could get anything off a pork chop was to pick…

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Kenneth was meeting with top government officials in Indonesia, among whom was a man named Sharir, whom Kenneth had first known in Washington. He was one of the revolutionaries and had come as a special emissary in the late 1940's to Washington.…

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Kenneth arranged with Cochran to have a tour of the islands. Cochran had a Marine colonel with a two-engine Beechcraft, and a co-pilot, six feet four tall or more, and Kenneth toured Java. They flew over to a volcano, the highest mountain on the…

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Kenneth flew over to Bali There was an artist on the beach in Bali, with a magnificent looking "dancing woman," who was one of the more famous dancers. All the women were bare from the waist up. The woman would come around, and she had great big…

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Merle Cochran was convinced that the administration that had been set up in Indonesia would be reelected. Kenneth was convinced that there would be a change. The two men argued about it. When Kenneth boarded the plane the next day, Merle Cochran's…

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Kenneth and his companions spent the night where they had an emergency landing. In the night, the Colonel became sick with dysentery. In the morning he looked pale and said that they couldn't go that day because he was too sick to fly. Kenneth gave…

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