The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project MARK S. PRATT Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: October 21, 1999 Copyright 200 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born and raised in assachusetts Harvard, Brown, Sorbonne and Georgetown Universities US Navy arriage Entered the Foreign Service in 1956 Tokyo, ,apan- .onsular Officer 195701959 Environment rs. Douglas acArthur Duties Taichung, Taiwan- FS2- .hinese language training 195901960 Political situation Elections .hiang 4ai0shek and adame 4uomintang .hinese ainlanders Environment Hong 4ong- ainland Economic Officer 196001963 ainland agriculture .hina6s 7Great 8eap Forward9 ao :edong Operations Foreign grain to .hina .hina0Soviet relations :hou En lai .hinese culture .hina and 2ndochina US .hina policy 7Domino9 theory 1 2ndia0.hina border war Vientiane, 8aos- Political Officer 196301968 Souvanna Phouma Political situation North Vietnamese US ilitary assistance 2nternational .ontrol .ommission Vietnam US Ambassadors US Air Force bombings Environment Government State Department- Desk Officer for 8aos and .ambodia 196801973 Vietnam Working Group Tet Offensive .omments on US Vietnam War policy 4issinger and .hina 2ndo .hina Working Group .ambodia Sihanouk .hina US ilitary influence on policy Paris, France- ember US Delegation to 2nternational 197301978 .onference on Vietnam .hina influence on Hanoi ASEAN US delegation .arter administration .ongressional interest Talks halted French concerns National 8eague of POW/ 2As Refugees President .arter policy .hina 8eonard Woodcock ission Vietnamese negotiating team Taipei, Taiwan- Political .ounselor/Political ilitary 197801981 Discussion with ,apanese Ambassador US0Taiwan relationship issue Secretary of State Vance 2 US relations with .hina US recognition of .hina Government Elections utual Defense Treaty Taiwan Relations Act Warren .hristopher mission ainlander views of US policy 4 T policies Status of US ission AeB0EmbassyC personnel American 2nstitute in Taiwan Political parties Taiwan military relationship Taiwan mid0East relations .hiang .hing0kuo National Security Bureau State Department- Deputy, Regional Affairs, East Asia Bureau 198101982 State Department- .hief, Taiwan .oordination Office 198201986 Defense of Asia Foundation budget Reagan policies Personalities Taiwan Relations Act ilitary sales US0.hina relations .hinese leaders Taiwan leaders Russia/.hina relations Bamboo Gang American 2nstitute in Taiwan AA2TC operations GuangDhou A.antonC, .hina- .onsul General 198601989 Operations Economy ,oint ventures US commercial interests .orruption Smuggling Religion .ommunism Government Education .hinese personalities American Embassy operations 3 President George Bush US0.hina relations Tiananmen SFuare Post security 2nternal .hina changes Environment .hina technology INTERVIEW GNote: This interview was not edited by r. PrattI $: Today is the 1st of October, 1999. This is an interview with Mar( S. Pratt. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, and I'm Charles Stuart Kennedy. ,ell, let's start at the beginning. Can you tell me when and where you were born and something about your family- PRATT: Yes, 2 was born ,anuary 29th, 1928 in 8ynn, assachusetts, but my family was resident in Salem, assachusetts, and my fatherKs family had been there for about 300 years. $: So you were born in the .ear of the Dragon. I was born on the 14th of February 192 . PRATT: Well, weKre dragons then. We should be compatible. $: Could you tell me something about your mother and father- PRATT: Yes, my father was from a rather old New England family, both his father and mother. y motherKs family was originally from the iddle West, but both her father, whose family name was Schrumm, is from that little area in Virginia where this German deserter from George 222Ks troops settled in the area of Scotch02rish. And then my motherKs mother came from farther south, the .arolinas, and they were both from the iddle West. And of course when they were born the .ivil War was barely over, so it added to my fatherKs side, which had one person who fought for the entire .ivil War and another grandfather who had paid somebody else to go in his place while he made a great deal of money producing munitions and other things for the Union side. On my motherKs side, one ran horses to the .onfederacy, and the other side of the family had already left Virginia because of the opposition to slavery. So there was very much an awareness in our family, of course, of the importance of the .ivil War. $: ,here did your parents meet- E PRATT: They met in Salem. 