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MALAYSIA COUNTRY READER TABLE OF CONTENTS William L. Blue 1948-1949 Consul/Principal Officer, Kuala Lumpur LaRue R. Lutkins 1950-1952 Consul/Poltical Officer, Penang Hendrik Van Oss 1951-1953 Consul/Principal Officer, Kuala Lumpur David Dean 1951-1954 Consular Officer, Kuala Lumpur Oscar Vance Armstrong 1952-1953 Consular Offficer, Kuala Lumpur Walter K. Schwinn 1954-1957 Public Affairs Officer, USIS, Kuala Lumpur Charles T. Cross 1955-1957 Political Officer, Kuala Lumpur Howard B. Schaffer 1956-1958 Rotation Officer, Kuala Lumpur Michael E.C. Ely 1957-1959 Political/Consular Officer, Kuala Lumpur Robert W. Drexler 1961-1963 Political Officer, Kuala Lumpur Charles F. Baldwin 1961-1964 Ambassador, Malaya Ronald D. Palmer 1962-1963 Economic Officer, Kuala Lumpur Robert W. Duemling 1963-1965 Consular/Economic Officer, Kuala Lumpur 1965-1966 Consul, Kuching, Sarawak William Andreas Brown 1964-1965 Principal Officer, Kuching, Sarawak Julia Chang Bloch 1964-1966 Peace Corps, Sabah Robert William Farrand 1964-1966 Junior Officer, Kuala Lumpur Samuel F. Hart 1964-1966 Consular/Political Officer, Kuala 1 Lumpur Parker W. Borg 1965-1967 Rotation Officer, Kuala Lumpur Robert B. Petersen 1967-1970 Branch Public Affairs Officer, USIS, Kuching Earl Wilson 1967-1970 Public Affairs Officer, USIS, Kuala Lumpur James C. Pollock 1968-1970 Junior Officer Trainee, USIS, Kuala Lumpur John J. Helble 1969-1970 Political Officer, Kuala Lumpur Jack Lydman 1969-1973 Ambassador, Malaysia Edwin Cronk 1972-1975 Ambassador, Singapore Ralph J. Katrosh 1972-1975 Political Officer, Kuala Lumpur Alphonse F. La Porta 1972-1975 Political Officer, Kuala Lumpur Stan Ifshin 1973-1975 Political Officer, Kuala Lumpur Francis T. Underhill 1974-1977 Ambassador, Malaysia Robert S. Dillon 1974-1977 Deputy Chief of Mission, Kuala Lumpur Robert H. Miller 1977-1980 Ambassador, Malaysia Melvin R. Chatman 1977-1980 Director, Refugee Office, USAID, Malaysia Peter B. Swiers 1979-1981 Political Counselor, Kuala Lumpur Paul P. Blackburn 1980-1984 Public Affairs Offficer, USIS, Kuala Lumpur Ronald D. Palmer 1981-1983 Ambassador, Malaysia Donald McConville 1981-1984 Economic Counselor, Kuala Lumpur Alphonse F. La Porta 1982-1985 Country Director, Office of 2 Malaysia, Burma and Singapore Affairs, East Asia Bureau, Washington, DC Joseph A. B. Winder 1983-1985 EAP, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei Affairs, Washington DC Thomas P. Shoesmith 1983-1987 Ambassador, Malaysia Francis J. Tatu 1984 Deputy Chief, Political Section, Kuala Lumpur Charles A. Mast 1984-1987 Economic Counselor, Kuala Lumpur James C. Pollock 1988-1992 Counselor of Embassy for Public Affairs, USIS, Kuala Lumpur Richard W. Teare 1989-1992 Director, Office of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore, Washington, DC Paul M. Cleveland 1989-1992 Ambassador, Malaysia David G. Brown 1992-1993 Director, Office of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore Affairs, Washington DC John Wolf 1992-1995 Ambassador, Malaysia Thomas R. Carmichael 1995-1997 Press Attaché, Kuala Lumpur Marie Therese Huhtala 2001-2004 Ambassador, Malaysia WILLIAM L. BLUE Principal Officer Kuala Lumpur (1948-1949) William Blue was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1914. He received a master's degree from Vanderbilt University in 1936. After studying at The Fletcher School, Mr. Blue joined the Foreign Service in 1941. His career included positions in Canada, Venezuela, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, and Washington, DC. Mr. Blue was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy in 3 1991. Q: Next you went in 1948 for a very short time to Kuala Lumpur. What were you doing there? BLUE: I was the first consul in Kuala Lumpur. I went first to Alexandria by ship and then was in Cairo for a week and in Port Said for a week waiting for a ship to Singapore. Q: You were principal officer there, weren't you? BLUE: I was principal officer. Q: Of course Kuala Lumpur in those days was part of... Mr. Blue. It was the capital of Malaya which was still a British colony. But within a month after I got there the communists came out of the jungle. If they had had better intelligence, they could have taken over Kuala Lumpur, but they didn't. It was a fascinating period. This was before Templar. The British were completely unprepared for this emergency. I had the Americans, like the head of the Pacific Tin Company, after me all the time to get up there and tell the British what they had to do. When I left, it was very risky to go from Kuala Lumpur up to the hill stations. Not long after I left, Sir Henry Gurney, the British High Commissioner, was ambushed and killed on his way to a hill station. Q: Here you were and found yourself as principal