Library of Congress Interview with Ambassador Daniel A. O'Donohue The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR DANIEL A. O'DONOHUE Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial interview date: May 28, 1996 Copyright 2000 ADST Q: Today is May 28, 1996. This is an interview with Ambassador Daniel A. O'Donohue, being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. I am Charles Stuart Kennedy. Well, let's start at the beginning. Would you tell me when and where you were born and something about your family? O'DONOHUE: I was born on October 27, 1931, in Detroit, Michigan. Both my father and mother were immigrants from Ireland, although they had met in Detroit. I was the first-born in the family. My father was a bus driver. I spent all of my youth in Detroit. Q: We're talking about when the Great Depression hit the United States. O'DONOHUE: Yes, although in those days the condition of “poverty” was so widespread that, as a child, I hardly noticed it, as a matter of fact. I can't really claim that the Depression ever bore very heavily on me. Q: I think that that's true of most of us at that time. It wasn't that bad a time for kids. O'DONOHUE: That's right. This was an utterly different kind of American society. This was actually the beginning of a period of “lean years.” We were children growing up in an Interview with Ambassador Daniel A. O'Donohue http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001427 Library of Congress adult society, unlike the “baby boom” after World War II, when children were the focus of society. It was an unexceptional childhood. Then I went to the University of Detroit. Q: Where did you go to high school? O'DONOHUE: Catholic Central High School in Detroit. Q: Did you get much material on foreign affairs? We're talking about the period of World War II. O'DONOHUE: Well, I had always had, and indeed quite clearly the reason why I was interested and entered the Foreign Service, was that I was an omnivorous reader. I was particularly interested in history. At that age I wouldn't have described this as “foreign or international affairs.” In effect, I was reading a great deal and continued to do so throughout my life. At the University of Detroit I actually majored in chemistry. Then, in my junior year I found out that I was color blind. I received a Bachelor of Science degree and went into the military. Up until that point, I had never heard of the Foreign Service, having come out of an immigrant milieu. Q: When did you graduate from the University of Detroit? O'DONOHUE: I received my degree in 1953. I served two years in the Army, including one year in Korea. Q: What did you do in Korea? O'DONOHUE: I was assigned to a very strange group. It was a special category of the Army, detailed to serve with the Air Force. It had a very mysterious title but, in fact, it was an Aviation Battalion which built airfields. In Korea. I was first assigned to Kimpo Air Base, which was called “K-14” in those days. I was briefly at “K-55” Air Base, a large air base Interview with Ambassador Daniel A. O'Donohue http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001427 Library of Congress down near Osan [about 30 miles South of Seoul]. Then, for most of my time in Korea, I was at “K-16” Air Base on Yoido Island in the middle of the Han River near Seoul. In those days “K-16” could take a C-47 transport aircraft. During the rainy season one end of the air strip was flooded, and we were evacuated at that time. Later it was the site of a massive land fill, where there now may be a million people living on what had once been a very small island. When I came back from the Army, I then entered Wayne State University in Detroit, where I obtained a Masters Degree in Public Administration in 1955. Early in the fall of that year a friend of mine told me that there was an examination for the Foreign Service and suggested that we take it. Up until then I had not known that we had a Foreign Service, but I took the Foreign Service examination in October, 1955. Then, events proceeded in a slow manner which, I think, are as true today as they were then. I took and passed the written exam, passed the oral, and, at that point, became much more seriously interested in foreign affairs. The process finally ended in July, 1957, when I entered the Foreign Service. Q: Could you give us a little feel for the oral exam you took? Do you remember how and when it was given? O'DONOHUE: Yes. It was given regionally. I drove down to Cincinnati from Detroit. As I remember, there were three examiners. The examination was heavily oriented toward foreign affairs with emphasis on how I expressed myself. I would say that it was quite “open ended.” That is, the questions didn't lend themselves to “Yes” or “No” answers. Indeed, the examiners let me ramble on. However, the questions were all related either to government, foreign affairs, or international developments. As I said, they were really questions to elicit responses. The examination was conducted in a fairly low key way by the three examiners. As I recall it, it lasted for about an hour or an hour and 20 minutes. I didn't feel that it was an “interrogation.” On the other hand, I Interview with Ambassador Daniel A. O'Donohue http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001427 Library of Congress felt that I had been put to a thorough test. As I remember, I left the room at the end of the exam. Later, one of the examiners came out and said that I had passed. Q: Were you married when you entered the Foreign Service? O'DONOHUE: No. Q: After you took the written exam, were you starting to make some inquiries about what the Foreign Service was? If you did, I was wondering what people told you. O'DONOHUE: Well, in Detroit and among the people that I associated with, the Foreign Service was really quite a mysterious thing. When I passed the written exam, I became more interested in the Foreign Service. At the same time, then as now, you couldn't “bank your future” on it. So, while waiting for all of the events involved in entering the Foreign Service to unfold, I went to Lansing to work in the State Government. Essentially, I was quite ignorant about the Foreign Service. Although I had majored in chemistry, I had two strengths. There was my massive reading in history and foreign affairs. Then, I also had a practical and solid grounding in American politics and government, because my father had been very active in the Democratic Party. Indeed, he had the rather ignominious experience of having been a campaign manager in 1932 for a Democratic candidate for Congress in Detroit who lost in the Roosevelt landslide. So this kind of influence obviously affected me. I was essentially ignorant of the Foreign Service, outside of descriptions of what it did. My approach was somewhat like the Navy slogan of joining the Foreign Service “to see the world.” Although, during this period the Wriston program had the State Department and the Foreign Service in a state of turmoil, I knew nothing of this. A measure of my ignorance was that I delayed entering the Foreign Service for a year because I had made a commitment to take this particular job in the State Government. Meanwhile, those who had gone to Georgetown University and elsewhere had “rushed in” to the Foreign Service. They had come in as FSO-6's in the old system and then had become FSO-7's in the new 8 grade system. As they were Interview with Ambassador Daniel A. O'Donohue http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib001427 Library of Congress literally the only FSO-7's, they were quickly promoted to FSO-6, while I came in as an FSO-8 and struggled for several years before I caught up with them. Indeed, one of my classmates was sworn in while he was in the hospital. He had gone to Georgetown and had come down with “mumps.” They swore him in when he was in his hospital bed. At that time the Foreign Service was paternalistic and highly personalized. Q: When did you take the Basic Officer Course? O'DONOHUE: In July, 1957. Q: Could you tell us something about the composition of your class at the Foreign Service Institute? What was their outlook and what kind of training did you receive? O'DONOHUE: First of all, we were in the midst of a tremendous expansion. The Foreign Service expanded in the sense that it took over many jobs which had previously been under the Civil Service. It wasn't so much that the State Department grew immensely, but the Foreign Service was suddenly recruiting for a much larger entity. The Foreign Service Institute [FSI] was training one class of new officers a month. There was a great sense of excitement and adventure. Like me, there were other, new officers for whom the Foreign Service was a career that they had not previously thought of. Then, in 1956-57, when the Foreign Service broadened its recruitment, the FSI classes grew in size.