Browse Items (1041 total)

sc38-0368-web.jpg
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…

Tags:

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…

Tags:

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…

Tags:

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…

Tags:

Ho needed the help of the Americans to keep the French out of Indochina. Kenneth told Ho that he was the man who had drafted that policy, which really put him in tight with Ho. Many of the discussions Kenneth had with Ho were in the field of…

Tags:

Kenneth's driver took him to a large house and spoke with some women before Kenneth was told to come on up. So he went up and was escorted to a bedroom. This house, or mansion, was the dwelling of an American graves mission that was out there hunting…

Tags:

sc38-0398-web.jpg
In Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh arranged for Kenneth to stay longer than he initially intended, in order to give Kenneth a good opportunity to move around Hanoi and see how conditions were. He also assigned Kenneth a car with a driver.

Tags:

Kenneth walked across the street and into the old high commissioner's palace, which was just a few hundred yards from the hotel. He asked to see Ho Chi Minh, and the staff people asked him who he was, which he told them. No one asked him to prove it.…

Tags:

sc38-0366-web.jpg
The soldiers dumped Kenneth off in front of the Hotel Metropole. Kenneth hauled his little tin trunk in to find out who was in charge to ask about getting a room. Well, all the rooms were filled. The manager said that here was no place that he could…

Tags:

sc38-320.png
Kenneth asked a soldier if he could help Kenneth get into Hanoi, twenty miles away. The soldier answered that many soldiers would be going into town for rest and recreation, that is to eat and be merry with the girls. As a way to get to Hanoi,…

Tags:

The conversation with General Salan played out after a while. There was nothing to eat or drink on board. The plane arrived in Hanoi late in the afternoon. By this point, Kenneth was "just miserable," dehydrated, having had nothing to eat or drink…

Tags:

Kenneth was going to fly to Hanoi, so he went to the airport but found no one there. He waited for hours before General Salan showed up, well fed and smelling of wine. The plane took off and Kenneth tried to have a conversation with the General. He…

Tags:

One of the OSS men, the son of a US senator, was murdered at the airport in Hanoi. He was mistaken for a Frenchman because he was brought up in France. When Kenneth was in Hanoi the senator called him to ask him to try to find out more about the…

Tags:

There was no regular transportation between Saigon and Hanoi except under the authority of the French Admiral or the British General Gracie. At the time, there was only one plane in Saigon, a C-47, with bucket seats down the aisles. One of our OSS…

Tags:

The Weldebreton Prison had originally been the Prins Hendrik Fort, which was built to defend against the British. Once the need for it had passed they turned it into a prison.

Tags:

Kenneth had been working for several years, off and on, on a book about an American adventurer named Walter Gibson. Gibson had gotten crosswise with the Dutch, and they had thrown him into a prison called Weldebreton. He had been tried for various…

Tags:

After the British-Thai negotiations ended in Bangkok, Kenneth travelled over to Saigon and called on the High Commissioner, who was Admiral Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu. He had been sent out by DeGaulle. The Admiral gave Kenneth a nice lunch, with a…

Tags:

Margaret tells of her trip home from Thailand on the Landon's first furlough, in 1931. While Kenneth traveled around the world one way, so as to visit the Holy Land, she traveled around the world the other way, with Peggy and Bill. Peggy was four,…

Tags:

Margaret tells the story of "The Pakai Affair". It started when Margaret spent the year battling some health issues and couldn't fulfill her responsibilities at the school. Her illness became part of the plan of Bertha Blount, one of "the villain[s]…

Tags:

Margaret begins telling "what I call 'The Pakai Affair.'" To tell the story, she gives some background concerning mission history in Siam. Margaret tells of the history of the Presbyterian mission in Siam, the main figures, the mission stations and…

Tags:

Margaret talks about how the farmers cared for their buffalo. They would keep them under the house, perhaps. Groups of men would take their buffalo out to grazing areas to feed. No one milked cows, though they did have female buffalo. When the…

Tags:

Margaret says Bill's pet amusement at the moment was pushing Peggy's doll carriage around. One morning, Margaret found him washing Peggy's doll's hair. The two children looked almost like twins now because Bill weighed only one pound less than Peggy.…

Tags:

Margaret wrote to Evangeline, who was then living in Minneapolis with her husband Evan Welsh. Margaret speaks of her problems with her cooks. Ah Sim eventually took over. Kru Flora helped Margaret with the shopping. 

Tags:

Margaret remembers the friends of the Landons (Ralph Verhaug, who married Katherine, Joe Wright, Muriel, etc.) The friendship went cold for the most part, though Muriel remained very faithful in writing. Margaret recalls how hard it was to not…

Tags:

The Landons were trying to persuade the Thai Christians to tithe to support their new pastor, Charlie Hak, but the response was not good. Previous missionaries had created a lot of what the Landons called "rice Christians." They were not anxious to…

Tags:

Output Formats

atom, dc-rdf, dcmes-xml, json, omeka-xml, rss2