CEYLON-SRI LANKA COUNTRY READER TABLE of CONTENTS Max Waldo Bishop 1944-1945 Consul, Colombo Howard Imbrey 1951-1952 Labor Repor
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CEYLON-SRI LANKA COUNTRY READER TABLE OF CONTENTS Max Waldo Bishop 1944-1945 Consul, Colombo Howard Imbrey 1951-1952 Labor Reporting Officer, Colombo Robert Anderson 1956-1959 Near Eastern Affairs, Ceylon Desk, Washington DC Robert A. Lincoln 1958-1961 Public Affairs Officer, USIS, Colombo C. William Kontos 1959-1961 Deputy Director, USAID, Colombo James G. Lowenstein 1959-1961 Political Officer, Colombo Harold G. Josif 1959-1962 Political Officer, Colombo Walter A. Lundy 1961-1963 Consular/Political Officer, Colombo Harry I. Odell 1961-1964 Economic Officer, Colombo John L. DeOrnellas 1962-1965 Political Officer, Colombo George G. B. Griffin 1962-1965 Second Secretary and Vice Consul, Colombo LaRue R. Lutkins 1962-1965 Deputy Chief of Mission, Colombo Cecil B. Lyon 1964-1967 Ambassador, Ceylon Dorothy A. Eardley 1965-1968 Secretary to the Ambassador, Colombo Franklin J. Crawford 1967-1968 Political/Economic Officer, Colombo George G. B. Griffin 1967-1969 Near East/South Asia Bureau, Southeast Asian Affairs, Ceylon and Maldives Desk Officer, Washington DC Lange Schermerhorn 1967-1969 Rotation Officer, Colombo Victor Skiles 1967-1969 USAID Representative, Colombo Betty Crites Dillon 1967-1971 Peace Corps Director, Colombo Victor L. Stier 1968-1971 Public Affairs Officer, USIS, Colombo Terrell E. Arnold 1969-1970 Deputy Chief of Mission, Colombo Albert A. Thibault, Jr. 1972-1975 Political/Labor Officer, Colombo Christopher Van Hollen 1972-1976 Ambassador, Sri Lanka Edward Brynn 1973-1975 Economic Officer, Colombo William P. Kiehl 1975-1977 Press Attaché, USIS, Colombo Albert A. Thibault, Jr. 1975-1978 India, Sri Lanka and Maldives Desk Officer, Washington DC Frank D. Correl 1976 Special Assistant, USAID, Sri Lanka John H. Reed 1976-1977 Ambassador, Sri Lanka John R. Eriksson 1977-1979 Deputy Mission Director, USAID, Colombo Herbert Levin 1977-1979 Deputy Chief of Mission, Colombo William Howard Wriggins 1977-1979 Ambassador, Sri Lanka James R. Meenan 1978-1983 Project Officer – Private Sector Development, USAID, Colombo Mary Jo Furgal 1979-1980 Cultural Affairs Officer Trainee, USIS, Colombo Harry A. Cahill 1979-1981 Deputy Chief of Mission, Colombo Herbert G. Hagerty 1981-1984 Deputy Chief of Mission, Colombo Howard L. Steele 1982-1984 Agricultural Research Training Institute, USAID, Colombo Victor L. Tomseth 1982-1984 Near Eastern Affairs/South Asia, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka Affairs, Washington DC John H. Reed 1982-1985 Ambassador, Sri Lanka Nancy E. Johnson 1983-1985 Political/Labor Officer, Colombo Victor L. Tomseth 1984-1986 Deputy Chief of Mission, Colombo Frank D. Correl 1984-1986 Mission Director, USAID, Colombo R. Grant Smith 1985-1988 Near East and South Asia Bureau, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka Desk, Country Director, Washington DC James W. S. Spain 1985-1989 Ambassador, Sri Lanka Edward Marks 1986-1989 Deputy Chief of Mission, Colombo Ernestine S. Heck 1986-1990 Political Counselor, Colombo Gilbert H. Sheinbaum 1986-1991 Director, Colombo Plan, Colombo Louise Taylor 1988-1990 South Asia Desk Officer, USIA, Washington DC Teresita C. Schaffer 1989-1992 Deputy assistant Secretary, NEA – South Asia, Washington, DC Mary Jo Furgal 1990-1993 Cultural Affairs Officer, USIS, Colombo Teresita C. Schaffer 1992-1995 Ambassador, Sri Lanka E. Ashley Wills 2000-2003 Ambassador, Sri Lanka MAX WALDO BISHOP Consul Colombo (1944-1945) Ambassador Max Waldo Bishop was born in Arkansas in 1908. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1932. He served in the United States Army Reserve until entering the Foreign Service in 1935. Ambassador Bishop’s overseas career included positions in Saudi Arabia, Japan, Thailand and Ceylon. Ambassador Bishop was interviewed in February 1993 by Thomas F. Conlon. BISHOP: In 1944 I was assigned as Consul in Colombo, Ceylon. I didn't do much consular work. My principal duties involved advising our military leaders in Southeast Asia Command on the various problems which came up, which have been well described in published histories. I was also assigned as a secretary of the Mission in New Delhi, India, where I was Political Advisor to General Wedemeyer, then the commanding general of the U. S. Burma-India Theater of Operations. I knew General Merrill, who commanded Merrill's Marauders in Burma. Q: At the end of World War II, were you a part of the discussions about what to do with Japan? In other words, whether to try the Emperor as a war criminal or keep him as a symbol of Japan. BISHOP: That was absolute stupidity