The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Ambassador James P. Zumwalt InterviewedAn by: Oral Charles History Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: February 1, 2018 ©2021 ADST 1 Copyright © 2019 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Editor: Kyle Hawke Proofreader: PJ Perdue Indexer: Kelly Bergh Cover and Book Designer: Kyle Hawke First publication, May 2021 2 To Ann, the love of my life This oral history is dedicated to you for standing by me for decades as my life partner, my wise counselor, and my trusted advisor. I began learning from you the day we met 37 years ago at the American Citizen Services counter of the American Embassy in Tokyo. During our first encounter, you taught me the Japanese language phrases I needed to perform consular work in Japan. That day, you impressed me with your professionalism and your compassion for your colleagues and your clients. Your strong moral compass has continued to provide direction in both my personal life and my professional career and your tolerance of my many shortcomings has enabled us to persevere through a few difficult challenges. Your good humor and resilience have enabled me to overcome hardships and manage stressful challenges. Together, we have celebrated many happy occasions during our Foreign Service careers. I am not sure where I would be without you. 3 Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to the friends, colleagues and family members who have read and commented on chapters of this oral history. My sister, Frances Zumwalt, and my Foreign Service colleagues, Pat Alsup, Hagop Avedissian, MaryKay Carlson, Mark Fitzpatrick, Greg Garland, Karin Lang, Kristine Marsh, Sandra O’Leary, Michael Scarlatos, and Eleanor Sutter have improved this document with their useful insights. Their corrections of my faulty memory and suggestions for additional context have improved this text tremendously. Any errors that remain are solely my responsibility. My editor Kyle Hawke has worked assiduously to check facts, improve the narrative flow, and propose changes to enhance the readability and comprehensibility of this story. I could not have finished this project without his patient guidance throughout the editing process. Many Foreign Service mentors who have guided my career deserve my heartfelt thanks. They are too numerous to name individually here, but their examples of diplomatic tradecraft, moral leadership, and courage and resilience in the face of adversity have shaped my Foreign Service career in positive ways. These teachers and guides appear in every chapter of this oral history volume. This work would not have been completed without the guidance and direction of my interviewer, Charles Stuart Kennedy. When I sat down for the first oral history interview in February 2016, my sole intent had been to relate my experiences in Embassy Tokyo in March 2011 as we coped with a major natural disaster beyond the scope of any of our imaginations. One two-hour interview, I thought, and the project would be complete. To my surprise, Stuart began our first session by asking questions related to my childhood to elicit comments on my motivation for joining the Foreign Service. Over the course of 36 hours of interviews during an eight-month period, Stuart’s penetrating questions elicited many details of my life experiences and diplomatic career that enriched this story. Stuart was ably supported by the staff of the Office of the Historian at the State Department throughout this project and, without their assistance, this project would not have been finished. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, who provided me two examples of moral and community leadership as they instilled in me a passion for excellence, an intellectual curiosity about the world, and a desire for public service. 4 5 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 4 Foreword 7 Chapter I: Growing up in California; First Encounters with Japan 8 Chapter II: Entering the Foreign Service 22 Chapter III: Kinshasa, Zaïre, 1981–1983 25 Chapter IV: Consulate General Osaka-Kobe, 1983–1985 38 Chapter V: Working in Washington: U.S.-Japan Trade and the Fall of Marcos, 1985–1989 54 Chapter VI: Embassy Tokyo Economic Secon, 1989–1993 73 Chapter VII: Return to Washington: U.S.-Korea Relaons and Internaonal Economics, 1993–1998 89 Chapter VIII: Embassy Beijing: U.S.-China Economic Relaons, 1998–2002 97 Chapter IX: Embassy Tokyo: U.S.