Asian American Spies: How Asian

Americans Helped Win the Allied

Victory Brian Masaru Hayashi
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Asian American Spies
 Asian American Spies
How Asian Americans Helped Win the Allied Victory

Brian Masaru Hayashi

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hayashi, Brian Masaru, 1955– author.
Title: Asian American spies : how Asian Americans helped win
the Allied victory / Brian Masaru Hayashi.
Other titles: How Asian Americans helped win the Allied victory
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021001784 (print) | LCCN 2021001785 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780195338850 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190092863 (epub) |
ISBN 9780190092856
Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939–1945—Secret service—United States. |
World War, 1939-1945—Participation, Asian American. | Asian American
spies—United States—History—20th century. | United States. Office of
Strategic Services—History. | World War, 1939–1945—Propaganda. |
Propaganda, American—Asia—History—20th century.
Classification: LCC D810.S7 H38 2021 (print) | LCC D810.S7 (ebook) |
DDC 940.54867308995—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001784
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021001785

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195338850.001.0001
For Yumei Song and Esther Yumi Hayashi
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Note on Transliteration

Prologue: A Trojan Horse?

Introduction
1. Creating an Inclusive, Centralized Intelligence Agency
2. Recruiting Asian Americans with the Right Stuff
3. Morale Operations and Talking Their Way Into Japan
4. Fighting Like a Man, Special Operations Style
5. Knowing Your Enemies and Allies: Research & Analysis and Secret Intelligence
6. Countering Enemy Spies, Rescuing POWs, and Dealing with Collaborators
7. Race, Loyalty, and Asian Americans
Epilogue: Unveiling the Trojan Horse

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book began years ago as part of a chapter for another book. However, finding a wealth
of primary sources and a dearth of secondary materials, I expanded this project and, in the
process, multiplied the number of people who helped make this book possible. At the early
stages of the book, certain knowledgeable individuals encouraged me along the way,
providing information, leads, and tips in the form of interviews that proved invaluable for
this project. The Japanese American Veterans Association members, and Terry Shima and
Grant Ichikawa in particular, provided a contact list of potential interviewees, some of whom
appear in this book. Father Richard Kim and his brother Arthur, too, supplied me with many
stories and insights about their family and life in prewar Shanghai that intersected with my
work on the OSS. Dick Hamada, Maggie Ikeda, Shirley Chun-Ming, and Howard Furumoto
opened their homes to me and allowed themselves to be interviewed about their involvement
or their family members’ role in the OSS. Debra Thurston, Hai and Tramh Le, and Ty and
Loan Nguyen, all friends of mine, helped by putting this vagabond researcher up overnight as
he explored the archives of key libraries in their area.
As the search for Asian Americans in the OSS expanded, my dependence on archivists and
librarians enlarged to include a considerable number of specialists. At the National Archives
and Records Administration II in College Park, Maryland, I received guidance from Larry
MacDonald regarding the OSS records that he and a host of volunteers processed and
organized after the CIA released them. The late John Taylor was especially helpful in
pointing out the largely untapped Shanghai Municipal Police records the CIA pulled out of
China before 1949. Nathan Patch, William Cunliffe, and Eric van Slander devoted an
enormous amount of their time to track down personnel records of various individuals within
the office. Jennifer Cole and Tad Bennicoff of the Seeley-Mudd Library at Princeton
University, and Peggy Dillard of the George Marshall Library in Lexington, Virginia, went
above and beyond the call of duty by locating and copying documents related to William
Lockwood and Peter Kim. Naoki Kanno, senior fellow at the Military Archives Center for
Military History at the National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo, was quite helpful in
my search through various materials. Susan Hammond, director of the War Legacies Project
and John McAuliffe, founder and director of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development,
searched through their transcripts related to Mac Shin and Frank Tan’s activities in Vietnam.
Other archivists and librarians who were generous with their time included Robert Tam of
the Chinese Historical Society Archives in Honolulu, Marjorie Lee of the UCLA Asian
American Studies Reading Room, and Sherman Seki of University of Hawai’i, Manoa. In
tracking down the social scientists who worked with Asian Americans in the OSS, Timothy
Driscoll of the Pusey Library at Harvard University, Susan Irving of the Rockefeller Archives
Center, Susan Jania of the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, David
Sun and Carole Leadenham of the Hoover Institution of War and Peace at Stanford
University, and Anne Watanabe, Octavio Olvera, Simon Elliott, and Jeffrey Rankin of
Special Collections at the UCLA Library were all extremely accommodating during my long
perusals of their materials.
The extensive research behind this book would not have been possible without financial
assistance or independent wealth. Lacking the latter, I was able to complete this project with
the former. The Mitsubishi Foundation generously provided me with funds that allowed me
to cross-check OSS materials against the Special Operations Executive records held at the
National Archives in London and the Guomingdang records at the National Archives in
Xindian City, Taiwan. The Japanese Ministry of Culture, Education, and Sports amply
supplied me with research grants over portions of this project that paid for much of the high
cost of traveling and lodging in so many different locations where the documents were
deposited. In addition, my previous academic home, the Graduate School of Human and
Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, supplied general financial assistance with the high
cost of copying and equipment during the writing of this book. Henry Choi, Sonia Kim, and
Aki Yamamoto helped me locate certain documents in Japanese and Korean languages.
Anran Wei assisted with some of the translation of the Chinese-language materials, as did
Jinhee Kwon, who ably assisted me when I went to inspect the Syngman Rhee Presidential
Papers at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. Shōtarō Shindo and Shinichi Itagaki, as usual,
provided valuable hints and insights from their own research which immeasurably help
improve this manuscript. Funding from the Department of History, Kent State University,
where I now have settled, was also helpful.
Special thanks goes to individuals who helped make the manuscript better. Susan Ferber,
editor, provided many insightful comments, suggestions, and corrections, making this
manuscript far more readable than it had been before. Lon Kurashige, Valerie Matsumoto,
Yasuko Takezawa, and Rumi Yasutake gave invaluable advice along with opportunities to
present portions of the research at their conferences.
And finally, my family deserves mention. My wife, Yumei, helped me as I struggled with
some of the Chinese-language documents, digitally photographed other materials, and took
care of our daughter Esther, whose help occasionally made the research and writing that
much more difficult to do. This book is dedicated to them.
 ABBREVIATIONS

AGFRTS Air Ground Forces Resources & Technical Staff

AUS Army of the United States
CBI China-Burma-India Theater
CN Chinese Nationalist (dollars)
CNO Chief of Naval Operations, United States Navy
COMINTERN Communist International
CPUSA Communist Party of the United States of America
CT China Theater
COI Coordinator of Information
DOJ Department of Justice
FE Far East section
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
GBT Gordon-Bernard-Tan spy team
IBT India-Burma Theater
ICP Indochinese Communist Party
JACL Japanese American Citizens League
JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff
MID Military Intelligence Division
MO Morale Operations Division, Office of Strategic Services
NKVD Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Dei or People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs
ONI Office of Naval Intelligence
OSS Office of Strategic Services
OWI Office of War Information
R&A Research and Analysis Division, Office of Strategic Services
ROTC Reserve Officer Training Corps
SACO Sino-American Special Technical Cooperative Organization
SI Secret Intelligence, Office of Strategic Services
SIS Secret Intelligence Service (British)
SO Special Operations Division, Office of Strategic Services
SOE Special Operations Executive (British)
SSU Strategic Services Unit
USN United States Navy
WRA War Relocation Authority
X-2 Counterintelligence Division, Office of Strategic Services
 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

Personal Names
Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi)
Chou Enlai (Zhou Enlai)
Ho Chi Minh (Nguyễn Sinh Cung)
Ilhan New (Yu Il Han)
Key H. Chang (Chang Ki Hyung)
Kilsoo Hahn (Kilsu Hahn)
Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong)
Pak Hoy Wong (Congxakhai)
Sisavang Vong (Sisavang Phoulivong)
Soong, T.V. (Sòng Zĭwén)
Syngman Rhee (Yi Sŭng-man)
Tai Li (Dai Li)

Geographic location names

Amoy (Xiamen)
Annam (central Vietnam)
Bias Bay (Daya Bay)
Burma (Myanmar)
Canton (Guangzhou)
Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
Chengtu (Chengdu),
Chinnanpo (Chinnampo)
Chungking (Chongqing)
Djakarta (Jakarta)
Dutch East Indies (Republic of Indonesia)
Foochow (Fuzhou)
Fo Shan (Foshan or Fatshen)
Foochow (Fuzhou)
Formosa (Taiwan)
Fort Bayard (Zhanjiang)
Genzan (Wonsan)
Hankow (Hankou)
Hoifung (Haifeng)
Hsian (Xian)
Icheng (Yichang)
Kangwŏn-do (Gangwon)
Karafuto (South Sakhalin)
Keijo (Seoul)
Kiukiang (Jiujiang)
Kongmoon (Jiangmen)
Kukong (Shaoguan)
Kwangtung (Guangdong)
Kweilin (Guilin)
Kweiyang (Guiyang)
Kweiyang (Guiyang)
Kweilin (Guilin)
Liuchow (Liuzhou)
Malacca (Malaysia)
Malaya (Malaysia)
Manchukuo (Manchuria)
Maoming (Mowming)
Mengtze (Mengzi)
Moneta (Gardena, California)
Mukden (Shenyang)
Nanking (Nanjing)
Pakhoi (Beihai)
Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)
Seishin (Chongjin)
Shameen (Shamian)
Sheklung (Shih-lung)
Shensi (Shaanxi)
Soochow (Suzhou)
Suiho (Sup’ung)
Sunwai (Sun Wui, Xhinhui)
Swatow (Shantou)
Tientsin (Tianjin)
Tsinan (Jinan)
Tientsin (Tianjin)
Toishan (Taishan)
Waichow (Huizhou)
Yangtze River (Yangzi)
Yenan (Yan’an)
Asian American Spies
 Prologue
A Trojan Horse?

On a cold day after Christmas 1944, Joe Teiji Koide stepped forward and placed his hand
over the Bible as others looked on. He pledged his solemn oath of office, as had so many
others as part of their induction into the United States’ first centralized intelligence agency,
the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). His words echoed through the room in more ways
than one:
I do further solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of
America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this
obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the
duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.1

After the ceremony was over, Koide went to Catalina Island, some twenty-two miles
southwest of Los Angeles, California, for his training. Koide worked for the Morale
Operations section of the Office on Project Green, a radio propaganda unit designing
materials for broadcast direct to Japan from the recently-captured Saipan in the Marianas
Island. The project was based in San Francisco, a city from which thousands of Koide’s
coethnics were forcibly removed only three years earlier. He enjoyed a $3,000 annual salary,
which was more than ten times higher than his previous one in the War Relocation Authority
camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Koide directed and produced radio scripts designed to
undermine the support the Imperial Japanese forces received from that nation’s civilian
populace. Before San Francisco, when Koide was in the “Collingwood” group at a secret
location outside of Washington, DC, he had proven himself a capable leader deserving of his
high salary and leadership status. Koide’s recruiter Thomas McFadden wrote:
He and three other members of the staff have demonstrated outstanding ability and have been designated as the chief
creative workers of the group. Their work is of a highly skilled and technical nature requiring a broad educational
background combined with a natural aptitude for the creation of subversive propaganda. Subject and the three other
individuals in question direct the other Japanese personnel in their work and have been given positions involving a
great deal of responsibility.2

Yet Joe Koide’s behavior prior to working for the OSS raises questions about his loyalty,
despite his obvious skills and production. One might excuse his invoking of God’s help as
simply verbalizing the standard wording of the oath, but his pledge made “without mental
reservation” to support the Constitution “against all enemies” raised questions after the war,
given his membership in the Communist Party in Moscow and New York City during the
1930s. Worse, his behavior prior to joining the OSS made some Communist Party members
doubt his commitment to the Allied war effort, though they kept silent during the war. During
the 1970s and 1980s, Koide came under attack from Communist Party members Karl Yoneda
and James Oda, both of whom accused him of undermining the Party while serving as its
underground agent. He violated basic security procedures regarding membership lists, even
though he received training at the Lenin International School in Moscow during the 1930s,
where he learned from the Communist International (COMINTERN) about the art of
espionage, sabotage, and propaganda. In particular, Koide compiled a list of forty-seven
Japanese communists in 1938, a copy of which surfaced in February 1972 in the Imperial
Japanese (Police) Security Bureau’s files, raising suspicions that he was, in fact, an agent of
Imperial Japan.
Koide was also known to have stirred up draft resistance among Japanese Americans
interned at the War Relocation Authority’s camp at Heart Mountain, actions deemed by Party
and non-Party members alike to be detrimental to the Allied war cause. Hence, Koide’s life
appeared “like that of a double or triple agent,” as James Oda declared.3

AN AGENT FOR HIRE?

