Ambassador from the Prairie or Allison Wonderland
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. xiv, [2], 400 pages. Illustrations. Index. Some ink underlining and marks noted. The DJ is somewhat soiled and creased: some wear to top and bottom edges. John Moore Allison (April 7, 1905 – October 28, 1978) was an American diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Japan from 1953 to 1957. From 1957 to 1958, he was Ambassador to Indonesia and from 1958 to 1960 to Czechoslovakia. He was later a professor at the University of Hawaii. Allison earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Nebraska in 1927. Allison worked as an English teacher,including at the Imperial Japanese Naval Engineer Officers Academy. Allison joined the Foreign Service in 1932. On January 26, 1938, Allison, American consul in Nanjing, was struck by a Japanese soldier. This incident is known as the "Allison Incident." Japanese Consul-General Katsuo Okazaki formally apologized. After Japan's surrender, he served in various State Department leadership positions covering Japan and the Far East from 1946 to 1952. Allison participated in the drafting of the Treaty of San Francisco, serving as John Foster Dulles's aide during the negotiation of the treaty. Allison was named United States Ambassador to Japan in 1953. In March 1954, 16 years after the "Allison Incident," Allison and the man who had apologized to him in Nanjing, Japanese Foreign Minister Okazaki, signed the U.S. and Japan Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement on behalf of their respective countries. After his mentor John Foster Dulles died in 1959, Allison retired from the Foreign Service in 1960. Derived from a Kirkus review: Allison, by his own admission, was a lucky man. Straight from the cornfields of Nebraska, he drifted into a stint of English teaching in pre-war Japan, then became an officer in the Foreign Service where, in a 30-year career, he was Ambassador to Japan, Indonesia and Czechoslovakia, rising as high as Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs under Truman. Allison was present in Japan when Pearl Harbor was bombed, with MacArthur when the North invaded South Korea, in Indonesia when that country raised its claims to New Guinea (he criticized the policy of giving aid to anti-Sukarno forces and was recalled); he worked with and admired Dulles, Truman and Acheson. In turns he was hail-fellow with almost everybody, from writer Christopher Morley to the U.S. Senate, which did not think him pink although he was not 101% for Chiang. Originally a moderate cold-warrior, he gradually became more dovish. Allison seems to have been a quiet, competent, honest diplomat who was not afraid to make some waves. Condition: Good / Good.
Keywords: Diplomacy, WWII, Japan, Foreign Service, Indonesia, Katsuo Okazaki, Richard M. Nixon, Syngman Rhee, State Department
ISBN: 0395172055
[Book #8222]
Price: $175.00