The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project ALBERT L. SELIGMANN Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: January 27, 2000 Copyright 2016 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in New York City Columbia College (School of International Affairs) U.S. Army, World War II U.S. Army, Japan occupation Institute of Pacific Relations Entered Foreign Service - 1955 State Department - Division of Research, Far East - Southeast Asia 1949-1955 China experts French policy Dutch Cora Dubois Indonesia State Department - DRF - Japan Desk 1955 Japanese military Communist Party Labor unions Political parties Island issues (Okinawa) Japan - Japanese Language Student 1955-1956 Kobe-Osaka, Japan - Political Officer 1956-1959 Political parties Social issues Koreans Academic community Tokyo, Japan - Political Officer 1959-1962 Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II Socialists 1 Asanuma incident Security Treaty Anti-American demonstrations Eisenhower visit canceled War debts Status of Forces Political parties Bangkok, Thailand - Political Officer 1962-1965 Area politics Sukarno Chinese State Department - INR - Northeast Asia - Chief 1965-1967 Japan Vietnam Okinawa Department of Defense - The Pentagon - Special Assistant to Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of International Security Affairs 1967-1969 Okinawa Kissinger NSSMs and NSDMs Textiles Nuclear issue Japan AMB systems Wood-McClintock study State Department - Policy Planning and Coordination 1969-1971 NCS coordination Vietnam Pacific Islands Secretary of State Rogers Japan Guam Doctrine Berlin, Germany - Political Advisor 1971-1975 Four Power agreement Staff responsibilities Allied Council Soviets Ostpolitik Allies’ reactions West Germany relationship 2 Berlin Wall Watergate GDR recognition Eastern European transit East-West contacts Political life Senior Seminar 1975-1976 Evaluation Polisario study project Tokyo, Japan - Political Counselor 1976-1980 Status of Forces Agreement cost sharing Self Defense Forces Military cooperation U.S. troops in Korea Lockheed Scandal Soviet MIG Ambassador Mansfield Okinawa Nixon’s China visit University of Miami - Diplomat in Residence 1980-1981 State Department - EAP - Japan Desk - Country Director 1981-1983 Defense issue Economic issues Politics U.S.-Japan Advisory Commission - Director 1983-1984 David Packard Studies and reports State Department - Board of Examiners 1984-1985 Evaluation and comments Retirement 1986-1990 National Conference of State Legislatures Asia Foundation (Tokyo) programs INTERVIEW Q: Today is January 27, 2000. This is an interview with Albert L. Seligmann. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and training, and I am 3 Charles Stuart Kennedy. You go by Al, is that right? SELIGMANN: That's right. Only my parents called me Albert. Q: All right. Well, let's start at the beginning. Tell me when and where you were born and a little about your family. SELIGMANN: I was born in New York City on May 26, 1925. At the time my family was living in an apartment house on the west side of Manhattan, West 83rd Street. While growing up, we lived in three west-side apartment houses before I went to college. My mother and father were both born in the United States - on my father’s mother’s side, at least, I am a third generation New Yorker. My earliest “first-hand” recollection of American history is a vague memory of my grandmother talking about the Civil War draft riots, which took place when she was a young girl. My grandfather and my grandmother’s parents on my father’s side, and as far as I know, my grandparents on my mothers side, whom I never knew personally, all came from somewhere around Strasbourg in Alsace when it was still part of France before the Franco-Prussian War. Q: Before 1870. SELIGMANN: Yes. Q: Well sticking to your father, had he gone to college or had he started a business or some such? SELIGMANN: He went to public schools in New York City. After graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School, still going strong today, he went on to City College and then obtained a law degree. He never practiced law, however, but ended up in the wholesale flour business founded by his father in the Washington Street market in lower Manhattan. Q: Did you have brothers and sisters? SELIGMANN: I had one older brother who still lives in New York. I always thought he was the brilliant one in the family. He wrote extremely well. I thought he was going to go far in literature or some such, but he got trapped into going into the family business, where but for the grace of World War II, I might too have been trapped. Q: He was the sacrificial lamb. SELIGMANN: Right. Q: How about your mother? What was her background? 