At the State Department, Kenneth's official title was International Relations Officer, Southeast Asian Affairs. He worked chiefly with Thailand to begin with. Then for a time he also handled Indonesia. The State brought someone in to be the Chief and…
Upon switching full time to American University, Kenneth retired from government service at the end of 1965. Dean Rusk hosted the reception for him, and awarded Kenneth a medal for his years of service.
Kenneth tells of General Brute Krulak. General Krulak thought Kenneth went about fighing insurgency incorrectly, finding Marines being slaughtered needlessly. Kenneth also talks about General Krulak's professional desire to be head of the Marine…
Kenneth describes the structure of the Foreign Service Institute. He explains how he might be a dean of one program, yet overall how he was an associate dean.
Kenneth had been ignoring Dean Rusk's attempts to meet with him, but Rusk eventually decided to just appoint Kenneth to the Foreign Service Institute. Kenneth was already making a larger salary than the Director, whom he was to be Special Assistant…
Kenneth ran the area studies program from 1963 through 1965. He completely reorganized the program, as many found it to be quite insufficient and superficial. Kenneth modeled it along the lines of serious area studies programs he found in various…
Brad dropped dead while shopping at a store, at the age of eighty four. His funeral was held in Meadville, with no Presbyterians invited, but many of the old girls from his Bible class came. Kenneth and Margaret's attire at the funeral drew a lot of…
The Landons had returned to Chicago and Kenneth was out one night, speaking at a church. He was on his way back when he ran onto a middle-aged lady and began talking with her. The two were well into the conversation when they suddenly realized that…
When World War II broke out, Kenneth had photographs of both sides of the peninsula all the way up to Burma, and also on the islands in the Gulf of Siam [and the Andaman Sea on the west side]. He had maps. And he had a ten-year file of Siamese…
Kenneth finished his PhD at Chicago, tried to become a pastor, then to introduce the teaching of Eastern religions and Philosophy in a number of universities, but never succeeded in any of his attempts. One day he decided to go around Illinois, Ohio,…
In Washington Kenneth was given a nice big office in the Triangle Building. Kenneth was the first substantive employee of the Office of the Coordinator of Information, he says, which later became the OSS, and then the CIA. "I am regarded as one of…
Kenneth went to work researching the questions that President Roosevelt and Col. Donovan wanted answered, and when he had his report ready, he accompanied Donovan to the President's office. Donovan had told Kenneth how he had come to seek Kenneth's…
Kenneth only called on President Roosevelt once, he says, and he didn't say anything. Donovan did all the talking, presenting Kenneth's report. This was at the end of the three weeks. After this, Kenneth said to Donovan that his three weeks were up,…
After calling on the President, Kenneth said to Donovan that his three weeks were up, and he would be leaving. Donovan still needed him, so he called President Dennis of Earlham College, and Dennis gave Kenneth a leave of absence through that first…
Kenneth would be expected back at Earlham Collge in January for the spring semester, but then Pearl Harbor happened, and all bets were off. During that period, there was quite an interest in Kenneth among various government agencies, which tried to…
Kenneth's most amusing experience while working at the Board of Economic Warfare happened one day when Max Ways said to him that the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted someone who had expertise on elephants to come over and instruct them on the animals. He…
Kenneth explains what the OCI or Office of the Coordinator of Information was. William Donovan was convinced that war was coming, and that the United States would get into it, and that we lacked intelligence information. We didn't know much about the…
Donovan brought a man named James Phinney Baxter down from Harvard to run the OCI, and he brought a number of men down from Harvard and Yale, and "the eastern seaboard boys began to take over." Both Yale and Harvard had Far Eastern departments.…
What Donovan wanted from Kenneth was reports on the situation in Southeast Asia as he knew it; the French in Indochina and their relations with the Thai, for instance. Another report had to do with the British in Burma, and where Malaysia and…
At the first meeting of the Far Eastern section of the OCI, Kenneth's new chief bawled him out for contacting people all over the city that he thought might be of help to him. Kenneth never worried about protocol, so he never paid attention to the…
Kenneth speaks of the Office of War Information that Donovan also set up and for which he made Thai language broadcasts. The original idea for the broadcasts came from the Thai Legation, as early as October, 1941, before the war began. Immediately…
In conjunction with the OWI broadcasts, there developed a need to send messages to San Francisco regarding the broadcasts, and the OWI people wanted some sort of simple code that could be typed out for this purpose. Kenneth thought up the idea of…
Kenneth says the US would not have declared war on Japan if the Japanese had not attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. The US did not oppose the Japanese even when they were stripping China and murdering people by the millions. There are many…
Kenneth went to a party and played the piano. Life magazine, Kenneth thinks it was, had an article on how to play the piano in four or five lessons. He sat down with that, figured it out, and did it. All he had to know was the melody, and it showed…