8ynn and Salem are, of course, contiguous. And my motherKs father practiced medicine in 8ynn, and my fatherKs family was in various types of business in Salem. $: ,hat sort of education did your parents have- PRATT: y father graduated from assachusetts Agricultural .ollegeLM ass Aggie,M it was calledLUniversity of assachusetts now. And he was sent there because his grandfather offered to pay for the education of all of his grandchildren, and some of them selected to go to Harvard and Harvard edical School and he paid for that. But my father was very sensitive to the fact that he was getting it from his grandfather, so he went to the cheapest place there was, which was ass Aggie. And that was what he had as his background, which then gave him . they made him a second lieutenant in the First World War and then subseFuently got him to be the director of the Park Department in Salem. We can go on from there later, because later on, when he became director of the Salem Hospital, he got a masterKs degree in public health from Harvard. $: .our mother- PRATT: y mother went to the University of 2ndiana because thatKs where her father had been. Her father had gotten his doctorKs degree from the University of 2ndiana, and so she went back there, 2 guess out of filial feeling, but then got her final degree from .ornell, and she got it in modern languages, French and Spanish. She subseFuently studied at Simmons, and she had herself worked for a time and then they got married. $: So by the time you came along in 192 , what was your father doing- PRATT: y father was still the director of the Park Department. 2t was in 1931, 2 believe, that he moved to be director of the Salem Hospital. $: Did you have other brothers or sisters- PRATT: Yes, 2 have two brothers and a sister, one older brother, one younger brother, and the youngest child is a sister. $: ,ell, then, where did you go to elementary school, early schooling- PRATT: Early schooling was at the Bowditch School, named after Nathaniel Bowditch, the great navigator, and he was, of course, a Salem boy. And this is the same school that my father had gone to. 2n fact, some of the same teachers were still teaching there, so one had Fuite a sense of roots there in Salem. $: Did the sea play a part- One always thin(s of Salem and whaling and all that. 5 PRATT: Very much so, because although none of my immediate family had been seafarers, nonetheless it was one of the strains there. One of my great0grandfathers, his wifeKs family were the Wards, and they of course had been sea captains, and one of them was Frederick Townsend Ward, who was in .hina as the precursor of the British M.hineseM Gordon as the head of the Ever Victorious Army during the Taip6ing Rebellion. But it meant Salem was very much there on the seacoast. We would go to Dirty Wharf. We would go aboard the ships, and we had our own little sailboat and so on, so that when 2 was growing up the sea, of course, was very, very much in our lives. After 2 was about eleven, 2 guess, when they moved from Salem to arblehead, which, of course, is basically a very different type of society perhaps, but now of course very much just a suburb of Boston. $: Then it was more sort of a yachting place, wasn't it- PRATT: 2t was a yachting place and very important for the summer people out on the arblehead Neck and a very important yacht club, where many persons from Boston and elsewhere would have their yachts. So indeed it was very much a place for yachting and sailing, but then we had the old town, which were fisher people and drawn from the .hannel 2slands, where they had a very different accent and sort of a different speech from those of us from Salem, shall we say, just a mile or so away. $: At the Bowditch school, did you find that there was any part of the sort of the educational curriculum that was beginning to particularly gain your interest2reading- PRATT: Well, the Orient, of course, was some place of considerable interest because of SalemKs connection with .hina, and so .hina, indeed, was one part of this and also the fact that some of the members of my family had been there. 2n fact, we still had some there until 1923. Then also, of course, we had, as you can see, some of these things around here were from my grandmother, so on that side they had their gifts from people who came back from .hina, and so on. So 2Kd say that at that time, probably the .hina side of things was one of the eBtensions of general education that interested me the most. 2 think you know that the old East 2ndia arine Hall, now called the Peabody EsseB useum in Salem was a place that my father used to take us to in order to have us get some sense of that sailing background and the Oriental connection of Salem. $: At an early age were you starting to read about Asia- Did you find yourself sort of following news from China more than most other people- This was the time of, of course, the Japanese incursion into China and all that.