officer in a place which in those days was of only modest concern to the United States. What were you expected to do with this uprising going on? BLUE: You had to depend on British sources, although there was an interesting guy there--a labor advisor to Sir Henry. He had been a railroad driver. He was in touch with the commies and knew quite a lot about what was going on. Somehow we got along very well. So I did get some information about what the thinking was on the other side. The whole colonial apparatus was there and some of them resented the fact that we had a consulate there. I wanted to go up to the installation of the new Sultan in Trengano but the British political advisor there turned down my request. They wanted things to remain as they had been. Q: Did you have the feeling while you were there that whatever happened the colonial system was on the way out? BLUE: Yes. They had a legislative assembly which I went to regularly. And the Malays were becoming more important. I was pretty sure the British were on their way out. Q: Were you getting any instructions from Washington or was it pretty much a matter of sending in your reports? 4 BLUE: Not specific instructions as I recall. Fortunately we had good relations with the British High Commissioner. He was a very decent man. He actually used to brief me and was fairly open about what was going on. But we didn't have any instructions saying, "You should do this and you should do that." There was no question that something was going to happen. Q: But the United States basically exerted no pressure there. BLUE: We didn't press them as I gather we did in New Delhi and places like that. Q: Did the change over in India have any rumbling effect, I think India gained its independence about that time? BLUE: No, I don't recall that it did. It was in 1947 when they had all those riots and got their independence, and I didn't get there until May of 1948. I don't remember that the situation in India had any effect on us. Q: You left Kuala Lumpur around 1949. BLUE: I left in September. My father was dying and I wanted to get back to the States. For one thing I wanted to get married. I was tired of being a bachelor and there was certainly nothing available out there. So I asked originally to return home at my own expense, but while I was back there I was called into Washington and told that I would be assigned to Personnel as I had requested a Washington assignment. LARUE R. LUTKINS Consul/Political Officer Penang (1950-1952) LaRue R. Lutkins was born in 1919 and raised in New York. His career with the State Department included assignments in Cuba, China, Malaysia, Japan, Hong Kong, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and South Africa. Mr. Lutkins was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy on October 18, 1990. LUTKINS: And it so happened that it was decided that we were going to beef up our presence in what was then called Malaya before it became Malaysia. One Chinese language officer, Oscar Armstrong, was assigned to Singapore. And I was assigned to reopen a post in Penang, Malaya, in northern Malaya near Thailand. So I went out there in the summer of 1950, reopened the Consulate there, and served there for two years. Q: Malaya was then still under British rule? 5 LUTKINS: Right. It remained under British rule until 1957, when they gave independence to Malaya. Q: You went with your family, I take it? LUTKINS: Oh, yes. Q: What was your main job while you were there from '50 to '52? The Korean War broke out about that time. Relations were nasty. What were you doing? LUTKINS: I'd say it was 90 percent political reporting. A couple of years earlier, around 1948, what they called, euphemistically, "The Emergency" had broken out with the local Chinese Communists in Malaya. They were not connected with the Chinese Communists on the mainland, but they were ethnic Chinese, part of the very substantial Overseas Chinese minority in Malaya, who had their own Communist Party. Actually, during the war they worked with the British against the Japanese, during the Japanese occupation. Shortly after the war, they staged this uprising, killed a lot of British rubber planters and people in the tin industry, and made life very difficult. The British had quite a substantial military force there combating this emergency. It was a difficult period. At one point, the British governor general was assassinated on his way up to a weekend in one of the hill stations. And then they sent out a really tough man, by name of Sir Gerald Templar, to head up the thing and bring it under control. There were various efforts made by the army and the police to cordon off the dispersed Chinese farmers, gather them together in secure, guarded villages, and keep them from contact with the guerrillas in the jungle.