John S. Service
John S. Service | |
---|---|
Born | John Stewart Service August 3, 1909 |
Died | February 3, 1999 Oakland, California | (aged 89)
Occupation | Foreign Service |
Known for | China Hands |
Parents |
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John Stewart Service (August 3, 1909 – February 3, 1999) was an American diplomat who served in the Foreign Service in China prior to and during World War II. Considered one of the State Department's "China Hands," he was an important member of the Dixie Mission to Yan'an. Service correctly predicted that the Communists would defeat the Nationalists in a civil war. He and other diplomats were blamed for the "loss" of China in the domestic political turmoil after the 1949 Communist triumph in China. In June 1945, Service was arrested in the Amerasia Affair in 1945. The prosecution sought an indictment for espionage, but a federal grand jury unanimously declined to indict him.[1]
In 1950 U.S. Senator
Early life
John Service was born on August 3, 1909, in the city of
In the fall of 1927, Service entered Oberlin College.[4] He majored in both art history and economics and was captain of the school's cross-country and track and field teams. After graduation, he took and passed the Foreign Service Exam in 1933. In 1977, Oberlin awarded him an honorary degree.
Career in China
Service was first assigned to a clerkship position in the American
During the early war years, Service wrote increasingly-critical reports on the
Dixie Mission and Yan'an
Because the invasion of Japan was planned to launch from China, there was great interest in enlisting support from all Chinese factions. The US Army Observation Group, also known as the Dixie Mission, was formed to travel the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party in Yan'an and to establish contact with the Communists as a power in North China. Davies selected Service to represent the State Department, the first to visit the Communist headquarters.
Service arrived in Yan'an on July 22, 1944. There Service met and interviewed top leaders of the Communists like Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Service wrote a series of reports over the next four months that praised Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, and described its leaders as "progressive" and "democratic."[6] He wrote, "The Communists are in China to stay and China's destiny is not Chiang's but theirs."[7] He continued to write that the Nationalists under Chiang were corrupt and incompetent. Service and the other American political officers advocated a policy of relations with the Communists and the Nationalists. They believed a civil war was inevitable and that the Communists would triumph. If the US supported the CPC in a coalition with the nationalists, they felt that the US could steer the Communists out of the Soviet orbit to which the Communists might be pushed if they were antagonized.[citation needed]
The new US Ambassador to China, Patrick Hurley, also tried to bring unity between the Communists and the Nationalists. Hurley initially accepted a five-point plan that would have brought both into a power-sharing arrangement. Chiang rejected this plan and countered with a three-point plan that would leave the Communists with no real power in a government run by him and his supporters. Hurley came to support Chiang's view exclusively and rejected the recommendations of Service and the other Foreign Service officers to accept the Communists' growing power and to accommodate it. Hurley had Service and the rest of the political officers recalled from China and blamed them for US diplomatic failures in China.[8]
Later career
Service returned to Washington in 1945 and was soon arrested as a suspect in the
Disloyalty charges
FBI surveillance recorded that Service met with Amerasia editor Philip Jaffe on April 19, 1945 at the Statler Hotel: "Service, according to the microphone surveillance, apparently gave Jaffe a document which dealt with matters the Chinese had furnished to the United States government in confidence."[9] In China, Service had established a reputation for meeting with Communists, reporters, and anyone who might provide information for his duty. Former ambassador to China, Clarence Gauss testified later during the McCarthy era:
In Chungking, Mr. Service was a political officer of the Embassy.... His job was to get every bit of information that he possibly could... he would see the foreign press people. He saw the Chinese press people. He saw anybody in any of the embassies or legations that were over there that were supposed to know anything.... He went to the Kuomintang headquarters... he went to the Communist headquarters. He associated with everybody and anybody in Chungking that could give him information, and he pieced together this puzzle that we had constantly before us as to what was going on in China and he did a magnificent job at it.[10]
Service had numerous meetings with Jaffe. Adrian Fisher, who was the senior legal officer at the State Department, later commented, "It was like a scene out of Heaven's My Destination. Jack Service went into a bawdy house thinking it was still a girls' boarding school."[11]
Eventually, FBI investigators broke into the offices of Amerasia, and found hundreds of government documents, many labeled "secret." "top secret," or "confidential." Service was arrested as a suspect.[12] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote that he thought he had an "airtight case" against Service.[13] However, when the Justice Department submitted its evidence to a federal grand jury, they elected to indict Jaffe but, by a vote of 20-0, refused to indict Service.
