Kenneth remembers king Ananda and his family coming back from Switzerland while Kenneth was still in Bangkok. He read a speech and it was obvious that he did not speak Thai as well as Kenneth did. The royal family subsequently held a dinner and…
Kenneth tells of Seni Pramoj. Pramoj greatly disliked Kenneth, yet when he filed a complaint with the State Department, Kenneth was the one able to respond to him. Later, Pamoj became Prime Minister of Thailand.
The climax of the negotiations was December 22, when the British gave in. Then the celebrations began. The Thai especially wanted to honor General Timmerman, who was the American negotiator in Colombo. They invited him to come to Bangkok, and the…
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…
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.
Ah Peh was clearing out the pineapples behind the house, under Margaret's direction. There were hundreds of them, making a haven for cobras and vipers. As Ah he worked, a viper struck him in the lower leg, and he became very sick. Kenneth rushed him…
The sequel was just as hilarious. Mae was ill, and people from church came to call with the visiting committee. There were three women. Mae was up and thanked the women for coming. But when they came in the door, they stopped cold and began sniffing.…
Kenneth tells of the security at airbases which were prepped to bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail. He says that their security was extremely lax, and he thought that it would be quite easy for the Vietnamese to come in and sabotage the planes.
Kenneth recounts the rest of his 1960 tour through Southeast Asia. He hears of the government in Laos being overthrown the night after he left. After a brief tour he travelled back to Bangkok and briefed the Prime Minister on what he saw.
Kenneth's book based on his Haskell lectures, Southeast Asia: Crossroad of Religions, was published not only by Chicago University Press but also by Oxford University Press, as his two previous books had been.
Kenneth tells of the firebug problem which Sarit deals with. People were lighting fires in order to collect the insurance on the properties and Sarit needed to deal with the problem. Televised, he shot a firebug which had been caught, teaching a…
When Harry Truman became President, the Potsdam conference changed the war theater for MacArthur. This brought Lord Louis Mountbatten's command into Thailand and the Indochinese states south of the 16th parallel, with Chiang Kai Shek north of that.…
Kenneth explains how the OCB worked, emphasizing the two different sides--that of policy and that of operations. He goes on to indicate that he was on the operations side and goes into how exactly that played out with his time on the OCB.
At the Thai celebration dinner, Dr. Thongpleo delivered an eloquent speech of gratitude to the Americans. He was one of Thailand’s "senators," and was quite an orator. He expressed elaborate appreciation to Kenneth for all he had done, and to the…
The overall purpose of Kenneth's trip was initially to be a political adviser on the negotiations between the English and the Thai. The British had made twenty-one demands on the Thai, which would have made Thailand virtually a British colony. the…
Kenneth elaborates on the purpose and function of the Operations Coordinating Board (OCB). He explains that it was set up under presidential directive, and how exactly it came to exist from the Psychological Strategy Board.
While traveling, Kenneth came upon a seller of peacock feather hats. The seller required the buyer to provide the pheasants which might be used in the making of the hat. Kenneth, however, found a premade hat in the house, tried it on and, finding…
Kip remembers an article in the newspaper about the Landons working to put in a special new kind of grass on their terraces. When the Landons moved to 4711 Fulton Street in late 1944, there was no grass, no shrubbery, and no trees. The Landons…
Kenneth tells of the latter part of the Country Team Seminar. He, as part of running the seminar, has some housekeeping to do with dealing with staff and scheduling lecturers. General Maxwell Taylor, special assistant to the President, was to be…
Kenneth goes into detail on the last day before the seminar teams would give their presentations. They had all worked quite hard, and were putting in many hour to make their presentations completely professional in quality. This was also the first…
In 1947 Kenneth was invited to give the Haskell lectures at the University of Chicago. It was one of the six most prestigious lectures in religion and philosophy in all of the US. A week before the lectures he loaded his material and came to Chicago…
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…
Kenneth's mother, Mae, was anemic and was told by her doctor that she should have a stout or dark beer that would help her overcome her anemia. This was standard procedure in those days. The father, Brad, was preaching against alcohol consumption and…
Kenneth gives a detailed description of the golf game he arranged for the Prime Minister and the President of the United States. Originally planned as simply a lunch, Kenneth decided that, because they were both interested in golf, he would set up a…