in the Department of State. When the war was over, unless we wanted to act like one of the Balkan countries, there was no reason to try the Emperor. We had fixed Japan. We had burned them out. They knew that they had it coming to them. There was no point to a trial. Thank God that General MacArthur was put in charge in Japan, because he was tough. He purged some of the military leaders, but that was about all. They were finished. I was the first Foreign Service Officer back in Japan after the surrender. HOWARD IMBREY Labor Reporting Officer Colombo (1951-1952) Upon receiving an education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Howard Imbrey joined the CIA in 1948. Among Mr. Imbrey’s CIA postings included India, Sri Lanka, Congo, France, and Italy. Mr. Imbrey was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy in June 2001. Q: So, where did you go then? IMBREY: Well, I was sent to Ceylon or Sri Lanka. Q: And you were there from ‘51 to ? IMBREY: It was one year, ‘52. Q: What was the political situation in Ceylon in ‘51 and ‘52? IMBREY: Oh, there again I was under cover as labor reporting officer. That was a new thing that they had invented at the time instead of having a labor attaché in the Embassy, which you couldn’t afford because there weren’t that many people, you just assigned one of your low-level guys as labor reporting officer. That gave me access to what was a very important labor movement in Ceylon. They had five distinct labor organizations one of which was Trotskyite, the only Trotskyite as far as I know, and run by a very clever man. The reporting of that was eaten up by the Department of Labor. They loved to know about what was going on in Ceylon. Q: So, was that pretty much what you did? IMBREY: Oh, I had relations with the police and I would go occasionally to Joffna in the north of the island because they were always hacking down telephone poles and other nasty things. Oh, yes, they had a communist party, which I was watching, too. That was our principal interest in those days. Watch those Russians. Q: The Tamil movement, how did that stand at that time? IMBREY: The husband of Bandaranaike, Solomon Ward Bandaranaike, he was, when I was there, he was running a newspaper called Sengalalay, which means Sinhalese blood and he was declaiming against the Indians. What are they doing here, they’re taking our money. The Indians worked the tea plantations. The tea plantations are situated on hills and the tea picker had a huge bag about the size of this table or longer and he has to fill that with two leaves on a bud from each plant. Each day you’ll get another blossom, two leaves and a bud. That is broken orange pekoe and it goes in the bag. You don’t put in any single leaves or single buds in. It has to be quite vigorously gotten. Now, for filling a bag like that, means being almost bent over vertical getting your bag back to the tea factory, they will pay one rupee a day. A rupee that was about thirty cents. This money, many of them sent back to India to support their families there for there were no jobs in India. Well, this was, in brief, that they were sending all this good Sinhalese money back to India so they should get rid of these guys. Sinhalese wouldn’t take on any tea-picking job. They were basically happy go lucky and it’s a country where if you take a banana seed, you go like, and that you’ve got to duck because of the banana tree. Now, at any rate, he was one, he started a great deal of animus against the Indian workers. As a matter of fact he was shot in 1953 or 1954, shortly after I left, by some people who thought he hadn’t gone far enough. Q: So, I mean how did you find sort of getting on in society there? Did all sit around and talk about how awful the Tamils were? IMBREY: No, no, no. My wife had a Tamil obstetrician as a matter of fact. No, they were well considered when we were there. People liked them. This was only the tea pickers. Q: How about the unions? I mean I take it there wasn’t a tea pickers’ union. IMBREY: No. As far as I can remember I don’t think there was one. Q: What about the union? Were they sort of imbued with the class struggle as taught by northern school of economics and all that? IMBREY: No they weren’t that far educated. They paid their dues and they looked to the union to do something for them politically, but I can’t imagine that any of them had any real notions. Q: I guess our only interest there in a way was the Chinese or the Soviets? IMBREY: I was not interested in the Chinese or the Soviets there, or I was not directed in that or not in that direction. Most of the time I was in India, I think the Embassy in Delhi possibly had people who were directed in that, but there just weren’t enough of them around.