Kunsung Rie crept through the underbrush as stealthily as possible. His aim in the exercise
was to place a “bomb” next to an “enemy” gasoline tank to destroy it. Rie’s three-man
sabotage team included Jimmy Pyen and Diamond Kimm, all Korean Americans, who had
successfully rowed into Johnson’s Landing in nylon row boats. They stealthily crept up to the
gasoline tank and set their charges, after which the three quietly withdrew to a secluded spot
to set up their portable radio set. Rie, the fastest of the three at twenty words a minute, tapped
out coded messages and received a reply. The Korean Americans then returned to base where
they listened to a critique of their performance on their sabotage practice run at night on
Catalina Island in late March 1945.4
“Napko” was the name of the sabotage mission that Rie was a part of. Led by Colonel Carl
Eifler of the OSS, its departure was scheduled for mid-August 1945. This Special Operations’
mission, code-named “Einec,” was to land the three Korean Americans in the Chemulpo Bay
area, near present-day Incheon, and another three-man Korean American team called
“Charo” close to Chinnampo, near Songnam. Both Einec and Charo aimed to establish a base
inside Korea from which to report on the Imperial Japanese forces and make contact with the
Korean underground. Once completed, they would launch sabotage operations, action that
Kunsung Rie preferred to intelligence-gathering. To successfully carry out their mission,
however, the OSS required Napko members to complete the necessary training. It also
needed them to form social connections with locals to shield them and their collaborators
from Imperial Japanese forces and political connections to win the cooperation of the Korean
underground. Above all, Napko required loyalty to the Allied cause.5
Kunsung Rie met most of Napko’s requirements. His social connections were strong—the
team was to be based initially at Rie’s own house in Korea, which made it necessary for him
to undergo plastic surgery to disguise his appearance. Before their mission’s mid-August
1945 departure, he had excelled in the OSS training in Special Operations. He was rated
“exceptionally well” in sending and receiving coded messages and quite adept at weapons
training. His trainer wrote: “Very good with carbine because he likes the weapon.” He earned
only a “satisfactory” mark in map work, partly because he was inattentive in his military
intelligence class. As Lieutenant Robert Carter Jr. wrote, Rie “would rather fire weapons than
learn what makes them operate.”6
But a critical requirement was in doubt. Who or what cause was Rie loyal to? The Office
of War Information (OWI) determined that this young Korean American held “questionable
loyalty” after a special hearing on Rie’s suitability for federal government service. It
withdrew Rie’s contract after fifty-eight witnesses, including Korean Americans such as
Woon Su Chung, Secretary to the Chairman of the Korean Committee, and Korean
independence lobbyist Kilsoo Haan, accused Rie of giving propaganda speeches for the
Japanese while employed at the New York Japanese Consulate. They believed Rie had
distanced himself from other “loyal Koreans,” fearing actions taken against Japan might
trigger “reprisal after the war.” OSS Chief of Security Archbold van Beuren informed Carl
Eifler that Rie was not trusted by other federal government agencies either: “The Subject is
regarded with suspicion by all government departments which have had contact with him,
and these suspicions range from allegations that he is a Japanese agent to statements that he
is loyal to the Allied cause but very unreliable.” Upon further investigation, van Beuren
found that Rie could not be trusted with confidential information since he was mercenary:
“There is much evidence to indicate that the Subject will always be willing to sell out to the
highest bidder and that he cannot be trusted with any type of confidential information.”7
Evidence notwithstanding, Carl Eifler retained Rie. The colonel believed dropping Rie
would in effect abort the mission before it began: “This entire plan of his particular group is
built about him and if I lose him I lose the entire striking force of the plan, and I doubt
seriously if the entire project could be carried on without this original striking force.”
Moreover, Eifler believed Rie’s motive for serving on Napko involved Korean nationalism.
He saw firsthand Rie’s ruthlessness in wanting to assassinate a fellow countryman for actions
deemed detrimental to the cause of Korean independence. When asked if he had any
misgivings, the colonel responded: “Definitely not, because the man, in going back, is going
back to a hard life of starvation, while carrying on the work which he is to do, where on the
other hand he could live in the United States in comparative peace and comfort.”8

AN AGENT TURNED?
“Where is Lincoln Kan?” Wilfred Smith, his superior, asked aloud in February 1945 after the
suave Chinese American had not been heard from for about six months. Kan was dispatched
on a spy mission into Japanese-occupied Guangdong Province of southern China. As a leader
of one of four spy teams sent to this region, Kan was assigned to Sector Two (Macao) to
gather intelligence on Imperial Japanese forces stationed there. His mission preceded a
ground assault by Chinese Nationalist troops seeking to capture southern China and open up
a port for the safe arrival of American “Liberty” supply ships that year. Kan’s “Akron” team
gathered information critical for planning this campaign, code-named “Carbonado.” He
needed to uncover the deployment, numbers, weaponry, and morale—information known as
Order of Battle—of the Imperial Japanese forces the Chinese Nationalist troops would likely
face, as well as the attitudes of the Pearl River Delta region’s local population toward
support, resistance, or neutrality in the event of such an assault. All of this, Wilfred Smith of
the Fourteenth Air Force, Charles Dewey, and Charles D. Ambelang Jr.—Kan’s superiors—
expected Kan and the Akron team to deliver by March 26, 1945.9
Lincoln Sat Hing Kan, also known as Kan Yuen Fook, was well-qualified for the mission.
Code-named “Karlin,” Kan understood the importance of Order of Battle information since
he was a lieutenant in the army and was experienced at collecting such data. He had once
served in the famed “Flying Tigers” of the Fourteenth Air Force’s Air and Ground Forces
Resources Technical Staff (AGFRTS). He was also socially well-connected to Guangdong
region, which provided him a measure of protection. His grandfather, father, and uncles were
all owners of a cigarette and tobacco enterprise known as Nanyang Brothers Company, with
an estimated value in 1924 of twelve million dollars. His loyalty was to the United States.
After all, he had been born an American citizen, in New York City on February 12, 1919, and
named after the sixteenth president of the United States, whose birthdate he shared. Kan
himself was fluent in both Chinese and English. His language skills came easily to him as he
was raised in Shanghai, and his English language skills were well-honed at the American
School there. He had socialized freely with other American students, as evidenced by his
founding of the Photographic Society. His college education began at the University of North
Carolina as a political science major in 1938. He took a leave of absence to enlist in 1940,
undergoing army training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Due to his training and
qualifications, Kan understood the risk he was taking and, prior to departure behind enemy
lines, he left a letter with Charles Fenn to deliver to his family, “just in case anything
happens,” he told Major Harold C. Faxon. With the requisite linguistic skills, cultural and
social connections to the targeted region, military training, social science background, and
correct “racial uniform,” Kan was prepared for the challenging assignment facing him.10
Kan’s assignment was fraught with danger. He faced the uncertain loyalties of many
guerrillas—the Guangdong and Guangxi provincial areas alone had some 10,000 who could
suddenly turn against the Chinese American and reveal his identity to the Imperial Japanese
forces. Or he could be assassinated by one of the thousands of agents serving Tai Li, head of
a Chinese Nationalist government’s intelligence agency, who swore to kill any OSS
operatives operating inside China without Chinese Nationalist government approval.
Transiting by water was equally dangerous. The area was known for centuries for its piratical
activities and the notorious pirate Kit Kung Wong preyed upon the boat traffic in the region.
He was reputedly in the pay of Imperial Japanese intelligence. Compounding these dangers,
Kan faced a formidable opponent—a well-trained Imperial Japanese intelligence unit.
Headquartered at the Japanese Consulate office in Macao, they had recruited a large number
of Chinese locals as informants who kept them well apprised about the local population.
Under the capable leadership of Colonel Toyo Sawa, Vice-Consul Kan faced a formidable
opponent and thus had to move around the region with considerable caution.11
The message from Karlin received on February 20, 1945, provided little comfort to Kan’s
superior. After such a long absence of contact, Wilfred Smith and Charles Dewey sent a test
message to authenticate Kan’s identity. “Every possible precaution in being taken,” Smith
assured the Akron mission planners. He planned “to ascertain the authenticity of his
messages and a test message is being given Lt. Kan during the schedule on the night of 23
February.” Karlin, however, gave an unsatisfactory response to the test message, raising
suspicions that Kan had been captured, tortured, and “turned” by their nemesis Colonel Toyo
Sawa.12

A TROJAN HORSE?
Both immediate supervisors and top-level OSS officers responsible for the spy and saboteur
operations showed no apparent concern for the risks involved with two of the three Asian
American agents. Herbert Little, chief of Morale Operations and the main recruiter for the
“Green Japanese” American team, admitted that he and his staff gave only “carefully worded
suggestions,” not orders regarding the black radio propaganda materials they were creating.
“It was rule by indirection,” Little confessed, despite the obvious distrust by some European
American staff members who scrutinized the materials submitted by Koide and other
Japanese Americans for covert messages. Henson Robinson, chief of the Schools and
Training, instructed Philip Allen at the Catalina Island training center to ignore Security’s red
flags on Kunsung Rie and proceed with Napko. After observing firsthand Rie and Napko
members’ training, the director, William Donovan, too showed no concern and took the plan
directly to the War Department’s Planning Group for approval.13
Following Donovan’s lead, other high-ranking OSS leaders pressed forward with their
plans, ignoring the possibility of an Asian American Trojan Horse in the midst. Instead, they
saw opportunities for including experienced agents like Lincoln Kan with his wide
commercial, social, and political connections in China into their postwar spy network for
East Asia. In early May 1945, Paul Helliwell and Duncan Lee, legal advisor to the office and
a colleague of Director William Donovan prior to the war, determined the best espionage
system for East Asia would involve bringing into their fold experienced agents and American
expatriates residing in the target area. Duncan Lee, whom Helliwell wanted to direct the
entire postwar spy network for East Asia, further advised William Donovan: “An efficient
intelligence system must have many roots among the masses of the population. In this
respect, I believe we can well learn from the British and other Europeans in Asia who
certainly make full use of their commercial people.”14
Only those near the bottom of the chain of command continued to doubt the loyalty of the
Asian American agents working directly under them. The European American personnel in
the San Francisco Green office constantly checked the translations and content of the
materials produced by the Japanese American staff, searching for hidden messages to the
enemy. The Security Investigation office of the OSS continued protesting Rie’s inclusion in
Napko. Kan’s superiors harbored doubts about the authenticity of his radio messages as well.
Suspecting capture, Wilfred Smith decided to continue communications with Karlin for the
purpose of feeding Sawa disinformation:
Our agent [Karlin] in Macao is maintaining a daily radio schedule with us but . . . is at present suspicious as to his
security and knowing something of Colonel SAWA (Chief Special Affairs Bureau in Macao) and his methods give
increasing reason for misgiving. Our agent has been given test questions and has not entirely given satisfaction in his
answers. However, in any case, . . . he will be useful, if not for our intelligence perhaps we can give [disinformation] . .
. through him to the Japanese.15
The action and behavior of the three Asian American agents raises a question about their role
within the OSS. Which of these OSS agents worked, voluntarily or involuntarily, for the
enemy? To find this answer, one must understand how the OSS and Asian Americans
understood each other, and their respective roles within that organization and the larger
American war effort of World War II.
 Introduction

