In the spring of 1942, Kenneth delivered the Taft lectures, three lectures, at the University of Cincinnati. In conjunction with that, he worked on reading in Chinese with a view to writing a book on Chinese philosophy.
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 left the OCI for the BEW in part because the Harvard folks couldn't get along with him about the Chinese he spoke. Margaret points out that Kenneth spoke the Swatow dialect, Taichu, that was commonly spoken among the diaspora of Chinese in…
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…
Margaret returns to the name of Baxter, looking up the Baxters in a biographical dictionary. James Phinney Baxter III. She reads about his work as president and lecturer at several colleges. When the OCI became the OSS, he became Deputy Director of…
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…
Kip notes from Kenneth's letters that he was being paid $20 a day. He started out at $15 a day, then moved up to $20. Kenneth was negotiating for more. Ernest Griffith was a man of wealth, a Quaker business type who was determined to get everything…
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…
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.…
Margaret explains how, in World War I, President Wilson discovered that the US had no such thing as an intelligence service, and so began to address this issue, but the little that he did at that time had probably disappeared when WWII started. The…
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…
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 acquired a royal barge from Thailand. It was dropped on his desk by a young man who had joined the Board of Economic Warfare and whose parents had died. The picture was part of his inheritance. The Landons believe it is an original painting…
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…
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 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,…
During that initial three weeks, Kenneth had two offices, one in the Triangle Building, and one in the Library of Congress, a research office, with full facilities and the availability of the stacks. That was when he discovered all of the Thai…
Kenneth and Margaret tell about Kenneth's earliest exchanges with the government about Southeast Asia. They talked about when the Japanese could attack Thailand, why the Japanese were in Indochina and how far, if they attack Thailand, they could…
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…
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 and his family were in Gull Lake vacationing when the call from Washington came in. The person was inquiring about Kenneth's knowledge of Souteast Asia and the Japanese intentions for Thailand. The caller ended by promising to send Kenneth a…
Kenneth tells of the background to his appointment at the State Department. There had been a number of inquiries before the call from Washington. Kenneth wasn't interested in most of them. He tells how Mortimer Graves, secretary of the Council of…
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,…
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…
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…