Service was subject to loyalty and security hearings every year from 1946 to 1951, with the exception of 1948. In each hearing, he was cleared of disloyalty or other wrongdoing.[14] Charles Yost was one of the State Department officials and friends who testified on Service's behalf.
Five years after Amerasia, on March 14, Senator Joseph McCarthy accused Service of being a Communist sympathizer in the State Department. Service was cleared of the charges by the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees, also known as the Tydings Committee. However, a final review board found "reasonable doubt" as to Service's loyalty, and Secretary of State Dean Acheson ordered his dismissal. In the "Red Scare" turmoil of the early 1950s, John P. Davies, and other diplomats were blamed for the fall of China to the Communists and were forced out of the State Department.
Beginning in 1952, Service appealed his dismissal from the State Department. Service was eventually hired by Sarco International, a steam trap company. In 1955, Clement Wells, the owner who had hired Service, appointed him president of the company. Meanwhile, Service's case eventually came to the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor unanimously.[15] The Court held that Service's dismissal had violated State Department procedures because its Loyalty Security Board found no evidence of Service being disloyal or a security risk.[16]
In The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism, the authors Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh state, "Any lingering doubts about Service's true position are erased by the evidence of the FBI surveillance. If he had been a secret Communist, much less a spy, some better evidence would likely have surfaced in the transcripts."[17]
Jonathan Mirsky, in his review in the
Lynne Joiner, the biographer, responded to these allegations in a letter to the editor: "I conducted extensive interviews with Service during the last year of his life and he never mentioned this to me or to others who knew him well." Joiner added, "Service was never able to see the evidence being used against him during his lifetime — and so it continues a decade after his death."[19]
Return to State Department
Service returned to active duty in the State Department in 1957. Firstly, he was assigned to its transportation division. In 1959, he was given a security clearance after a new internal hearing. Undersecretary of State for Administration
Though Service continued to get excellent performance reviews in every position that he held, the State Department refused to promote him. He retired in 1962 and pursued a Master of Arts degree in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. After earning his degree, Service worked as library curator for the school's Center for Chinese Studies into the 1970s, and then served as editor for the center's publications.
In 1971, preceding President
Death
On February 3, 1999, John Stewart Service died in Oakland, California.[21]
Legacy
The two main themes of Service's reporting were the Nationalists were incompetent and likely to lose in a power struggle with the Communists, and the Communists seemed to be worthy successors with whom the US should try to establish relations. Prior to the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War in 1946, Service had predicted that the Communists would prevail because of their ability to stamp out corruption, gain popular support, and organize grassroots organizations.[22] The scenarios that Service envisioned in his reports from Dixie Mission about the Communists' future management of China were rose–colored or incomplete. Mao's implementation of his economic plans was harsh and undemocratic. Service hoped that the Communists would adopt free market and democratic reforms if they were pushed in the right direction with US support. Later, Service wrote that he believed an American relationship with the Communists might have prevented the Korean War and Vietnam War or lessened their gravity.[23]
In 1973, historian
The story of the Dixie Mission was the basis for a World War II novel, Two Sons of China (Bondfire Book, 2013) by Andrew Lam, in which Service is a prominent figure.[25]
References
- ISBN 0-8078-2245-0.
- ^ "U.S. Supreme Court: Service v. Dulles, 354 U.S. 363 (1957)"
- ISBN 9780199754892. Retrieved August 10, 2022.