“Race” was changing in the years immediately prior to and during World War II. For many
European Americans in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), it was no longer an idea that
ascribed a fixed set of social or cultural characteristics to a given ethnic or racial group.
Instead, William Donovan, the founding director of America’s first wartime centralized
intelligence agency, took pride in his organization’s ethnic and racial inclusiveness by
requiring loyalty, along with cultural and linguistic skills, as the basis for employment. On
September 28, 1945, he characterized the OSS in his final speech to his employees
terminating the five-year-old spy agency as “a group of Americans constituting a cross
section of racial origins” that successfully collected, analyzed, and disseminated strategic and
tactical intelligence necessary for America’s decision-makers during the war. In the audience
were African Americans, Latino Americans, and Asian Americans.1
Donovan’s claim appears accurate as it applies to Asian Americans. Within this hybrid
federal government agency of civilian and military personnel, Asian Americans numbered
over 400 or under 2 percent of 23,978 names in the OSS personnel records. These numbers
suggest racial discrimination at the entry level, since Asian Americans comprised roughly 3
percent of the total American population for the continental United States and its territories
of Alaska, Guam, Hawai’i, and the Philippines. Yet these Asian Americans served in roles
that affirm the agency’s racial inclusiveness. Those with the necessary linguistic skills
translated the mass of collected materials and documents for the Research and Analysis
(R&A) section’s reports on East Asia, earning high marks among military officers and
federal government officials. Others slipped behind enemy lines, gathering covertly
intelligence on the enemy forces and local conditions for Secret Intelligence (SI), having the
requisite linguistic and cultural skills, local social connections, and the correct racial uniform.
Still others served in Special Operations (SO), conducting raids against the Imperial Japanese
forces in Burma, while those in Morale Operations (MO) cranked out propaganda pamphlets
and radio broadcasts to stiffen Chinese resistance to Imperial Japanese occupiers and weaken
the Japanese resolve in fighting against the Allied forces. Nearly all held the rank of
“technical” personnel: noncommissioned or commissioned officers to whom European
American enlisted men serving under them were required to salute and obey orders. In nearly
all cases, Asian American civilian personnel handled classified materials without restrictions
on their security clearance. Their salaries, too, were commensurate with other OSS
employees of similar qualifications instead of relegation to the secretarial pool and janitorial
service.2
Yet writers on the OSS differ in their assessment of the spy agency’s racial inclusiveness.
Bradley Smith suggests that racial segregation was commonplace, pointing to an instance of
a Japanese American R&A employee unable to obtain security clearance to the Library of
Congress due to race. However, Douglas Waller disagrees. He portrays the OSS as the
opposite—very racially inclusive—after consulting a much a wider range of documents than
what had been available to Smith thirty years prior. He portrays Donovan as staunchly
defending one of his African American employees against racial discrimination and taking
exception to the mass removal and internment of West Coast Japanese Americans.3
In addition to race, loyalty is another important issue when considering Asian Americans
in World War II. The OSS placed a premium on loyalty, requiring it of all their employees to
ensure that the intelligence they collected, analyzed, and disseminated to other federal
government agencies was not disinformation originating with the enemy. Even today, the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s employment ads list patriotism or loyalty to the United
States as one of their requirements. But here too, one simply cannot borrow from previous
studies on the subject matter. Past studies of Asian Americans in general portray them as
exclusively loyal to the United States when loyalty is often not singular, nor directed solely
toward one country such as the United States. Such depictions of Asian Americans as
political “model minorities” presents only one side of a multilayered, fluid phenomenon
known as loyalty.
Moving beyond oversimplification, this book widens the coverage of the OSS. Along with
MO, it explores the SI, SO, and R&A sections to provide a wider and more complete picture
of Japanese Americans in the OSS. It also examines Chinese Americans and Korean
Americans, as their historical experiences in the OSS were intertwined with one another in
the agency. The book does not cover Filipino Americans, however, since the OSS was
banned from operating in the Philippines by General Douglas MacArthur, eliminating the
need for such ethnic heritage speakers. In terms of time periodization, the book covers
closely Asian Americans and their prewar backgrounds, as those experiences influenced their
wartime participation in the OSS, a dimension often overlooked in studies on Asian
American intelligence agents. The book also covers some months after the Japanese formally
surrendered on September 2, 1945, as some of these Asian Americans were detailed to
conduct war crimes investigations allegedly committed by other Asian Americans in
collaboration with the Imperial Japanese forces.4
In this book, therefore, both race and loyalty are understood as fluid social constructions.
They are not seen as a fixed, essentialized phenomenon, nor are they restricted to a single
country, but can be multiple and changing. This study utilizes the social constructivist
approach of Simon Keller to understand loyalty and its antithesis, treason and collaboration.
Loyalty is not a stable identity in which, for example, one is born in the United States,
therefore one is loyal to that country to the exclusion of others. Keller defines loyalty as “the
attitude and associated pattern of conduct that is constituted by an individual’s taking
something’s side” and once taken, makes “essential reference to a special relationship”
between the individual and the object of that individual’s loyalty. Patriotism is one type of
loyalty that expresses itself in belief, and requires the creation of an imagined special
relationship. It does not originate from where one is born, raised, or educated; it is not sui
generis nor a product of the “historical self.” Similarly, treason requires betrayal of that
imaginary special relationship by the adoption of another object of loyalty at war with the
United States. Article III of the Constitution defines treason as “levying war” on the United
States and “adhering to the nation’s enemies, giving aid and comfort.” Treason and loyalty
are therefore social constructions whose meaning change over time, especially after 1945.
Collaboration is understood to mean “the continuing exercise of power under the pressure
produced by the presence of an occupying power,” a definition that removes the negative
association with treason imposed by those on the winning side of a war.5
Other terms used in this book related to espionage should be mentioned here. Intelligence
is, as John Ferris aptly puts it, “the collection and analysis of information by a power, to
enable it to make maximum use of its resources against rivals and potential enemies.” Such
kind of information may be tactical in nature, designed to answer the question, “What is the
enemy composed of?” This includes the targeted groups’ military capabilities, such as the
number of troops, the specifications of their weaponry, and general state of readiness for
combat. Other information gathered and analyzed include operational intelligence aimed at
determining where the enemy forces are deployed. To collect this type of intelligence,
sometimes it is done overtly, as when military attaches of the army or navy are assigned to
work in foreign countries. At other times, the information is gathered covertly or in secret. In
the latter, an agent or an individual capable of gathering such information covertly is used.
Occasionally used is a double agent, or one who has switched sides while in the service of
one intelligence agency. Communication from the agent to his or her supervisor or case
officer is usually done in writing or by radio in a language disguised so as to render the
message meaningless to the casual reader. A code is where words, phrases, letters, or
syllables are used to replace a plaintext element. A cipher is where a letter (or two at most) is
represented by another letter or number. Strategic intelligence concerns what the enemy or
ally is likely to do within the limits of their military capabilities. To determine intent, such
agencies must pull together a wide range of information including the personalities and their
tendencies in decision-making, and the political, economic, social, and cultural factors that
come into play in the decision-making process. Agencies usually gather such information
from open sources or those materials such as newspapers, magazines, technical and academic
journals, radio broadcasts, and other sources deemed accessible to the public. Intelligence
groups sometimes engage in propaganda work as well. The OSS conducted such operations,
spreading disinformation to undermine morale and sow confusion among enemy military and
civilian populations. Their distribution of leaflets and transmission of radio broadcasts for
that end was known as “black” propaganda, as opposed to “white” propaganda, which is a
straightforward and generally verifiable information. The latter was handled by the Office of
War Information (OWI), an agency that also employed Asian Americans and is the subject of
another book.6
In addition, some terms in Japanese are worth noting. Japanese Americans after World War
II often use generational terms. Issei refers to the first generation that immigrated from Japan
to the United States. Nisei refers to the second-generation or those born in the United States
and its territories. Other terms, such as kibei, refer to American-born Japanese who spent
some time in Japan before returning to the United States. Yobiyose refers to those Japanese
who were born in Japan but came at an early age to the United States. Inu refers to “spy” in
the singular or plural.7
Primary sources used in this study are another reason why Asian American Spies stands
apart from other books. Unlike previous studies, this book takes advantage of a much wider
set of documents related to the subject. The CIA released to the National Archives and
Records Administration nearly 4,000 cubic feet of OSS documents in the 1990s and, after
2000, made available the personnel records and other recently declassified materials that are
rich in detail and shed considerable light on OSS operations. To verify the essential integrity
of the OSS documents, OSS records were checked against materials from their rival
organizations—the SOE and the OWI—as well as former disgruntled employees such as J.
Arthur Duff. The study also utilizes personal papers of various individuals who served in the
OSS and were well-positioned to observe these Asian Americans. A few Asian American
spies left their personal papers, which are also used here. To further sketch their backgrounds,
materials in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese languages from around the world are also used
for this study, the former two with considerable assistance of native speakers. Together, these
sources provide a new look at the OSS, Asian Americans, and how they understood and
constructed loyalty during their service in World War II.8
However, memoirs and oral interviews by former OSS personnel are used selectively.
They are understood as being “between memory and history,” to borrow a phrase from Pierre
Nora, because their recollections of historical events are shaped by additional factors beyond
individual abilities in recall and proximity, temporal and spatial. In the first place, former
members of the OSS were legally obligated not to reveal publicly their wartime activities in
accordance with their oath of office. Only a small handful were given permission to write or
talk about their experiences. A half-century after the war ended they were released from their
obligation of silence, though many members continued to conceal important details of
operations and methods used in carrying out their duties for the OSS. Additionally, memoirs
and interviews are subject to “schematic reconstruction,” or the reframing of memory over
time. When individuals recall their personal experience—or what cognitive psychologists
call “episodic memory”—they apply a “schema” to facilitate recall. Those schemas are
mental concepts that inform individuals about what to expect from a given situation. The
schema or “lessons learned” change the details recalled with the passage of time and are
shaped, even invented to fit the “semantic memory.” The latter is a memory of knowledge,
such as remembering how to speak a foreign language, and begins to shape the episodic
memory when former participants gathered together to write accounts of their personal
experiences. Hence, they are used only with corroboration from other materials generated at
the time of the events under analysis.9
The few who received permission to write their memoirs consulted their colleagues prior
to publication and avoided subject matters that might reveal ongoing operations. Elizabeth
McIntosh, in Sisterhood of Spies and her previous book, Undercover Girl, penned her
memoirs only after consulting with the top officials inside the OSS and the CIA. Carl Eifler
wrote his autobiography with Thomas Moon, another SO agent, in The Deadliest Colonel
and fictionalized names and details to cover his wartime activities thirty years prior. Joe
Koide did the same, disguising the names of the personnel in MO he worked with. His two-
volume autobiography, initially intended as a work of fiction, was based on unrevealed
sources he collected and was written after consulting with colleagues. Unlike reports
generated at the time or immediately after an observed event, memoirs and oral interviews
are thus shaped by not only the individual author but by other unrevealed sources whose
accuracy and proximity cannot be determined without other corroborating sources.10
Beyond sources upon which it stands, this book’s unusual arrangement and findings
require an explanation. The prologue opens with the question of which of the three OSS
Asian American personnel in 1945 might have been a double agent or a mole. The first
chapter considers the internal structure of the OSS—how it was put together and how its
recruitment of agents was handled with respect to race and ethnicity. It finds that the
intelligence organization founded by William Donovan was, for the most part, quite liberal
with respect to both categories, though with such a large organization instances of
discrimination were entirely possible. The second chapter examines Chinese Americans,
Japanese Americans, and Korean Americans to assess the risk factors involved in recruiting
agents from these ethnic groups. It reveals that there were a handful of Asian Americans
recruited to serve foreign intelligence agencies and the risk, while low, nevertheless existed.
Chapters 3 to 5 examine three sections of the Asian American agents introduced in the
prologue. Joe Koide’s MO, whose aim was primarily black propaganda, is examined to better
understand how a possible foreign agent could transmit intelligence to another intelligence
agency. It finds that this section had a higher risk than others, because MO recruited
individuals with loyalty to the Allied cause of defeating the Axis powers rather than to the
American Constitution, as had other sections. And it allowed its Asian American personnel
considerable latitude in the creation of propaganda materials, both in print and over the radio.
In contrast, SO posed the lowest risk of infiltration, in large part because field operations
undertaken by this section were well behind enemy lines where the dangers were greatest and
where mutual reliance among team members the strongest for survival. Except for their
office in Istanbul, Turkey, Secret Intelligence avoided foreign agent penetration, since they
carefully recruited agents from groups known for their loyalty to the United States.
Counterintelligence and R&A sections were also free from foreign agent penetration, perhaps
in part because the former was too small numerically while the latter, the largest section of
the OSS, shielded itself from foreign interference by restricting its recruitment to their “old
boy network,” which kept out foreign agents but also excluded a number of qualified and
talented female recruits of all racial and ethnic groups. Chapter 6 delves into the months
immediately after Japan’s surrender, when OSS Asian Americans were tasked to rescue
Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and to investigate war crimes, which included alleged Asian
American collaborators. It unveils a small but significant number of Asian Americans who
served Imperial Japanese interests voluntarily and involuntarily. The last chapter ends with an
examination of loyalty and treason, since these issues were crucial not only for the
employment of Asian American agents, but also because many readers today have a
particularly strong image of Japanese Americans having a singular loyal to the United States
based on the stellar combat record of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. While true for
many Japanese Americans, historical truth is rarely so simple and in this case, both so-called
loyal and disloyal Asian Americans are presented here in the belief that the telling of only the
former reinforces the model minority image that many scholars today find detrimental.
Hopefully, the last chapter will help remove that simplistic image of Japanese Americans as it
reconsiders the meaning of loyalty and treason. The epilogue closes the book with a
revelation of which OSS member was the agent for a foreign power.11
 Given these findings, this study offers a new look in three different areas of scholarly
examination. For studies on the OSS, Asian American Spies provides a valuable corrective to
the Europe-centric view of the agency. It also brings to light Asian American agents and their
activities for the OSS in ways not possible until 1996, when Congress released all former
OSS members from their legal obligation of silence. For Asian American studies, it provides
a rare comparative look at three Asian American communities historically, and how social,
economic, and cultural tensions within and between these communities created a dynamic
mix from which these agents for the OSS were recruited. It also points to how some Asian
Americans were able to play a large but behind-the-scene role in postwar American
intelligence. And finally, for studies on race and loyalty, this book shows that racial antipathy
was far from pervasive in the OSS. Asian American Spies demonstrates how the OSS,
notably SO and SI, were racially inclusive in part because Asian Americans had the correct
racial and cultural uniforms that had greater value in close proximity to the enemy in Asia.
This finding contradicts the broad generalizations made by John Dower in War Without
Mercy and more recently by Peter Schrijvers in The GI War against Japan, that antipathetic
racial stereotypes against all Japanese was pervasive and deep. Instead, this book finds that
race as it applies to Asian Americans in World War II was a social construction whose
definitional boundaries of categories of races changed over time, as articulated by Michael
Omi and Howard Winant in Racial Formation in the United States. Its findings also match
those of Lon Kurashige, who demonstrates in Two Faces of Exclusion that racialist exclusion
was beginning to give way to inclusion of Asian Americans prior to World War II.12
A final comment on the spelling used for this study is in order. To the extent possible, the
original spelling as it appears in the documents is used. However, for clarity’s sake I have
added a list of personal names and geographic locations with their pinyin pronunciation for
the Chinese language and the same for the McCune-Reischauer system for the Korean
language. For Japanese names, I have inserted long vowel marks to help those interested and
able to read Japanese to better find the documents I have used. Given names followed by
surnames appear here, except for those whose names are widely recognized by last name
first, such as key leaders and royalty. I have also shortened some of the citations, since the
OSS attached long labels to their folders and files. I left off the middle initial for most names,
and omitted the military ranks and marital status of the personnel. I alone bear responsibility
alone for any errors that may appear here.
 CHAPTER 1

