Hill, H. Kenneth
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR H. KENNETH HILL Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: March 28, 2014 Copyright 2018 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Dallas, Texas on 06/14/1937 BA from University of California in Berkeley 1955-1959 Served in the United States Army 1961-1963 MA, University of California in Berkeley 1963-1964 Entered the Foreign Service 1964 Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine—Consular Officer 1965-1967 Working in Both Sides of the City The Six Day War Frankfurt, Germany—Consular Officer 1967-1968 Dealing with American Marriages and Crimes Berlin, Germany—Consular Officer 1968-1970 Escorting a Hijacker back to America Berlin, Germany—Political Officer 1970-1972 Four-Power Treaty Belgrade, Yugoslavia—Political Officer 1973-1976 Dealing with Discrimination against Albanians and Bosnians The Shift in US-Yugoslavian Policy under Ambassador Silberman Washington, DC—Desk Officer 1976-1978 Human Rights Office Dealing with Human Right Violations in Allied Countries Washington, Dc—Desk Officer 1978-1980 Office of Management Operations Hiring of LGBT Foreign Service Officers The Foreign Assistance Act 1 Washington, DC—Political Military Affairs, Deputy Director 1980-1982 Controlling the Sale of Fighter Jets Sofia, Bulgaria—Deputy Chief of Mission 1982-1984 Working in a Police State Terrorist Threats Lusaka, Zambia—Deputy Chief of Mission 1984-1988 Diplomacy during the Presidency of Kenneth Kaunda Opening an Embassy School Washington, DC—Bureau of Personnel, Minister Counselor 1988-1990 Senior Office Assignment Hiring more Women Sofia, Bulgaria—Ambassador 1990-1993 Creating Democracy Post-Communism The Presidency of Zhelyu Zhelev The Fall of the Soviet Union Working with Support for Eastern European Development (SEED) Garmisch, Germany—Diplomat in Residence 1993-1995 Starting the George C. Marshall Center for Strategic Studies Operating a Defense Establishment in a Democracy Outreach to Post Communist Countries Retired from the Foreign Service 1995 Various Volunteering Sarasota Institute for Lifetime Learning The Life Enhancement Office INTERVIEW Q: Today is March 28, 2014, this is an interview with Ambassador Kenneth Hill, I’m Charles Stuart Kennedy. Well, let’s start off by when and where were you born? HILL: I was born in Cushing, C-U-S-H-I-N-G, Texas on June 14, 1937. Q: OK. What do you know about the Hill side of your family? HILL: I’ve actually done genealogy on it. The earliest member I could find in America came in about 1660 to Baltimore County, Maryland. His name was John Hill. I have not 2 been able to find out exactly where he came from. It was England I’m sure, but I don’t know exactly where. He died in Baltimore County in 1691. I found his will in the Maryland archives in Annapolis and was able to hold the will with a wax seal on it in my hands. Q: What do you know about how your ancestors supported themselves when they got to America? HILL: We were farmers right up to my father. One of the descendents of John Hill in the 18th century left Baltimore County and went to South Carolina where he got a grant of land and began farming there. His son went to Alabama and farmed. And his son went to Texas and farmed. And my father was a farmer in Texas until World War II when he took our family to California and got a job at the Standard Oil of California refinery in Richmond, California. Q: All right. So now, do you know anything about, firstly, what kind of farming your family’s involved in? Small farm, large farm, what? HILL: It was small subsistent farming. Basically my ancestors were growing food to feed themselves and their families. Q: Well then, did your father get much of an education, or? HILL: No. His elementary education reached into high school, but he didn’t finish high school. And neither did my mother, but she later earned an equivalent high school diploma. Q: What about on your mother’s side? What do you know about where they came from? HILL: She was from Dallas, Texas. Her ancestors settled in the Dallas area in about 1840, making them very early settlers there. But by the time she married my father they were certainly no longer a prominent family in the area. Q: Did you grow up in Texas? HILL: No, I grew up in California. I was five-years-old when my father moved the family to California. He was happy to leave subsistence farming, which was very difficult in Texas during the Depression, and have employment at the Standard Oil refinery in Richmond. Q: Oh -- HILL: So I grew up in California in Richmond, which is on the east side of San Francisco Bay, and graduated from high school and went to the University of California, Berkeley. Q: Well, let’s move back a bit. When you grew up in Richmond. What was it like when 3 you were a kid in the ‘40s? HILL: Well, this was wartime. At the time, Richmond had three important businesses. One was it was the terminus of the Santa Fe Railroad. The second was the large and important Standard Oil of California refinery. And third was a shipyard built by Henry J. Kaiser that produced liberty ships. We lived in one of the housing projects that were put up very quickly during the war to accommodate the large influx of wartime workers. Richmond had a population of about 23,000 at the beginning of the war and very quickly the population grew to about 105,000. So I grew up living in the large apartment blocks built for the war workers, which meant that I had a lot of kids to play with and things to do. For example, it was easy for us to play softball with two small teams, or to ride to the hills or visit San Francisco Bay, or have a group hike on the high hill by the bay, Nickel Knob. Q: Well, I was going to say, the war was difficult for the warriors, but for small kids it could be a lot of fun. HILL: Yes. During the war, we had a Coast Guard station across the road from our apartment house, with barracks and young men in uniforms. Their presence provided fantasies for the war games we played. As children we heard a bit about what was happening in the war but mainly about victories in Europe and the South Pacific, but not about the casualties of servicemen and the people in war torn countries. The war wasn’t a problem for kids. The fighting in the Pacific was especially interesting because the ocean was nearby. There was even a small Japanese submarine at Point Richmond, the small harbor off of San Francisco Bay, that had been captured somewhere. We also experienced blackouts early in the war when an unidentified airplane flew overhead in the evening, and the searchlights near the oil refinery and the railroad tracks would light up and sweep the sky while we lowered our window shades to black out the lights in our apartment. Q: When you were a small kid, compared to other small kids were you much of a reader? HILL: Yes. I discovered the library not far from our apartment house and spent time there reading books and checking them out. We did not have television in the 1940s until about 1947 when one or two of the neighbors got an early set, so I read a lot more than kids did in the fifties when television became common. I also enjoyed reading Popular Mechanics magazines that a neighbor boy’s family subscribed to. But I wouldn’t say that I was a budding intellectual. Q: (laughs) Okay. What religion was your family? HILL: We were Baptists. Q: And was this an important factor, or? HILL: It was. It was important in my life until I reached early twenties. 4 Q: And what about politics? Where did they -- HILL: My dad was a staunch Democrat. Q: Was the union a big thing at that time? HILL: It was for him because the oil industry was unionized. And he was a shop steward for a time, a leader of a small group of people. There was a very large strike against Standard Oil in about 1946 or ‘47.. Dad was out of work for a while because of the strike, and one day he took me with him to where the union had set up a picket line to prevent “scabs” (workers who crossed the picket line) from going to work in the refinery. Q: Did you identify as I’m a union kid, or was that sort of thing going on at the time? HILL: No, it was really my dad’s thing. I knew as much as I’ve just told you about what was going on, but all of the kids that I grew up with were workers’ kids. We were living in the housing projects, 16 families to a building and most parents worked at the oil refinery or the shipyard. So one didn’t think my dad’s a union man, so therefore I’m a union kid. That just wasn't part of my growing up. Q: Well, what was -- school. How about elementary school? What was your elementary school like? HILL: Well, first of all, because it was wartime and because the town had grown so large in population so quickly, we had split shifts. So in elementary school you could either go in the morning until lunchtime, or you could go in the afternoon after lunch.