- ^ a b Biography of Service by Oberlin College via John Service Papers. Archived 2006-09-12 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Senate Internal Security Committee, The Amerasia Papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China, January 26, 1970, pp. 577, 592, 1015
- ^ Ibid., pp. 406, 410, 577, 579, 589, 1014
- ^ Amerasia Papers, pp. 113, 112
- ^ Carter, Mission to Yenan, 131.
- ^ Report of the United States Senate Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees, 1950, appendix, p. 2051
- ^ Esherick, Joseph W., ed., Introduction, Lost Chance in China: The World War II Despatches of John S. Service, (New York: Random House, 1974), pp. xvi–xvii.
- ^ Kahn, The China Hands, p. 166.
- ^
Harvey Klehr and Ronald Radosh, The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 0-8078-2245-0, p. 131
- ^ FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to Peyton Ford, Assistant to the Attorney General, re Philip Jacob Jaffe, was., et al., Espionage, May 4, 1950[permanent dead link] (FBI file: Amerasia, Section 54)
- ^ Esherick, ed., Lost Chance in China, p., xix.
- ^ Carter, Mission to Yenan, 215.
- ^ SERVICE v. DULLES, 354 U.S. 363 (1957), SCOTUS Opinion of case.
- ^
Klehr, Harvey; Radosh, Ronald (1996). The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism. The University of North Carolina Press. p. 216. ISBN 0-8078-2245-0.
- ^ Mirsky, Jonathan (December 21, 2009). "In Whose Service?". Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Joiner, Lynne (January 10, 2010). "Service Was No Fellow Traveller". www.online.wsj.com. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 14, 2014.
- ^ Joiner, p.323
- New York Times. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
- ^ John Service, Report No. 1, 7/28/1944., to Commanding General Fwd. Ech., USAF – CBI, APO 879. "First Formal Impressions of Northern Shensi Communist Base". State Department, NARA, RG 59. Page One, Two, Three, and Four.
- ^ Service, John S. (1971). The Amerasia Papers: Some Problems in the History of US-China Relations. Center for Chinese Studies, University of California. pp. 191–192.
- ^ Barbara W. Tuchman, "Why Policy-Makers Do Not Listen," in Practicing History: Selected Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), pp. 287-93.
- ^ Lam, Andrew. Two Sons of China (978-1629213736) Colorado Springs, CO; Bondfire Books, 2014.
Sources
- Joiner, Lynne (2009). Honorable Survivor: Mao's China, McCarthy's America, and the Persecution of John S. Service. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-423-6.
- Service, John S. (1974). Lost Chance in China: The World War II: Despatches of John S. Service. Random House. ISBN 0-394-48436-3.
- Radosh, Ronald, and Klehr, Harvey (1996). The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2245-0.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - Service, John S. (1971). The Amerasia Papers: Some Problems in the History of US-China Relations. Center for Chinese Studies, University of California.
- ISBN 0-14-004301-2.
- ISBN 0-89526-472-2.
- ISBN 978-1-4000-8105-9.
- Evans, M. Stanton; Romerstein, Herbert (2013). Stalin's Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt's Government. Threshold Editions. ISBN 978-1439147702.
External links
- Interview with John S. Service, 1977 (The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project)
- FBI recording summary, May 31, 1950: Philip Jacob Jaffe, June 10, 1945-April 19, 1946[permanent dead link] (with cover memorandum, Ladd to Hoover, June 30, 1952)
- An obituary for John Service
- Photo of Service in his later years
- Oberlin College biography of John Service and spouse.
- A short biography of Service.
- Interview of John Service by CNN.
- Extended Interview hosted at George Washington University.
- Guide to the John S. Service papers at The Bancroft Library
- John Stewart Service and Charles Edward Rhetts Papers. Truman Presidential Museum and Library
- Oral History transcript, Caroline Service, 1976