Creating an Inclusive, Centralized Intelligence Agency

The federal government agency Joe Koide, Kunsung Rie, and Lincoln Kan joined was an
ethnically and racially inclusive organization. This was not common inside the Washington
governmental bureaucracy in the early 1940s, as racial segregation was widespread. The
State Department routinely practiced racial discrimination, restricting African Americans to
the lowest positions within their organization. However, other newer agencies, such as the
Office of Price Administration, provided higher-level employment opportunities for
minorities while the Civilian Aeronautics Administration integrated National Airport’s
restaurants. How and why the Office of Strategic Services became the part of the newer
group of federal government agencies turning away from Jim Crow and employing Asian
Americans is the subject of this chapter.1
When the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI) was established on July 11,
1941, its director, William Donovan, was not concerned with recruiting Asian Americans.
Instead, he recruited individuals with European language skills as he sought information on
the capabilities and intentions of potential enemies and allies in Europe. Donovan gathered
from them information on weaponry, strength and size of combat troops, training and state of
readiness, and supply delivery systems, all of which is known as “tactical intelligence.” He
pulled together “operational intelligence,” or data on where those forces were deployed and
in what strength. Furthermore, he required details on the infrastructure supporting those
forces, such as the factories producing the weapons, raw materials necessary for such
production, food supplies, and other necessities for deployment, all of which affects the
capabilities of the enemy or ally. Yet to evaluate the enemy or ally’s intent, Donovan further
required an in-depth understanding of the enemy’s people and its leaders, together with
careful mapping of its topography— information referred to as “strategic intelligence.” Prior
to the COI, Donovan’s job was handled separately and information compartmentalized: the
Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the Military Intelligence Division (MID) collected
tactical intelligence; the State Department and the Treasury Department gathered strategic
intelligence; and the FBI confined its agent to counterintelligence work. But once
established, COI became indispensable for assembling both tactical and strategic intelligence
after American embassies in enemy territories were closed and all State, Justice, and
Treasury officials and army and navy military attaches were called home following the
declaration of war against the Axis powers in December.2
Figure 1.1 Map of Existing Theaters of Strategic Direction-Theaters of Operation, 1944. Courtesy of National Archives and
Records Administration II.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the War Department adopted the general outlines of
Donovan’s vision. They took Donovan’s organization under their wing in the summer of
1942 when President Roosevelt renamed the group the Office of Strategic Services.
Recognizing the need for an agency “distinct from the [army and navy] service intelligence
agencies,” the staff charged it with gathering “military, economic and political information”
on enemy, neutral, and allied countries to shed light on “the conditions and intentions of
opposing governments,” as well as to conduct counterintelligence against foreign agents. To
carry out these tasks, the JCS granted the OSS the right of access to intelligence reports and
secret intercepts, to transmit and receive messages confidentially with its own codes and
ciphers or through diplomatic pouches, and to have passports issued to its agents without “the
usual formalities of proof of identity.” In addition, the War Department’s top brass granted
the OSS the privilege of securing officers’ commissions for its personnel, “adequate” priority
in travel and supplies, and official recognition of “the military necessity of issuing simulated
or facsimile documents such as identity cards, ration cards, travel documents and currency.”
In short, the Joint Chiefs of Staff assigned Donovan’s group the task of centralizing
American intelligence through various means and to conduct “irregular warfare” as they
deemed appropriate.3
To assist in operations against Japan, William Donovan gathered intelligence outside of the
main islands of Japan. He realized getting information out of Japanese-occupied territories
was easier than inside Japan where Japanese authorities’ tight control over their society made
communication with agents difficult. But he also hoped to eventually slip agents into Japan
before his rival MacArthur’s anticipated invasion of those islands, so OSS agents could
deliver his sarcastic welcome: “Japan is being delivered to you, General MacArthur, courtesy
of Wild Bill Donovan.” Donovan also planned to conduct guerrilla warfare in Japanese-
occupied China and Korea, where locals were likely to cooperate with Allied forces. For his
organization to function smoothly, Donovan divided his personnel into two categories—field
agents and rear area personnel. For the former, he required people with the linguistic skills,
cultural knowledge, and the correct racial uniforms to successfully secure local cooperation
or passive acceptance of his agents operating in northeast Asia. For the latter, he needed
individuals with knowledge and experience in the region acquired through academic study
and through personal, social, or commercial experience to recruit and supervise locals tasked
with collecting intelligence. For Donovan, then, the top positions of the office would demand
recruits with high social, commercial, or academic connections and, equally important,
people he could trust and rely on with security matters. He then had them recruit others who,
utilizing their old boy network of social and professional peers, brought in European
American males and overlooked females, but excluded nearly all racial minorities, including
Asian Americans.4
Donovan gathered his resources to wage war against Imperial Japan amidst limitations
imposed from outside. He tried to enter the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater of Operation
where the US Navy and Army were militarily weak, knowing the former sought updated
weather reports on the region since climate patterns over northern China were useful for
central Pacific Ocean forecasts. Donovan was aware that the navy placed observers in China
known as coast watchers to identify Imperial Japanese Navy vessels and merchant marine
ships for bombing. Instead of turning to the OSS, however, he watched in dismay as the navy
dispatched Commander Marion “Mary” Miles to Chungking in 1942 to gather tactical
intelligence and begin covert operations by creating a Chinese Nationalist government-led
guerrilla force capable of tying down Imperial Japanese forces in China. Worse, his OSS was
rendered irrelevant in China as Miles successfully founded with army approval the Sino-
American Special Technical Cooperative Organization (SACO) in April 1943 and linked up
with Tai Li, head of the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics and a top spymaster. Even the
army, the director found, had locked his OSS out of strategic intelligence and covert
operations in the region once the Theater Commander General Joseph Stilwell appointed his
own son as head of the army’s intelligence section in China and Burma to analyze the
intentions of Chinese leadership and to mobilize the ethnically diverse local population in
Burma against Imperial Japanese forces.5
Fortunately for Donovan, the British needed OSS assistance in East Asia. Their forces
performed poorly in battles with the Imperial Japanese military during December 1941.
Fixated on suppressing nationalist movements within their empire, their Secret Intelligence
Service (SIS) inadequately assessed Imperial Japanese forces’ capabilities and intentions,
thereby contributing to the defeat and surrender of a numerically superior British force in
Singapore and the Royal Army’s retreat from Burma to India after their failure to stem the
rapid advance of the Imperial Japanese forces. The Special Operations Executive (SOE) too
was in disarray, since Chiang Kai-shek banned them from all guerrilla activities inside China
in early 1942. Both the SIS and SOE were hampered by their inability to recruit within the
diverse ethnic populations in East Asia, since the British policy of “imperial recovery” meant
continuation of their unpopular colonial rule. They scoured the empire but acquired only a
handful of Chinese Canadians to join the British forces in East Asia. Those few Japanese
Canadians who were available for service refused to join the British forces until their
demands for full citizenship rights were met. Worse, they came up with only a single Korean
Canadian who, after her interview, was assessed as “a mental case” with “pro-Japanese
sympathies.” The British depended on the Americans to provide them with translators and
had to make important concessions to the OSS in East Asia out of necessity. Thus, they
agreed to operational boundaries that permitted the OSS to plant its headquarters and other
bases inside India, share joint jurisdiction over Southeast Asia, and place all of China under
American operational jurisdiction.6
The OSS’s success in carving out a niche in East Asia, however, was undermined by others
inside the Washington Beltway. Donovan divided his office into three major sections—
administrative, intelligence, and strategic services—with a deputy director to oversee each.
The Administrative Department, directed by Louis Ream, handled the day-to-day operation
involving budgeting, supplies, and personnel matters. With over $12 million in 1942 and
access to the president’s $100 million annual emergency fund, the OSS entered the playing
field of federal government agencies amply endowed to carry out its assignment.
Figure 1.2 OSS organization—USA, 1944. Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration II.

It lacked, however, the independent means to provide supplies while operating in the
Indian Ocean Rim region, even though they were promised priorities “within reasonable
limits.” Hence, they relied on British assistance for transport of their personnel and materials
from the United States, across the Atlantic Ocean, through Cairo, to India. Additionally, their
personnel section acquired military officers’ commissions from army and navy without
revealing the nature of their mission, but were stymied by Bureau of Budget officials
demanding information on the OSS’s table of organization and rationales for officer
assignments. Thereafter, the OSS could only give noncommissioned officer and technical
representative status to their entry-level Asian American recruits. They also could offer
American citizenship—an enticing incentive for some noncitizen recruits, since
naturalization was virtually impossible for Asian immigrants defined by law as “aliens
ineligible for citizenship.” But for the most part, the OSS recruited among the American-born
and, even then, was tardy in recruitment. Once training began, the Administrative
Department’s Schools and Training section was slow to build “schools.” It did not train Carl
Eifler’s Detachment 101, which together with 500 of the earliest OSS recruits went to Camp
X, an SOE training camp located in a small Canadian town of 45,000 near Oshawa, Ontario,
on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Only when the last set of Asian Americans like Koide
and Rie came in did Schools and Training teach them the fieldcraft at isolated training camp
sites on Catalina Island, the national parks in Catoctin Mountain Park, north of Frederick,
Maryland, or Prince William Forest Park, near Quantico, Virginia.7
Donovan’s Intelligence Department also stumbled into trouble. Even though the Joint
Chiefs of Staff recognized the need for OSS intelligence-gathering and centralizing the data,
the War Department was undermined by others who saw the OSS as encroaching on their
territory. Deputy Director John Magruder had his department organized into different
subsections—Secret Intelligence (SI), Counterintelligence (X-2), Research and Analysis
(R&A), Foreign Nationalities Branch, and Censorship & Documents—all but the last two of
which conflicted with other organizations. The Office of Naval Intelligence was good with
SI, which offered to merge personnel. But SI ran afoul of the army’s intelligence director,
General George Strong, who opposed the coordinator of information’s transfer to the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, fearing civilian control over intelligence. X-2 raised fears in the FBI, which
saw the OSS as a threat to its own plan to expand counterintelligence operations in the
Western Hemisphere and beyond. Even Donovan’s prized R&A collided with the State
Department. R&A’s collection and analysis of large quantities of newspapers, magazines,
directories, Who’s Who, industrial manuals, and other open-source materials to develop
strategic intelligence was not controversial. It was their recruitment of some of America’s top
scholars that drew away expert personnel the State Department habitually depended upon
that caused tensions. Worse, its director James Baxter III, president of Williams College,
lured some of the top talent from Harvard University, such as German historian William
Langer, economist Edward Mason, and French historian Donald McKay, with high salaries.
These scholars in turn brought in Edward Earle of Princeton University’s Institute for
Advanced Study; Joseph Hayden, chair of the Department of Government at the University
of Michigan; and Calvin Hoover, a Duke University economist, who formed the R&A’s first
board of analysts to evaluate the long-term, strategic intelligence reports. Board members
used their own “eastern academic grapevine” to collect from thirty-five universities and
colleges a group of a hundred intellectuals competent in thirty-six different languages,
draining the pool of academics the State Department sought to tap.8
The Strategic Services Department also ran into trouble. It was tasked with undermining
the enemies’ capabilities and intentions through guerrilla warfare, commando-type operations
on the enemy’s flanks and rear, and with black propaganda to undercut the enemy’s will, both
civilian and military, to fight. Led by Deputy Director Strategic Services Operations Edward
L. Bigelow, the department had six sections—Special Operations, Operational Groups,
Maritime Unit, Special Projects, and the Field Experimental Unit (or Detachment 101)—all
to conduct warfare against Japan utilizing the former methods, while Morale Operations
(MO) adopted the latter. But MO under Karl Mann lost a sizeable segment of his staff to the
Office of War Information (OWI), formed in June 1942. OSS guerrilla/commando warfare
operations were halted by both army and navy theater commanders in the Pacific Theater of
Operation, despite Donovan’s friendship with Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and his
enviable Medal of Honor status within the army. The only concession he could wring from
them was deployment of his Field Experimental Unit in the China-Burma-India (CBI)
Theater of Operation, where supply priorities were the lowest and commanded by a general
who was indifferent to guerrilla warfare. When Eifler and his executive officer John
Coughlin reported to General Joseph Stilwell, Coughlin recalled that the cantankerous
general warned them as they departed for behind-enemy-lines operations: “Just remember
when your nuisance value exceeds your credit value you are out.”9
Donovan’s office circumvented these obstacles by strategically placing branch offices in
key port cities. Although both the army and the navy did not permit OSS entry into the
Pacific Theater per se, Donovan secured the approval of Lieutenant General Delos Emmons,
commander of the Hawaiian Department for the army, and Admiral Chester Nimitz, navy
commander in chief, Pacific Ocean Area, to establish an R&A branch in Honolulu on April
25, 1942. In return, Donovan’s group supplied Emmons with 1,300 radio sets and provided
his troops with morale-boosting materials and radio programs. He then turned to Alfred
Tozzer, a Harvard University anthropologist specializing in Mayan civilization, to serve as
the branch office head. Tozzer’s wife, Margaret Tenney Castle, was the daughter of George
Castle of the Castle & Cook Company, one of the territory’s largest corporations whose
holdings included Dole Pineapple and nearly all of the island of Lanai. Donovan knew the
professor made frequent trips to Hawai’i to study local Okinawans and counted on Tozzer
using his high social connections there for the OSS. Not long after Tozzer arrived on
February 1, 1943, he hired Willowdean Handy, an anthropologist and the only female
member of the Board of Regents of the University of Hawai’i, together with Marjorie
Sinclair, novelist and wife of the president of the University of Hawai’i, and head of the
Office of Postal Censor in Honolulu. Donovan did not anticipate the success Tozzer would
have in eliciting greater cooperation from the navy through the distribution of the Honolulu
office’s strategic intelligence reports with data culled from the Federal Communications
Commission’s transcripts of Radio Tokyo broadcasts. That political, economic, and social
information, Donovan learned, was judged by Admiral Chester Nimitz to be vital for his own
war plans. Donovan, however, took satisfaction in Tozzer’s initial report: “The personal
experience of this R&A outpost,” Tozzer said, “with the Army and Navy in this theatre in all
echelons have been most pleasant.”10
Donovan also succeeded in planting one of his agents inside MacArthur’s Southwest
Pacific Area Headquarters. He assigned Joseph Hayden to MacArthur’s office, knowing the
man’s stellar military service and expertise on the Philippines would prove beneficial to the
general. Hayden had earned a Silver Star for service in the navy during World War I as a gun
train commander in France; spoke French, German, and Spanish; and had about five years of
experience living in the Philippines on four different occasions—as an exchange professor at
the University of Philippines, 1922 to 1923, and as a Carnegie Visiting Professor from 1930
to 1931. As if to further whet the general’s appetite, Donovan knew Hayden’s academic
credentials were strong since, as a member of the political science department at the
University of Michigan, he had authored The Philippines: A Study in National Development
and Pacific Politics. Donovan may have told the general that Hayden was also on the board
of analysts for the R&A and would be responsible for “a complete picture” of any given topic
of importance with the information derived from private sources, government agencies,
foreign periodicals, and shortwave broadcasts. All this information, the director promised,
would become available to MacArthur even though Hayden and the board were to “integrate
this information of a confidential and secret nature in such manner that it may be presented . .
. to the President.” The OSS director also gave Hayden “exceptionally wide latitude for
unreviewed action and independent judgment” on projects similar to “secret intelligence.” By
early fall of 1943, Hayden had transferred intelligence materials on the Philippines from the
R&A to the Southwest Pacific Area Headquarters, along with special SI and SO equipment.
Donovan obviously succeeded, despite the personal rivalry with MacArthur, as evident by the
visit of one of MacArthur’s intelligence officer, Captain A. M. Russell, to “open the way to
some form of collaboration between the OSS and the Allied Geographical Section.” His
agent Hayden joined the Southwest Pacific Headquarters later that year.11
In addition, Donovan established two important branch offices to run operations against
Japan. He tasked the San Francisco office, also known as the Pacific Area office, with
coordination of all departmental operations—secret intelligence, strategic services, and
administration—as it related to the war against Japan. Donovan then got Robert Hall,
professor of geography at the University of Michigan, to oversee this branch office, given
Hall’s expertise in dealing with the Japanese in Latin America, where he was conducting a
detailed study of their settlements when the war broke out. Donovan viewed Hall’s
geographic expeditions to Japan from the late 1920s through the 1930s as important
qualifications, in addition to the professor’s experience as a decorated intelligence officer
with the American Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I. Donovan appointed
Hall as director of the Pacific Area office with orders to report only to himself, not William
Langer, the head of R&A under whom Hall was initially assigned when he joined the OSS on
November 17, 1942.12
The other branch office in New York was directed by businessmen, not scholars. From
midtown Manhattan, businessman-philanthropist Vincent Astor led the group to take
advantage of two important sources of information. His Oral Intelligence Unit, chaired by
Colonel “Ned” Buxton, was set up in mid-August 1941 to collect information from refugees
and Americans returning from foreign countries after receiving passenger lists from the
Immigration and Naturalization Service. Such information useful for understanding a variety
of subjects, from the mechanisms of governance in enemy territories to the condition of the
local economy. The other group was the Insurance Unit, tasked with gleaning intelligence
from records of insurance agencies. This group of a half-dozen businessmen examined
standard insurance records for blueprints of bomb plants, timetables of tide changes, and
thousands of other details about targets from a brewery in Bangkok, Thailand to a candy
company in Bergedorf, Germany. Under the leadership of Cornelius van der Starr, better
known as C. V. Starr, they compiled extensive files on the lives and property of their
policyholders, information useful for determining influential leaders inside Germany.13
Choosing Starr as the head of the Insurance Unit of the New York office was logical. Starr
understood how to build an organization from the ground up, a necessary qualification for the
nascent OSS. Starr grew up in a working-class neighborhood near Fort Bragg, California,
where he worked many odd jobs before matriculating at the University of California,
Berkeley. But he dropped out to study on his own and passed the state bar exam. Although
uninterested in military life after joining the US Army during World War I, Starr
demonstrated a real flair for the insurance business after leaving his Pacific Mail Steamship
Company job in Yokohama, Japan, for Shanghai. There he established his large insurance
business in 1918 by teaming up with Frank Raven to form the American Asiatic
Underwriters. Starr also hired two Chinese clerks upon whom he depended to bring in
clients. His company was a success and accumulated large real-estate holdings, owned by the
Metropolitan Land Company of Shanghai, opened up an automobile retail outlet for
Studebaker and Buick-Vauxhall agencies, and began spreading his business across China’s
coastal region and into the interior. By 1940 Starr’s Asia Life, known as “Yu Pang” or
“friendly country,” had offices across China in Tientsin, Hankow, Foochow, Canton,
Chungking, Amoy, Mukden, Harbin, and Hong Kong. After establishing the American
International Underwriters Corporation in New York in 1926, he established offices in Saigon
and Haiphong of French Indochina; Djakarta and Surabaya of the Dutch East Indies, Kuala
Lumpur and Malacca, Singapore; and the Philippines. His rapid expansion was in no small
part due to Starr’s disposition to select trusted Chinese personnel for positions of high rank
within his company. His insurance company provided Donovan with a ready-made
intelligence-gathering unit with trusted Chinese personnel.14
Esson McDowell Gale was chosen as Donovan’s personal representative to China to
independently verify intelligence reports received from SACO. Gale was highly qualified for
this task. He was fluent in French and German, competent in Japanese, and his Mandarin
Chinese language skills were so well-honed that he translated ancient Chinese documents. He
acquired these skills as a result of his many years spent in China, initially as a government
language student interpreter after graduating from the University of Michigan in 1907. His
knowledge of China was evident in his book, much of it based on his experiences as director
of the Salt Revenue Administration in major Chinese provinces and Manchuria, service for
which he was awarded medals by the Chinese government.15 Gale was equally suited to
liaise with factions within the Korean Provisional government, a necessary qualification to
ensure smooth operation of the Korean guerrilla operations Donovan envisioned. He had
connections with key figures like Syngman Rhee through his uncle James Gale, who had
assisted the leader’s entry into the United States. Esson Gale’s wife, born in Seoul and raised
in Wonsan, was socially tied to many within Korean leadership circles. Gale also developed
other connections from his Salt Revenue Administration work in Hankow and Changchun
(Manchuria) from 1914 to 1927 as its chief auditor, then as its officiating director general in
the Chinese Ministry of Finance, Salt Revenue Administration, from 1932 to 1939. He came
into the position recommended by Dr. T. V. Soong, minister of finance and brother-in-law of
Chiang Kai-shek. Being a former neighbor and friend of Admiral Chester Nimitz also made
him a logical choice.16
The OSS then secured for Gale the necessary credentials for work in East Asia. In
September 1941, Joseph Hayden met with John Wiley, Calvin Hoover, and Stanley Hornbeck
of the State Department to establish Gale’s cover. They agreed that Gale should create an
undercover organization that would report to Manila in case Americans were forced to leave
Shanghai under Japanese pressure. Hayden then secured a letter of recommendation from
Soong, who delivered the letter addressed to Chiang Kai-shek in a secret code. Two months
later, Hayden completed Gale’s official cover, making him a Foreign Service Technical
Advisor to the US Ambassador to China. He then scheduled for Gale to leave for Shanghai
on December 12, 1941.17
Gale’s plan for his mission team was ambitious. He aimed to recruit highly qualified
personnel and divide them into three sections—administrative, intelligence, and special
operations. For his administrative positions, he pulled in talented individuals like Paul
Linebarger to handle political observation and public relations role; Hunter Mann for
transportation; I. G. Riddick for propaganda; and O. J. Todd for the engineering and
conservation aspects of his work. For his intelligence work, he sought individuals with
knowledge of specific regions in East Asia including Tibet, Indochina, Calcutta, Australia,
Chungking, and Shanghai. Gale then placed Colonel Morris DePass to head the guerrilla
operations section but brought in others to supplement trained military directives and to
handle specific regions of East Asia. He searched for additional personnel to cover South
China, North China, North Manchuria, Siberia, Korea, and Singapore.18
Gale’s cautious approach should have endeared him to the Chinese and Korean leadership.
He believed in moving slowly but deliberately in intelligence work inside China, fearing
overlapping jurisdiction would spark jealousies and resistance. “Whatever misgivings there
may be in some quarters as to possible functional overlappings,” Gale reminded Donovan,
they “could be allayed by this more gradual approach. I recall that your own opinion held
that deliberate spade work would be desirable in a successful build-up of the project.”
Furthermore, Gale was open about his work for the COI and sought permission from the
Chinese government before proceeding with intelligence-gathering, believing in being
diplomatic “with a large D.” As he said to Donovan,
All my contacts here, both British and American, stress that any fact gathering activities must be with the cognizance of
the national authorities. In this friendly but alert governments domain, obscurantist methods are not feasible. The
situation here is entirely dissimilar to the earlier proposed undercover assignment to occupied areas. Therefore, I urge
that in the assignment of any person to this office, the Ambassador should be previously advised of his status and duties
through the State Department, for clarification to Chinese authorities.19