-Japan Economic Relaons, 2002–2006 118 Chapter X: Managing Bilateral Relaons: Japan Desk Director, 2006–2008 131 Chapter XI: Embassy Tokyo DCM, 2008–2011 140 Chapter XII: Embassy Tokyo Response to Japan’s March 11 Triple Disaster, 2011 172 Chapter XIII: Final Months as Embassy Tokyo Deputy Chief of Mission, 2011 210 Chapter XIV: Deputy Assistant Secretary for Japan and Korea, 2012–2015 213 Chapter XV: Ambassador to the Republic of Senegal, 2015–2017 225 Chapter XVI: .S. Ambassador to Guinea-Bissau, 2015–2017 286 Chapter XVII: The Gambia — Transion to Democrac Government, 2016–17 322 Chapter XVIII: Final Days in Dakar, 2016–2017 327 Chapter XIX: Reflecons on a Foreign Service Career 330 About Ambassador James P. Zumwalt 335 About Charles Stuart Kennedy 336 6 Foreword As an amateur student of history, I agreed to record my memories from a 36-year Foreign Service career in the hopes that this account might assist scholars of American diplomatic history. Accordingly, I have organized this story into chronological chapters to enable researchers to focus solely on the elements of interest to their scholarly work. One word of warning to anyone reading this oral history: this narrative is told from the perspective of my position at that time. From the vantagepoint of a junior officer in Kinshasa in Chapter 3 to that of the Ambassador in Dakar in Chapter 15, my perspective has changed over time as I matured and gained more career experience. I also hope that this oral history can help aspiring diplomats and others interested in diplomacy by supplementing the academic theories with examples from real life. Diplomacy is an art more than a science. Certainly, aspiring diplomats should study international relations theory, the tools of statecraft, government organizational theory, and diplomatic history to establish an intellectual framework for their diplomatic work. However, mastering the practice of diplomacy involves learning from the experiences of others. Over the course of my career, I have gained insights from many policy practitioners, both Foreign Service officers, government political appointees, and foreign government officials. I hope that this volume might provide positive examples to aspiring and practicing diplomats for ways to overcome miscommunication, resolve problems, and manage challenges diplomats face as they attempt to advance the national interest. Jim Zumwalt December 29, 2020 7 Chapter I Growing up in California; First Encounters with Japan F EBRUARY 1, 2018 KENNEDY: Jim, where and when were you born? ZUMWALT: I was born in La Mesa, California, a suburb of San Diego, in 1956. KENNEDY: Tell us something about your family, first on your father’s side. What do you know about them? ZUMWALT: My father grew up in the San Joaquin Valley of California. My family is proud of our history in the United States. I am an eighth-generation American descended from Andrew Zumwalt, who landed in Baltimore in 1737. Andrew Zumwalt settled first in Pennsylvania, then later moved to Virginia. He had seven sons, most of whom served in local militias during the Revolutionary War. Almost every Zumwalt in the United States is related to one of Andrew’s seven sons. His grandson, Jacob Zumwalt, moved to Missouri where my great-great-grandfather, James Brown Zumwalt, was born. That is where my name, James, comes from. Their settlement, just north of modern-day St. Louis, has been rebuilt as it looked in 1812. They were subsistence farmers. Their reconstructed cabin is located in Fort Zumwalt Park in O’Fallon, Missouri. James and his brother moved to California in 1849, then later returned to Missouri to lead others in a covered wagon train across the continent back to California. He didn’t succeed as a gold miner, so he turned to farming. He settled in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where my grandfather and father were born. KENNEDY: Where in the San Joaquin Valley? ZUMWALT: My father’s hometown is Tulare, California. It lies southeast of Fresno in a very fertile valley between the Sierra Nevada and California Coastal mountain ranges. Now, there is a lot of dairy and alfalfa, but also fruits, nuts, grapes, olives, and vegetables. Tulare County is one of the top agricultural producers by value in the United States. While the valley floor is flat and agricultural, to the east rise the Sierra Nevada mountains. Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park lie in Tulare County. KENNEDY: I remember, as a kid before the war, being taken by my aunts who lived in Beverly Hills, taken in a Model T to go over and look at the wildflowers in the Central Valley. ZUMWALT: My family also used to drive from San Diego to Tulare in the summers to visit my grandfather. I thought it was a very hot place, but my father, who grew up there, had positive memories of small-town life, despite the poverty of the Depression. My grandfather was a doctor in this town of perhaps twenty thousand people. My grandfather was a public figure with many friends; at one point, he was elected mayor. I never met my grandmother, who died when my father was still a child, but she was a very accomplished woman; she too was a medical doctor.