4 SELIGMANN: She went to Hunter College. Like most women of her generation, at least those who got married - there were a number of maiden-aunt teachers in our family - she didn't have a professional career. She married my father while he was in the army stationed in Asheville, North Carolina during World War I. Q: So you basically grew up in New York City. Where did you go to school, to begin with, grammar school? SELIGMANN: I started off for one year in a coed kindergarten, PS 93, but shortly after that, boys went their way and girls went theirs and I moved over to PS 166. All this was about the beginning of the real depression - my brother, for example, was in a private school but was pulled out to join me at P.S.166. Fortunately, New York City had pretty good public schools in those days, although the physical plants of many were antiquated and austere by today’s standards. I read in the newspaper last week that the city was about to renovate or tear down all those magnificent, ancient public school buildings, and P.S.166, which to the best of my knowledge is still standing, is certainly in that category; it seemed a hundred years old when I went there, although it was probably more like fifty. Q: How did you find, do you recall the education you were getting then? SELIGMANN: It was excellent. In those days a woman could be a teacher or telephone operator or a secretary but not much else. So you had all these well-educated, mostly spinster, mostly Irish schoolteachers. I remember them all. I had a fine education in what have become to be called the “basics:” no social studies, but solid history and geography; no communication skills, but solid grounding in grammar and spelling. Also, there were possibilities for skipping grades or what they called “rapid advancement,” combining grades, so there was plenty of challenge. Moreover, the student body was very mixed: middle-class kids like myself and what we used to call the Columbus Avenue toughs, so we received something of an education in real life as well. Q: Did you get into fights and things? SELIGMANN: I remember one intimidating classmate sticking a knife in my back, and saying, "You’re going to help me on the quiz aren't you!" I do not recall what happened, but if he was sitting behind me, I doubt whether I covered my paper. Another time, one of his comrades picked a fight with me. I didn't know much about fighting, and still don't, but I let loose a wild punch and broke one of his teeth. Of course, that made me an embarrassed hero. Q: Never back someone into a corner. Well, then you went to grammar school. Do you recall much of the reading? Were you much of a reader at that time? SELIGMANN: I doubt whether anyone who took first grade with Anna Magee will ever forget her - and that is where my reading got started. For at least some weeks, an afternoon hour was devoted to reciting a self-chosen memorized selection from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses;” The prize awarded for the best 5 performance was, guess what, an autographed copy of “A Child’s Garden of Verses.” By the eighth grade I was on a Mark Twain jag, and ran through not just the assigned Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but his complete works, which we had at home, including my favorites: “A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court,” and “The Innocents Abroad.” In between, I went through the Sonny Boy series, the “Tom Swift and His Flying Machine,” etc. series, and was embarked on Shakespeare. My brother and I were also plied at birthdays and Christmas with a steady stream of books from uncles and aunts, especially one uncle, who unimaginatively, we thought, never gave us anything but books. Another set of books that comes to mind opened up some of the more exotic areas of the globe from a colonialist perspective. The G. A. Henty series had a revival about that time, but my father still had his “With Clive in India,” “Dash for Khartoum, “Under Wellington’s Command,” “With Wolfe in Canada,” and the rest from his boyhood days, and I read them with engaged gusto, if not great historical understanding. In retrospect this was a pretty happy period. I still keep up with some of my classmates. My very oldest friend, Larry Finkelstein, was in first grade with me, and we have never lost touch. He had a multifaceted career, most of in academe, and while not in the Foreign Service came very close to it. He was part of the U.S. delegation at San Francisco when they drafted the UN charter, and served on the Goodwill Mission for Indonesia before independence. Whenever we meet, we talk about Anna Magee and our first grade reading.