Gale’s attitude toward Korean independence, however, was unequivocal and immediate.
He denied that Koreans were unprepared to govern themselves, which won him the approval
of many within the Korean independence movement. Gale reasoned:
Certainly, no overseas Asiatic representation has a more experienced personnel, familiar with most governments of the
world, good and bad. . . . The Koreans could indeed assume administrative control in their own country with less
friction and greater effectiveness than either the French in Algiers or the Italians in Sicily . . . have demonstrated.20

Despite his willingness to work on Chinese and Korean terms, Gale’s mission ground to
halt soon after his arrival in Chungking. Gale encountered Gauss’s “acute displeasure,”
which the US Ambassador registered right after Gale reported in on March 8, 1942, and for
the next three months. He smeared his scholarly special assistant with vicious rumors and
placed him under operational restrictions that clearly violated the presidential directive for
the OSS. As one observer noted,
 Subsequently, Mr. Gauss spoke disparagingly of any attempt of the C.O.I. to conduct “secret” operations in China,
asserting that any activities in China should be carried on through him and through him only. He also sought to
discredit Dr. Gale on the basis of his previous record in China, and created the impression that he would do everything
in his power to force Dr. Gale out of China.

Gauss’s opposition was so deep that Joseph Hayden decided to halt the Gale mission less
than a half a year after it begun “on account of Chinese feeling” and to protect another
ongoing project. “It is also desired,” said Hayden to Gale, “that the success of the microfilm
project be carried on by [John] Fairbank for the Research and Analysis Branch not be
jeopardized by suspicion however unfounded that he is engaged in or connected with any sort
of secret operations.” Gale then turned over the reins to R&A’s Clyde Sargent, and the
Korean Project was shelved.21
Cancellation of the Gale mission forced the OSS to work under the restrictive SACO terms
of agreement. On the one hand, SACO prohibited all special operations, such as those
contemplated by Carl Eifler, and all independent SI network plans. It also left the OSS
vulnerable to compromised intelligence data and leaks because Japanese, British, and
Chinese Communist moles were placed inside of Tai Li’s bureau. On the other hand, the OSS
was able to exploit the agreement’s vagueness in the command structure to covertly establish
their own SI operations inside the China Theater. Under SACO, they were able to send in
their own R&A and MO personnel to quietly gather intelligence, an approach that allowed
Lincoln Kan and other OSS agents to enter the field.22
To ensure a smooth flow of strategic intelligence out of China, R&A director William
Langer appointed the China-friendly University of Michigan Professor Charles Frederick
Remer to run its Far Eastern section. Remer in turn brought in Charles Stelle, Joseph
Spencer, and Charles Fahs—all East Asia specialists—as his subsection chiefs. Remer
himself was an experienced “China Hand,” having taught for several years at St. John’s
University in Shanghai prior to and after World War I before receiving his doctorate in
economics from Harvard University in 1923. As a professor at Williams College and
University of Michigan, he authored or coauthored several books on the Chinese economy,
including, A Study of Chinese Boycotts, and Foreign Investments in China.23 Remer was
already prepared for the possibility of war in East Asia once the Soviet Union and Japan
signed a neutrality agreement in 1939, believing that just as Germany signed a nonaggression
pact with the Soviet Union and went to war against Britain and France, Japan would also
wage war against the Allied powers. Thus, he called for strengthening China militarily to
resist Japan, even though the United States was neutral:
The policy of the United States has been determined in broad outline by Japanese adherence to the Axis. This was an
open alliance against the United States. No other interpretation is safe. In carrying out American policy certain steps
seem imperative. Assistance must be given to China. A divided China is a victory for Japan and a defeat for the United
States. Chinese military success will turn the tide against Japan.24

