Interview with Richard A. Ericson Jr

Library of Congress Interview with Richard A. Ericson Jr. The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR RICHARD A. ERICSON, JR. Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: March 27, 1995 Copyright 1998 ADST Q: Today is March 27, 1995. This is an interview with Richard A. Ericson, Jr. on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies. I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. To begin with, could you tell me something about your background—a bit about your parents, when you were born, where you grew up, etc. ERICSON: My parents were both born in Two Harbors, Minnesota, which was a major ore port during World War I on the north shore of Lake Superior about 25 miles northeast of Duluth. Both grew up there. My father got an appointment to West Point... Q: You are what, Norwegian descent? ERICSON: Well, sort of half and half. I am really a good Icelander. Icelander 65%, Norwegian 35% and Irish...I come along more 50/50. But my paternal grandparents were both immigrants from Norway. My maternal grandparents were Scots-Irish who abandoned the wilds of Canada's vicious climate for the vicious climate of northern Lake Superior. That particular little town was divided by a highway and all the Scandinavians, being smart, lived away from the water, and all the others, who were mostly Scots-Irish, lived in Interview with Richard A. Ericson Jr. http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000349 Library of Congress the southern part along the lake shore. The town retained its ethnic characteristics until well after World War II. If you went to a church in the northern part of the town you heard your sermon in Swedish or Norwegian. So, my parents were one of the first couples to marry across the line. They were high school sweethearts. My father went to the University of Minnesota first and then got an appointment to West Point, at which time it looked as if we were going into World War I. He graduated from West Point and they were married afterwards. I was born while he was stationed at Fort De Russy on Waikiki in Hawaii in 1923. Queen Victoria's birthday, 1923, May 24. We didn't stay long in Hawaii. We moved to a variety of ... Dad was transferred to West Point as an instructor; then to Fort Monroe in Virginia, and then in the early days of the depression, he was stationed and asked for an assignment to the University of Minnesota. He was adjutant of the military department there for...well in those days, when the depression came, the army didn't transfer anybody who didn't want to be transferred. He opted to stay there and did so for seven years. I went through grade school in Minneapolis. We then went to Panama for a couple of years, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Fort Toten, New York and ended up here in Washington where my family spent the war years while he was overseas. Q: What was your father doing? ERICSON: My father graduated into the field artillery, but they sent him to France. He was unfortunate, his whole class was, in the sense that they graduated November 1918, which was the worse possible time for anybody to graduate from West Point. The war was just over and the hump was there...all those people who had been taken in and given permanent commissions after World War I. He stayed a 1st Lieutenant for 17 years. In those days promotion was strictly by seniority. Somebody died and everyone moved up one file. I don't know why he stood it, as a matter of fact, but he did. Interview with Richard A. Ericson Jr. http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000349 Library of Congress They sent his class to France on a tour of the battle fields and in Europe, after the tour was over, they were assigned to various units of their respective branches in Europe mostly. He ended up with an artillery unit that was part of the Polish relief expedition. He spent a year delousing Poles and came back saying if that was what field artillery was all about he wanted no part of it. So he transferred to the coast artillery. He was mathematically inclined, more or less, and wanted to do the anti-aircraft work that the coast artillery had fallen heir to. So the result was that we lived a very pleasant life at mostly very nice posts, but in a branch that ultimately proved to be a dead-end. Actually he commanded anti- aircraft units that landed in New Guinea and got invalided out of that with scrub typhus. Then he commanded the anti-aircraft unit that went into Leahy and got invalided out of that with so-called jungle rot. He ended up as an inspector general and served in Japan with me in my early days in Japan. He came out as inspector general of the 8th Army and ended up as chief of staff of the Family Logistical Command which was what was left over when the 8th Army went to Korea when the Korean War broke out. Anyway, we were there concurrently and that was very pleasant. Q: Where did you go to get your higher education? ERICSON: I went to high school in Panama, a government one which was excellent and to a little Catholic school in Leavenworth while in Kansas, and then an enormous high school in Bayside, New York. I went to the Foreign Service School at Georgetown. I entered in the fall of 1941 and, of course, World War II came along and the faculty just disintegrated. I think most of us would admit we were majoring in ROTC rather than anything specific. I did not graduate from Georgetown until 1955. I had just completed the first semester of my junior year when my ROTC class was called in. Q: Did you go into the Army? ERICSON: Oh, yes. Interview with Richard A. Ericson Jr. http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000349 Library of Congress Q: What did you do? ERICSON: Well, Georgetown's ROTC was infantry and if you were in senior ROTC and were taken in during the war, they were obligated to send you to OCS. I didn't really want infantry, I wanted something a little better than that, but I weighed about 125 pounds at that stage of the game. I volunteered for something called the tank destroyers and went down to help build what is now Fort Hood, Texas. Got through basic training and they decided tank destroyers were a lousy idea so they shut down the OCS and abolished the whole branch. I went back to infantry basic training. OCS was closed, they sent us back to Georgetown under the ASTP program. They closed that down and I went down to Benning for another basic training cycle and finally got through infantry and into OCS. I ended up not being one of those sent overseas immediately. I suppose it was partly because I was such a strapping physical specimen! They sent me to a regiment that had broken off from a National Guard division when they so-called streamlined the National Guard and cut them from four regiments to three. Everyone of them had one extraneous regiment. Mine was sent up to the Aleutians where I spent two or three years doing not much of anything, but freezing. Then we came back down and we were dispersed and sent overseas. The cadre was kept and they turned it into an advanced infantry replacement training center to train anti-aircraft non-coms how to become infantry non-coms. I did that for a while. Then I was heading overseas when they dropped that golf ball on Hiroshima. I ended up in Korea. Q: When did you go to Korea? ERICSON: I got there in October, 1945 and because I was a good army brat and signed the wrong agreement...I signed the agreement to stay in 18 months after the cessation of hostilities...which, unfortunately, they held me to. I had a good experience. I was an instructor for various kinds of weapons and IRTCs. When I got overseas, they lined everybody up on the dock and told every fifth guy to step forward and I ended up in the Corps of Engineers as adjutant of the boat battalion of the 592nd Boat and Shore Interview with Richard A. Ericson Jr. http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000349 Library of Congress Regiment, which was the outfit that ran the boats in the harbor of Inchon. So I spent all of the time in Korea living on Wome Do and... Q: It is an island... ERICSON: Yes. “Do” means island and “Wome” means moon tail. It is located in the port of Inchon. The adjutant of the battalion, when they broke up the battalion and transferred everybody to...I transferred to the Corps of Engineers in order to get a promotion and then they broke up the battalion and turned us all into a transportation port company. I ended up commanding the whole thing the last eight months I was there. Anybody with any points went home and we weren't getting any experienced boat people so I had a nice little fief out there on Wome Do. Q: I think it is important to capture this period because you are going to be returning to Korea a number of times. What were your impressions of Korea at the time and how did the Americans, from your perspective, operate there? ERICSON: Well, remember we were on an island and our looks were always to the sea.

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