Remer’s other assistants, too, were very knowledgeable about China. Charles Stelle,
Remer’s right-hand man, wrote “Americans and the China Opium Trade in the Nineteenth
Century.”25 Joseph Spencer, head of the China section, was a geography professor at
University of California, Los Angeles, whose specialty was also China. Spencer had
published numerous articles in the 1930s on China while working as the assistant district
inspector for the Salt Revenue Administration, Ministry of Finance, under which he covered
seven different districts stretching across thousands of square miles in central, western, and
southwestern China over an eight-year period. Spencer and his wife were fluent in Chinese,
having resided in Icheng on the banks of the Yangtze River and in Chungking. He was posted
further inland to Kweiyang after the Japanese invasion in 1937 and moved to Yunnan before
returning to the United States in 1940 to teach at UCLA. Spencer joined the OSS in April
1942 and was commissioned a captain in the army in September 1943. Thereupon he was
sent to the China-Burma-India Theater Headquarters in New Delhi to take charge of the
group assigned to gather information covering New Delhi to Kandy and Ceylon to Sian in
western central China. But in the summer of 1944 he was assigned to China and was content
with the appointment, even though he declared himself “busier than a dog with two kinds of
fleas.”26
Harvard University historian John Fairbank was also recruited to assist the R&A/Far East
section until the end of 1943. Fairbank was tapped by James Baxter III in August 1941 as an
expert on Chinese maritime customs, the subject of his doctoral dissertation at Oxford
University in 1936. He was assigned to be a liaison contact to Lauchlin Currie, then an
administrative assistant to the president on the White House staff. Before the war began,
Fairbank began working in Washington, DC for American aid to Free China, whose aim was
to “show the paucity of aid really given to Nationalist China and the urgent need for further
aid.” In this role, he was sent to Chungking to gather reference materials on Japan as a
representative of the Library of Congress. He also served as representative of the American
Publications Service of the American Embassy, which made American publications on
microfilm available to Chinese universities.27
Charles Fahs was the lone Japan expert. Breaking loose of his family’s close association
with Christian missions in China, the Brooklyn-born scholar studied the House of Peers—the
upper house of the Japanese Parliament—for his doctoral dissertation at Northwestern
University, published in 1933. He then went to the Sorbonne in Paris, where he and Edwin
Reischauer studied Japanese grammar under Serge Elisséeff before arriving at Kyoto
Imperial University in 1934. Dressed like a native, Fahs studied the Japanese language
further while taking up calligraphy, judo, and archery. In 1936, he accepted an academic
appointment at Claremont College, where he taught Far Eastern history, Japanese and
Chinese government, Japanese and Chinese literature in translation, and Japanese language
while writing Government in Japan: Recent Trends in Its Scope and Operation. Like his
peers, Fahs rejected racialist views of Japan, choosing instead to view his subject
empathetically. Defending that country’s expansion on the Asian continent, Fahs claimed that
“Japan must obviously either have territory into which her excess population can migrate or
which she can exploit economically so as to support the increased population at home.” He
countered scholarly and media condemnation of Japan by asserting the country was “more
democratic than Germany, Italy or the USSR” and declared that its leaders were moved by
domestic political and economic considerations, not unlike their counterparts in Europe and
America.28
 Fahs’ defense notwithstanding, SI believed the Imperial Japanese government’s rigid
political control over the main islands of Japan effectively closed it off from intelligence-
gathering. SI director Joseph Hayden therefore focused on Japanese-occupied territories and
thus saw C. V. Starr’s business enterprises as one of SI’s most important sources of
intelligence, especially the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury, an English-language media
that gave voice to the liberal American outlook on China. Its editor Randall Gould, former
news reporter for Time, United Press, and Christian Science Monitor, was allowed to express
his views in the editorial section and it was sharply antagonistic toward the Japanese military
and their bombing of Chungking while full of praise for the Chinese public’s “stoic fortitude”
and their display of “an inexhaustible stock of courage.” Gould was highly optimistic about
Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership of Free China, believing he had “mellowed and developed
within the years into a figure of greatness for the democratic pattern.” Gould’s outlook on
China’s leadership won over Chiang Kai-shek and other top Chinese military leaders. Starr’s
other newspaper published in the Chinese-language, Ta Mei Wan Pao (Great American
Evening Newspaper), was equally opposed Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
and insistently predicted the eventual demise of all treaty ports. This stance infuriated many
European residents of Shanghai to the point that his offices were bombed; one of his editors,
Samuel Chang, was fatally gunned down in a café; and Starr himself had to ride in a bullet-
proof limousine for his own protection. But his newspaper in 1939 enjoyed a circulation of
100,000, the largest in the city, even after Gould was imprisoned by the Japanese and his
offices in Occupied China closed. However, Starr’s two newspapers still had offices
operating in other parts of China and Asia in December 1942. Starr then offered SI his
Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury to be used as a cover for gathering biographical
information on over 5,000 individuals, including collaborators, in a project known as
“Twinkle.” Hence, Starr sent Randall Gould and F. B. “Fritz” Opper, correspondents for the
Christian Science Monitor and Chicago Daily News, to Chungking to re-establish his
newspaper office and gather intelligence for the OSS.29
J. Arthur Duff was Starr’s most appealing asset for SI. Duff’s escape from Occupied China
in 1942 proved that SI usage of Old China Hands, contrary to SACO policy, could effectively
gather intelligence behind Imperial Japanese lines without having the correct racial uniform.
Duff was fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, and other dialects, having been born in 1899 to a
Canadian missionary couple in a small village near Kiukiang on the Yangtze River. He had
lived all but five years of his prewar life in the region and, though a Canadian citizen, was
considered reliable, having a mission school education and married to an American citizen
named Jeannie Woodbridge, who hailed from a family of thirteen generations of Christian
ministers. Through his service with the Shanghai Volunteer Corps in the late 1920s and early
1930s, Duff cultivated relationships with a number of important foreign expatriates in
Shanghai including C. V. Starr, whose Reliance Motors Company he managed. He was on a
business trip to Hong Kong when the Imperial Japanese forces invaded the treaty port in
early December 1941 and interned all citizens of the Allied powers. Despite his obvious
foreign appearance, Duff eluded capture by the Imperial Japanese forces. He hid until
January 9, 1942 before departing by speedboat to Bias Bay about forty miles east of Hong
Kong, where he again went into hiding for nearly three weeks. While there, Duff agreed to
carry letters by locals addressed to their relatives and friends in the Taipun Benevolent
Association of New York. After arriving in Kukong, he made arrangements with Starr for his
passage to New York through India and North Africa. He also got John Keswick of the SOE
to transport the Taipun letters past Customs officials in a diplomatic pouch. After delivering
the letters to their relatives and friends in New York, Duff met with Donovan to plan another
mission to the same region without SACO permission.30
Donovan was clearly impressed with Duff’s exploits and Starr’s organization. Donovan
heard from others that Starr had a comprehensive network of highly experienced Chinese and
foreign personnel, owned the Shanghai Evening Post, and was quite familiar with China. He
knew Starr’s organization was badly off financially, having had all of its assets seized in
China by the Japanese occupiers. He therefore gave Starr a temporary loan of two million
dollars, believing Starr’s employees were as skilled in intelligence work as Duff, who
commented on the director:
Donovan was convinced that he had found the answer, assuming that all Starr’s China staff were like me!!! He went
ahead and concluded a deal with Starr—involving large sums of money—in effect he took over Starr’s Far Eastern
obligations “for the duration,”with Starr in charge, details were never announced, of course. All were [sic] a closely-
held secret between Donovan and Starr.31

Duff took up a new mission whose purpose he changed to better suit the SOE than the
OSS. Duff switched the aim from conventional to economic warfare, in part of his own
business background. He undertook field training at a school outside of Washington, DC to
learn the art of codes and ciphers, recognition of warships by silhouette, and usage of various
weapons and explosives. He did not perform well though, treating training as “a necessary
evil” and remaining “stand-offish,” much to the chagrin of his trainers. Duff then started
Operation “Salt” in coordination with two young advisers to General Yu Hon Mow of the
Canton government in exile at Kukong. Duff offered them 20 percent of the salt revenue
collected by Yu’s trucks in exchange for a military passport that would ensure his passage
through the area. He planned to transport torpedoes and other supplies for US Navy
submarines operating within range of Taipun Bay area.
Before his departure in mid-December 1942, Salt was scrubbed. Under the cover of a
survey mission for the United China Relief, Duff was instead assigned to gather secret
intelligence while establishing a system for rescuing downed aviators from General Claire
Chennault’s Fourteenth Air Force. Duff, however, created a new trucking company intended
to deny the Imperial Japanese forces the Pearl River Delta region’s supply of wolfram or
tungsten, a metal used in aircraft manufacturing. He recruited Lewis Carson, an American,
and Rudy Yung, head of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Bureau, and established the
commercial venture with funds from Starr’s account in India. Duff justified the change by
citing the potential damage the new group could do to the Imperial Japanese forces—cutoff
of wolfram supply to the Japanese and the creation of a network that could be used for either
secret intelligence-gathering or sabotage operations. “The transportation company,” Duff
explained, “is principally a front and a means for providing our connections with machinery
through which to operate and for giving them remuneration. The organisation can be used in
any way desired.”32
 Duff’s covert re-entry into the Pearl River Delta region in the winter of 1942–43 proved a
fatal blow for OSS and the Starr organization. Although Duff’s intelligence on the region was
good and Donovan’s faith in the Canadian’s ability to slip past the Japanese and Tai Li’s
agents well-founded, his cover was blown by Miles, who sent out letters to various Allied
leaders in the China Theater regarding Duff’s true identity. Worse, Duff himself, without
OSS knowledge, had arranged to scout the area for ways the British SIS and the SOE could
gain admission into the region after being banished by Chiang Kai-shek. Duff even promised
Colonel Lindsay Ride of the British Air Aid Group (BAAG) that he would gather
intelligence for them and joined his group while on the OSS payroll. His dual role came to
light only after Duff walked out of the OSS and into the British Embassy in Chungking in
December 1943, ostensibly to free himself from the obligation of remaining silent. Duff was
incensed over an alleged plot by the American forces to prevent a British reassertion of its
authority over Hong Kong after the war by immediately flying in Chinese troops to have
them rather the British accept the Japanese surrender: “I considered it a particularly dirty
trick, and therefore quit the OSS in order to expose it to the British.”33
Despite the Starr fiasco, SI operations in the China Theater moved forward
organizationally under Norwood Allman. Like Duff, Allman was an Old China Hand. Born
in Union Hall, Virginia, he graduated from the University of Virginia in 1915. A year later he
joined the American Embassy in Beijing as a student interpreter, where he worked with a
young assistant librarian named Mao Tse-tung at the University of Beijing. In 1921 he
became the US consul in Shanghai but retired from the consular corps three years later to
manage his burgeoning business ventures, which included a paper mill and a cinema chain as
well as his law practice in Shanghai. He published a couple of books on Chinese patents and
copyrights, was the commander of the American company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps,
and was a member of the Municipal Council. In part because he was the editor of Shun Pao,
a Chinese-language paper critical of the Japanese, Allman was arrested the day after Japan
attacked Pearl Harbor and interned in a prison camp for six months until being repatriated to
the United States in June 1942.34
Allman took over as chief of SI, Far East section. After interviewing “all the worthwhile
passengers” on board the civilian exchange ship the Gripsholm to gather intelligence on
Japan, Allman landed in New York with various tidbits of information useful to the military.
He was scheduled to return to China as part of the Starr spy network, but shortly after he
arrived at the end of October 1942, he was assigned to replace Gale and Price, both of whom
resigned from the OSS, and Hayden, who was moved up to the planing board. Allman got W.
M. Drummond and Major Austin O. Glass to run the China/Philippines/Indochina desk,
while Daniel Buchanan and George McCune managed the Japan desk and Korea desk,
respectively. He also brought in E. D. Pawley, who previously recruited and sent to China the
American Volunteer Group of fighter pilots for General Claire Chennault’s famed Flying
Tigers. Although he found several hundred individuals among the Grispholm passengers
well-suited for SI his Far East Section depended heavily on Chinese interpreters rather than
linguistically-competent American personnel. He then directed Alghan Lusey to be the
section’s field commander over SI’s field agents and included within his ranks John Fairbank
and Clyde Sargent, the former using the Inter-departmental Committee for the Acquisition of
Foreign Publications as his cover to do, “in his spare time,” intelligence-gathering.35
While Allman did little to recruit Asian Americans into the OSS, he employed Daniel
Buchanan, who did. Buchanan was well-qualified for his assigned task. Born in Kobe, Japan
to a missionary couple in 1894, he grew up speaking both English and Japanese. He left
Japan to attend college in the United States, receiving his undergraduate degree at
Fredericksburg College in 1912, then his Master’s degree at Washington and Lee University
two years later. He returned to Japan to teach the English language and American culture in
Tokyo, but decided to pursue his Bachelor of Divinity degree at McCormick Theological
Seminary. He received his degree and his ordination into the Presbyterian Church in 1921.
He served the Presbyterian Church Mission, Japan as its information officer and newspaper
evangelism specialist, but left to study for his doctorate at Hartford Seminary. He became an
expert on Japanese religion, publishing a portion of his doctoral dissertation on the Japanese
Fox God Inari in 1935. Buchanan was well-versed in Japanese literature as well, collecting
and translating Japanese proverbs and sayings that he would later publish after the war. The
Presbyterian minister was also competent in German and French, a bonus to Allman, who
made him chief of the Japan-Korea desk after recruiting him away from the OWI. With his
fluent Japanese, he became a primary recruiter of Japanese Americans.36
Ernest Price was another key figure in pushing SI toward hiring Asian Americans. As
Joseph Hayden’s second in command, he drafted a plan in 1942 for the establishment of a
bomber base inside Manchuria, supplied with Lend-Lease materials designated for both the
Soviet Union and China. Price envisioned a Manchurian expeditionary force composed of
Manchurians, Chinese students, and linguistically-qualified Chinese Americans, the latter to
teach the former two groups how to maintain, supply, and defend the air bases for American
bombers tasked with bombing the main islands of Japan. Price wanted to lead the advance
survey force, to select the site and to lay the groundwork for the base despite the proximity of
the Imperial Japanese Northern China Army. His confidence stemmed from extensive
knowledge of China. Although born in Henzada, Burma, to Baptist missionary parents and
educated in the US Midwest, Price had been in the US Foreign Service since his student
interpreter days with the American Legation in Beijing in 1914. He had served in one
capacity or another in Foochow, Canton, Nanking, Tientsin, and Tsinan before resigning in
1929. Frustrated at not being promoted to full consul-general, despite his demonstrated
competence in his work and his fluency in Mandarin, Cantonese, and other Chinese dialects,
Price quit and became president of China Airways before pursuing his doctorate at Johns
Hopkins University. He demonstrated his sophisticated understanding of northeast China in
his published dissertation, “The Russo-Japanese Treaties of 1907–1916 Concerning
Manchuria and Mongolia” (1933), using documents written in French, Russian, and Chinese.
While Price maintained a detached outlook on the Manchurian question, he asserted guerrilla
operations were viable in this region because of the likelihood of continued “political
banditry” (guerrilla warfare) by Manchurians against Japanese rule in Manchukuo.37
But Price’s plan of using Chinese Americans for operations in northeast China was
dropped by late 1942. William Langer saw flaws in the plan: supplying air bases in
Manchuria was problematic; defending such air bases against a large and well-trained
Japanese army nearby was difficult; and establishing the bases in secrecy was not possible,
given Japanese control over Manchuria. William Donovan was even more emphatic: he had
Price fired from the job. As Price confessed, “the Colonel [Donovan] is of the opinion that I
have opposed his policies with respect to operations in China. Even though, as I have said, I
have had little opportunity to express an opinion and my advice has never once been
requested by the Colonel, this allegation is essentially true, and we can let it go at that.”38
With Allied guerrilla operations prohibited inside northeast China, Special Operations
turned to Burma. Due to that change in location, Special Operations under Carl Eifler,
commander of the Field Experimental Unit or Detachment 101, opened its door to Asian
Americans in the China-Burma-India Theater. Eifler demonstrated little affection for
Japanese Americans when he was in charge of the Enemy Alien Internment Camp at Sand
Island in Hawai’i. He showed, according to Yasutarō Soga, editor/publisher of the Nippu Jiji
and a resident of Hawai’i for forty-five years, “a defiant attitude” toward the internees and
tormented them with strip-searches, roll calls, and other harsh disciplinary measures. Eifler,
in fact, shared in common with Stilwell a decidedly anti-Japanese prejudice. In early 1940,
Stilwell told Eifler privately, “I have always claimed that Jap stock cannot be assimilated,
and the more I see of it, the more convinced I am that the only reasonable solution is to throw
them all out.” While Eifler did not recruit Japanese Americans, he was enthusiastic about
other Asian Americans, especially getting a Chinese American doctor as his medical officer.
He filled out the rest of his team of twenty-one with two more Chinese Americans and a
Korean American, under the assumption that his guerrilla operations would cover all of East
Asia.39
More than SO, MO carved out a large niche for Asian Americans inside the OSS. Unlike
SI, MO’s top leadership had no experience with East Asia. Its director, Colonel K. D. Mann,
was the former vice president of an Ohio steel corporation and had had no previous dealings
with China or Japan when he first reported to Deputy Director Strategic Services, Edward
Bigelow. His Far East section head, Herbert Little, the individual who opened the door to
Asian Americans including Joe Koide, had only some limited knowledge of the region. Little
was born in Manchester, England, but immigrated to New York with his family as a five-
year-old. They settled in Seattle, where in 1920 his whole family became naturalized
American citizens. His father was self-employed in the insurance industry but also a minister.
Herbert received his primary and secondary education in the Seattle area pursued a doctorate
at the University of Washington, but completed only half before quitting in 1927. He joined a
local law firm, where as a senior partner he earned from $12,000 to $24,000 annually,
specializing in international law and estates. He was not known as a Japan expert despite the
fact that he spoke some Japanese and had traveled to Japan, China, and Manchuria in 1931.
When war broke out, Little joined the army as a major and then in July 1943, switched to the
OSS as a lieutenant colonel. He was immediately sent to General Stilwell’s headquarters in
New Delhi and then to Chungking to plan for operations against Japan.40
Yet Herbert Little initially assembled his Far East administrative staff out of an odd
collection of individuals, none of whom were Asian Americans. Tasked with producing and
distributing effective black propaganda, Little required personnel with expertise in producing
printed materials, such as pamphlets and newspapers, or with radio broadcasting experience.
His circle of acquaintances from which he drew his first recruits was limited and thus
provided him with less than ideal candidates. Little recruited Maxwell Kleiman, a lawyer and
income tax consultant who was in the US Army Air Corps for thirteen months prior to
joining the OSS. Kleiman was born in Russia, but became a naturalized citizen; some time
after he received his education at New York University, he became involved in business
dealings with the Japanese prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. These activities earned him
the label “questionable” in terms of loyalty. OSS investigators believed Kleiman’s entry into
the army as an officer spared him from prosecution for failing to register himself as “an agent
for a foreign principal.”41
Fortunately, other recruits were more appropriate for the task. In particular, Little recruited
two highly competent women for his office. One was Jane Smith-Hutton to manage the
Washington, DC office. She was fluent in Japanese, having spent twelve years in Japan.
Interned in a Japanese camp, she returned aboard the Gripsholm and was recruited by CBS
newsman Edmund Taylor, who convinced her of the importance of morale operations in the
German success in overrunning French and British forces on the European continent. The
other was Betty MacDonald, a journalist from Honolulu. Her father William Peet was at the
sports desk of the Honolulu Advertiser and her mother, a former Washington, DC columnist,
was a schoolteacher in Honolulu. Betty graduated from the University of Washington with a
degree in journalism and returned to Honolulu to work for the same newspaper as her father.
There she met and married Alexander MacDonald, reporter and author of Revolt in Paradise,
an expose of the moneyed establishment that controlled Hawai’i. After working for Scripps-
Howard news service and the Star-Bulletin’s society section editor, Betty and her husband
studied Japanese by living for a year with Dr. Saburō Watanabe, principal of a Japanese
language school in Honolulu. After the Pearl Harbor attack, Betty promptly volunteered for
the OSS and also got her husband, a naval officer, to join.42
Yet MO required more than European American personnel familiar with East Asia to wage
an effective propaganda campaign. Since their primary audience was Japanese and Chinese
—Koreans were assumed supporters of the Allied cause—MO sought individuals with
native-level ability in Japanese or Chinese languages, knowledge of local conditions based
on their recent residency in those targeted regions, and work experience in the print or radio
broadcasting media. In return, MO could offer only a civilian status, having few officers’
commissions to give. MO pay was not as high as other recruiting federal government
agencies, as Morton Bodfish, deputy chief of MO admitted: “We find ourselves facing some
very real obstacles which cannot be met by ordinary means. Not the least of these obstacles is
the open competition of the OWI for skilled men at salaries generally in excess of those paid
by OSS.” By early February 1945, the chief of MO Kenneth Mann estimated their work in
East Asia required 120 for the India-Burma Theater and an additional 146 for the China
Theater. Given their expansion, where would these personnel come from?43
To fill their personnel requirements for MO and other sections, the OSS recruited Asian
Americans. Throughout its existence, Donovan defined the office as a multiracial
organization, as evident in his speech for the OSS’ termination ceremony in fall 1945: “This
experiment was to determine whether a group of Americans constituting a cross section of
racial origins, of abilities, temperaments and talents could meet and risk an encounter with
the long-established and well-trained enemy organizations.” The director’s behavior was
consistent with his liberal outlook, as he refused the French government’s Croix de Guerre
medal to protest its anti-Semitism against his Jewish sergeant during World War I. He broke
racial protocol again by hiring African Americans, such as James Freeman, as his chauffeur,
and Chinese American sergeants Yueh C. Tsai and H. Kuei Chang as his personal cooks.44
Donovan’s liberal racial outlook extended toward Japanese Americans as well. He
suspected Ukrainian Americans, not Japanese Americans, of Axis support for German
saboteurs plotting to strike the United States. Although he thought the German and Japanese
navies were operating submarine bases inside Chile and in Baja, Mexico, he placed Japanese
Americans in the safe zone of the OSS ethnic/racial security map. Donovan believed them
loyal in sufficient numbers to be trusted. In mid-December 1941, he expressed to President
Roosevelt his strong opposition to the mass removal and confinement of West Coast Japanese
Americans, agreeing with Ralph Van Deman’s view that the plan was “an entirely unbaked
and illy [sic] considered proposition.” Donovan called attention to the flaws of the mass
removal and internment proposition—ignoring the findings of three federal government
agencies tasked with such an investigation prior to the war; stirring up unnecessarily a
relatively hysteria-free West Coast; creating confusion in the surrounding communities where
Japanese Americans resided; disrupting defense, especially aircraft production; and pushing
Japanese Americans to support Japan after providing inadequate care for their possessions
which thieves and arsonists would despoil. Instead, Donovan recommended John Steinbeck’s
proposal for using the pro-USA Japanese Americans to keep watch over potential
troublemakers within the ethnic group.45
The Pacific office’s chief of morale operations shared Donovan’s faith in Asian Americans
by employing them. Herbert Little was responsible for pulling into MO many Japanese
Americans, both US citizens and aliens, for black propaganda work. His willingness to hire
them can be only be surmised, but it seems reasonable that his own immigrant status made
him a willing employer of Asian immigrants. His legal practice in international law involving
Japan gave him some measure of familiarity with the Japanese language and provided him
with some knowledge of Japanese Americans, as did his long residency in Seattle. Little’s
close friendship with journalist Chester Rowell may have led him to also oppose the mass
removal and internment of Japanese Americans. His trustee status in the American Council
of the Institute of Pacific Relations, an organization that conceptually separated Japanese
Americans from Imperial Japanese government foreign policy in the 1930s, also influenced
his outlook.46
Daniel Buchanan also favored Japanese American recruits. Buchanan joined SI in April
1943 after leaving “a relatively minor position” in OWI to make better use of his near-native
ability in the Japanese language, his solid expertise in Japanese culture and religion, and
strong familiarity with the Japanese educational system due to his long residency in that
country. He therefore saw a similar waste of talent as Japanese Americans were being
isolated in the War Relocation Authority camps. Buchanan never believed a lack of
citizenship should bar one from serving the United States during war. He was born in Kobe
City, Japan in 1892 and, even though he received his entire collegiate and graduate education
in the United States, was a British citizen until October 1918, when he enlisted in US Army
and became a naturalized American citizen. For him, loyalty was a matter of the heart rather
than citizenship:
In my early youth though technically a British subject, I was always at heart and by training an American. During
World War I my sympathies were with the Allies long before America entered. Although I was then teaching in a
government school in Japan where I was not subject to any military draft, I rejected an offer of a commission in the
British army, and resigning my position in July 1918, I returned to the United States at my own expense to volunteer as
a private. I was attending an officers training camp when the war ended. While in the army I took the oath of
naturalization before the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia.47

As Buchanan had with Japanese Americans, the OSS “mapped” Korean Americans in the
secure zone. They saw certain Korean Americans as posing no security risk even before the
federal government’s change of the status of Korean immigrants in the United States from
“enemy” to “nonenemy” alien status in October 1942. Yet they also shared some of the same
stereotypes the American public embraced about Koreans and Korean Americans. In
Hawai’i, for example, Koreans were seen as the opposite of Japanese. Coastal Carolina
University history professor Brandon Palmer finds similar constructions, identifying eight
particular images of Koreans in Hawai’i’s mass media prior to 1925—shiftless, ignorant of
American customs and practices, revengeful and bent on vigilantism, barbaric and childish,
criminal, Christian, nationalistic, and incompetent at self-governance. International
University of the East professor Craig Coleman uncovered continuity of those stereotypes
which juxtaposed Koreans as untidy, ungovernable, and rude while the Japanese were the
opposite—neat, polite, clean, and highly governed.48
Under the influence of such negative stereotypes, Donovan limited Korean Americans’
roles within the OSS. He followed the State Department’s policy of nonrecognition of
expatriate independence movements by issuing a directive: “Until Koreans in the United
States have achieved some kind of unity, do not quote any individuals.” He and others saw
Koreans and Korean Americans as “childish,” “revengeful and bent of vigilantism.” He
feared they might quickly mount their own offensive against the Imperial Japanese forces
without adequate support which, he thought, was the same as “doing something suicidal.” At
the same time, Donovan and others thought strategically, withholding Korean and Korean
American attacks on Imperial Japanese forces to scare the Japanese into thinking something
big was in the works for Korea. “If adroitly handled,” Donovan’s order said, “this
propaganda should have the effect of keeping the Japanese on the alert in Korea and possibly
immobilizing troops in that area.” Donovan allowed a dozen Korean Americans to enter the
OSS out of deference to Syngman Rhee, but believed it best to bar all other applicants.49
Negative racial stereotypes played far less a role in the OSS’ decision not to recruit many
Chinese Americans. Edwin Martin of the R&A/China Theater admitted the main reason was
fear of a security breach. Martin stated that contact with all “persons of Chinese race” was
kept to a minimum in the Far East section of R&A because of the perception that the Chinese
Nationalist government was “very assiduous in seeking to learn about OSS and what it is
doing.” The R&A/China Theater therefore kept out all Chinese citizens from their building:
 As you probably know, we have even been extremely reluctant to employ American citizens of Chinese origin with full
security privileges, and at present have only one, Corporal Robert Chin. Because of the political problems involved in
such actions, I should think it might be desirable before granting full security approval for anyone of [the] Chinese race
to secure an opinion from this office. It has been informally reported to me, for example, that the Map Division now has
on its staff with full security clearance a Chinese with Chinese citizenship, something which offhand we would
consider quite questionable.50

Yet SI had no such qualms, perhaps in part because its leadership firmly rejected such
negative racial imaginations of the Chinese. SI’s Far East section head Norwood Allman, for
example, deplored the “treaty port” mentality of foreign expatriates in China who disdained
social contact with the Chinese. As he once explained to a group of readers:
My wife, who had been born of American missionary parents in Tsinan, and I both deplored the usual lack in the
Chinese treaty ports of social intercourse between Chinese and foreigners, and we ignored it. When we returned to
Shanghai in 1922 the American University Club was the only common meeting ground other than religious circles.
However, we continued our earlier custom of entertaining Chinese in our home, and in return were entertained by them.
We both spoke Chinese, and that, along with the insatiable curiosity about all facets of Chinese life that I had developed
in the diplomatic service, helped us greatly in our friendships with Chinese people.51

Despite the contrasting positions of the R&A with SI, the OSS was prepared to employ
Asian Americans in many of their middling positions of responsibility and others as
commissioned officers. With few exceptions, they were not to be assigned to the Services
Division and were conspicuously absent from the less glamorous jobs as cooks, trash
disposers, or barracks cleaners, as was common for Filipinos in the navy or African
Americans in the army. Instead, the OSS determined most would serve as “technical
representatives,” or a rank equivalent to that of a noncommissioned officer, as Donovan
ordered:
In the conduct of certain secret operations to be carried on by this office, it will be necessary to utilize individuals who
speak certain foreign languages with native ability. The trained personnel should be enlisted or drafted into the United
States Army. The proposed work will be most effective if the willing cooperation and assistance of citizens and
residents of the foreign country against which a mission is directed can be secured and properly directed. These leaders
should be commissioned officers of the United States Army, even though they may be citizens of foreign countries. It is
believed that many instances will occur whereby the effective cooperation and assistance of the foreign nationals can
only be secured if a citizen of that nation, or a resident of the particular vicinity, is given a position of leadership and
responsibility in the work to be performed.52

However, Donovan imposed three qualifications. He refused to assist immigrants in

obtaining American citizenship beyond his general encouragement of Congressional
members to grant such privileges, a position that some of his underlings ignored. All also
limited their highest rank to that of Captain, also circumvented in a couple instances as it
applied to Asian Americans. “The merits of each particular case,” the director stated, “will be
carefully studied before recommendations for appointment are made, but it is believed that it
will be unnecessary to appoint such individuals to commissioned ranks higher than that of
Captain.”53
But the third qualification—the demand of loyalty—was potentially a sticking point for
some bent on recruiting Asian Americans. Where did their loyalty lie?
Another random document with
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know, there is no proof that it possesses any virtue in meningeal
tuberculosis. It has the high authority of Charles West,14 however,
who thinks the remedy is more encouraging than any other, and who
mentions one instance in which recovery took place under its
employment. He recommends that two grains be given every four
hours to a child three years old, the bowels being kept free. Most
authorities recommend much higher doses, such as ten or fifteen
grains, three or four times daily.
14 Op. cit., p. 102.

Counter-irritation to the head or back of the neck was formerly much

employed, but is now generally abandoned, as giving rise to much
discomfort without obvious beneficial effect. In the cases reported by
Hahn, already alluded to under the head of Prognosis, recovery is
attributed to the energetic application of tartar-emetic ointment to the
scalp, producing extensive ulceration, which in one of them lasted
more than ten months before cicatrization took place. A careful
examination of the reports of these cases satisfies me that but two
out of the seven were really examples of tubercular meningitis. How
far the recovery in the successful cases is to be attributed to the
treatment is very doubtful. Small blisters applied to the vertex or
back of the neck are alluded to favorably by West, but he quotes no
observations in which they were followed by benefit.

Tubercular Meningitis in the Adult.

Tubercular meningitis may occur at any age, but after the period of
childhood it is most frequent between the ages of sixteen and thirty
years. About 75 per cent. of the patients are males, and 25 per cent.
females.15 The disease does not differ essentially in its course and
symptoms from that in children. A family history of tuberculosis is
common, or the patient may be already suffering from phthisis,
scrofulous glands, cheesy deposits in various organs, caries of the
bone, syphilis, or other constitutional affections. According to Seitz,
in 93.5 per cent. out of 130 cases with autopsies chronic
inflammatory conditions or caseous deposits were found in various
organs of the body. Many cases are examples of acute tuberculosis
in which the brunt of the disease has fallen upon the brain rather
than the other organs.
15 Seitz, op. cit., p. 9.

When cerebral symptoms supervene upon acute disease, such as

typhoid fever, pericarditis, acute rheumatism, pneumonia, the
exanthemata, etc., the diagnosis between tubercular and simple
meningitis is important, because the latter is not necessarily fatal,
while the former is almost never recovered from. If the patient were
previously healthy and presumably free from tubercular disease, the
chances would be in favor of the simple form. A rapid course of the
disease would also speak for acute meningitis, and recovery would
almost certainly preclude tubercular meningitis. In some cases the
diagnosis is difficult or impossible in the beginning.

In cases beginning without acute antecedents—in adults as in

children—there is no pathognomonic symptom, but the combination
and succession of the phenomena are usually sufficient for the
diagnosis. Headache, depression or irritability of temper, delirium,
half-closed eyes, ptosis of one lid, squinting, inequality and
sluggishness of the pupils, moderate fever, sunken belly, vomiting,
constipation, slow and irregular pulse, sopor gradually deepening to
coma, with occasional convulsions or paralysis of the limbs, followed
in the course of two or three weeks by death, especially if occurring
in a patient who has already presented signs of tuberculosis in other
organs, point almost unmistakably to tubercular meningitis. Some of
the symptoms may not be strongly pronounced, one or two may be
absent, but the general picture will suggest no other disease.
According to Seitz, tubercle of the choroid is rare in tubercular
meningitis of the adult. It is usually associated with tuberculosis of
other organs, the pia being free. The subjoined cases are
illustrations of the disease in adolescence and adult life:
Case I.—A lad sixteen years old, always somewhat delicate, with a
cough and morning expectoration of some months' standing, exerted
himself immoderately in gymnastic exercise on the afternoon of
Sept. 24, 1875. That night he was awakened by cough and
hæmoptysis. Signs of consolidation were found at the apices of both
lungs. In three months there were swelling, induration, and
suppuration of one testicle. Some months later, pain in the right arm,
stiffness of the shoulder-joint, and an abscess communicating with
the joint, from which small spicula of bone were discharged. He was
about, and even attended school, for more than a year from the time
of the attack of hæmoptysis. About Jan. 1, 1877, he began to
complain of severe pain in the forehead, with nausea (but no
vomiting) and constipation. Jan. 27th he took to his bed, complaining
chiefly of pain in the forehead and eyes. Feb. 1st he was drowsy,
irritable, and delirious. Feb. 3d incontinence of urine and constant
delirium. Up to this time the pulse had not been above 76 in the
minute, and on this day it was 64. The next day, Feb. 4th, he was
wholly unconscious; pulse 96, pupils dilated. Feb. 5th, left hand in
constant motion; pulse 112. From this time the pulse steadily
increased in frequency. Feb. 6th he swallowed food, notwithstanding
his stupor. Feb. 7th he answered questions; there was oscillation of
the eyeballs, and epistaxis from constant picking of the nose. He
died Feb. 9th, the pulse being 144 and the respirations 60 in the
minute for several hours previous. The temperature never rose
above 101.7° F. There was never any vomiting. The duration of the
case was thirteen days, in addition to the prodromic period of twenty-
seven days.—Autopsy by R. H. Fitz: The pia of the base of the brain
from the medulla to the optic thalamus contained a large number of
gray miliary tubercles, old and recent, and the same condition was
found in the surfaces of the fissure of Sylvius. Ventricles distended
with fluid, ependyma thick and translucent. A moderate-sized cavity
in the apex of the left lung, with cheesy contents. Both lungs
contained an abundance of hard, gray, miliary tubercles. Left kidney
contained a wedge-shaped, cheesy mass of the size of a walnut,
with numerous tubercles. Left testicle contained a cheesy mass of
the size of a walnut; both epididymes were cheesy. The mucous
membrane of the bladder contained tubercles near the neck. The
vesiculæ seminales contained softened cheesy masses with
openings into the urethra. There was a fistulous opening into the
right shoulder-joint.

Case II.—Emeline K. L——, 32 years old, single, nurse, had become

much exhausted by taking care of a difficult case, and entered
Massachusetts General Hospital March 6, 1883, complaining since
four days of a little cough, slight expectoration, and chilliness, but no
rigor. She seemed hysterical. There was complaint of severe pain in
the head, chest, and abdomen. A slight systolic murmur was found
at the apex of the heart, and a few moist râles at the base of the
chest on both sides behind. The urine was normal. Temperature,
103° F. Three weeks after entrance she began to be delirious,
especially at night. April 13th, five weeks and three days after
entrance, she was semi-conscious, but would put out her tongue and
open her eyes when requested to do so; the abdomen was
distended, the pupils were dilated and unequal; there was twitching
of the muscles of the right side of the face. Careful examination only
disclosed occasional fine râle at the base of right chest. She died
April 16th, having been completely unconscious for twenty-four
hours. There was no vomiting throughout the case. The temperature
was very irregular, ranging between 100° and 103° F., and once as
high as 104° F.; it was usually one or two degrees higher at night
than in the morning. Pulse, generally from 100 to 110; it rose steadily
during the last few days to 160 at the time of death.—Autopsy: Pia
mater of brain œdematous, slightly opaque; its lower surface,
especially at the base of the brain, showed numerous minute gray
tubercles; enlarged cheesy glands at the base of the neck; small,
opaque, gray tubercles scattered rather sparsely throughout both
lungs. There was also miliary tuberculosis of the liver, spleen, and
kidneys.
CHRONIC HYDROCEPHALUS.
 BY FRANCIS MINOT, M.D.

SYNONYMS.—Dropsy of the brain, Dropsy of the head.

DEFINITION.—A gradual accumulation of serous fluid in the brain,

occupying either the ventricles or the cavity of the arachnoid, or both,
occurring chiefly in infants or very young children.

The term hydrocephalus, which was applied by the older writers to

accumulations of serous fluid both within and also without the
cranium, termed distinctively internal and external hydrocephalus, is
now restricted to dropsical effusions either between the meninges or
within the ventricular cavities. These may be acute or chronic, and
they arise from the same conditions which are followed by the
effusion of serum in other parts of the body; that is to say, from an
alteration in the serous membrane lining a cavity, from an obstruction
in the capillary circulation with increased tension in the larger
vessels, from an altered condition of the blood, etc.

Chronic hydrocephalus is almost entirely confined to young children,

and is probably due to an arrested development of the brain, as
shown by its being usually congenital, by the dwarfed intellectual
condition of the patient, and by its frequent association with spina
bifida. The pathogeny of the disease is, however, still obscure.
Whether the abnormal accumulation of serous fluid is to be ascribed
to a chronic alteration of the ventricular walls or of the choroid
plexuses, allied to inflammation, such as occurs in the pleura, for
example, causing an increased secretion, or to a closure of the
communication between the ventricles and the spinal cavity, as
suggested by the late John Hilton, resulting in dropsy by retention, or
to some other cause, is not yet determined. Hilton says:1 “In almost
every case of internal hydrocephalus which I have examined after
death I found that this cerebro-spinal opening [between the fourth
ventricle and the spinal canal] was so completely closed that no
cerebro-spinal fluid could escape from the interior of the brain; and,
as the fluid was being constantly secreted, it necessarily
accumulated there, and the occlusion formed, to my mind, the
essential pathological element of internal hydrocephalus.” Sieveking,
commenting upon Hilton's theory, says:2 “While giving these facts
due weight, it must be pointed out that we are yet far from
understanding either how the fluid is poured into the cerebral cavities
or how it is removed, and that we do not positively know that the
spinal canal has any better means of getting rid of an excess of fluid
than the cerebral cavities have.” An arrest of the growth of the brain
is supposed by some pathologists to account for ventricular as well
as arachnoidal dropsy by the creation of a vacuum in the cavity of
the cranium, which is filled by exudation of the more fluid portion of
the blood from the vessels or of lymph from the lymphatics.
1 John Hilton, Lectures on Rest and Pain, etc., 2d ed., New York, 1879, p. 22.

2 Jones and Sieveking's Pathological Anatomy, 2d ed., London, 1875, p. 248.

ETIOLOGY.—That chronic hydrocephalus in young children is in a

large proportion of cases an hereditary disease is shown by the fact
that it is frequently congenital, that more than one child in a family is
occasionally affected by it, and that while one child is hydrocephalic
others may be idiotic. A scrofulous taint in the family history is
noticeable in many cases, the evil effect of which is frequently
enhanced by unfavorable sanitary conditions of life, especially by
residence in dark, damp, ill-ventilated, and badly-drained apartments
and by insufficient or unwholesome food. Hence the disease is more
frequently met with among the poor than in the well-to-do classes of
society. There is a difference of opinion as to whether it ever arises
in consequence of external violence, such as a blow on the head, or
of some strong impression, like fright or grief, acting on the mother of
the child during pregnancy. The probability is that such causes would
not be efficient except in cases where a predisposition to
hydrocephalus had already existed. West3 mentions the case of a
healthy child five months old who fell out of the arms of her nurse,
and was taken with a fit the same day. She apparently recovered,
but when a year old had frequent returns of convulsions. At the age
of fifteen months the head began to enlarge, and it continued to
increase in size until she was three years old, when she was
attacked by measles, and died in a few days with convulsions and
coma. The symptoms, both bodily and mental, were typical of
hydrocephalus, and the diagnosis was fully confirmed by the
autopsy.
3 Op. cit., p. 127.

The causes of chronic hydrocephalus in older subjects and in adults

are, in addition to the above mentioned, chiefly mechanical. Any
lesion which hinders the exit of venous blood from the cranium may
be followed by dropsy of the arachnoid cavity or ventricles. The
principal ones are tumors of the brain or its membranes, the effusion
of lymph in the neighborhood of veins, thrombosis of the cerebral
sinuses, compression of numerous small vessels by tubercular
granulations, obstructions outside the cranium, including tumors of
the neck, aneurisms, obstructive disease of the heart, emphysema
and cirrhosis of the lungs, besides diseases giving rise to general
dropsy, as the different forms of nephritis, marasmus, the various
cachexiæ, etc.

SYMPTOMS.—When the disease is already somewhat advanced

before birth, the head is often abnormally large, the cranial bones
are separated, the fontanels are distended and fluctuating, and it
occasionally happens that delivery of the distended head can only be
effected after the fluid has been evacuated by puncture. Even when
there is no abnormal increase in the size of the head, indications of
cerebral disturbance are sometimes apparent from birth, such as
strabismus or convulsions recurring with more or less frequency,
along with signs of failure of the general health. In the course of
some weeks, or, it may be, months, the attention of the parents is
attracted to the prominence of the child's forehead, strongly
contrasting with the comparatively diminutive size of the face. Soon
an enlargement of the fontanels is perceived, the sutures between
the cranial bones become broader, and the head assumes a globular
shape from the pressure of the contained fluid. The separation of the
bones at the vertex of the skull causes the os frontis to protrude
forward, the parietals backward and outward, and the occipital
backward and downward. The orbital plates of the frontal bone yield
to the pressure of the fluid behind them, and from a horizontal
position tend to assume a vertical one, protruding the eyeballs,
which have a peculiar downward direction. The sclerotica is visible
above the iris, and the latter is partially covered by the lower eyelid.
The enlargement of the head is progressive, though not uniformly so,
there being pauses of weeks or months during which it is arrested. If
it be considerable, the cranial bones are usually thinned, so that the
skull becomes translucent when opposite a bright light. When there
is a wide separation of the bones there is an unusual development of
ossa triquetra in the sutures.

In cases in which the ossification of the cranium is considerably

advanced before the beginning of the disease, the enlargement of
the head is apt to be correspondingly less. If all the sutures are
consolidated, there may be no increase in size, and this is especially
true of the mechanical dropsy of adult life. The dropsical effusion,
which is then moderate in amount, finds room through compression
of the brain-substance, and part of it escapes into the spinal canal.

The size of the hydrocephalic head varies considerably. Where there

has been an early arrest of the disease it may be but slightly above
the normal. On the other hand, the dimensions are sometimes
enormous. In the Warren Museum of Harvard University is a cranium
which measures 27½ inches in its greatest circumference, and 20½
inches from one auditory foramen to the other over the top of the
head. Its internal capacity is 257 cubic inches. The patient, who died
at the age of three years, was never able to sit up and support the
head, or even to turn it from the left side, on which she continually
lay; she never spoke, and seemed to have no intelligence. The skull
of the celebrated James Cardinal measured 32¼ inches in its largest
circumference.4 Even more remarkable instances are on record. The
dimensions of the fontanels, particularly the anterior, usually
correspond with those of the skull in general. During any strong
muscular effort on the part of the patient the membrane covering
them is seen to be bulged out by pressure from the fluid beneath.
The enlargement is not always uniform; it may be in part or wholly
confined to one side, owing to consolidation of the sutures of the
opposite side, or because only one of the lateral ventricles is
affected. The scalp is traversed by numerous distended veins. The
hair is very scanty. The head has a soft, fluctuating feel, and the
walls sometimes seem to crackle beneath the fingers, like
parchment.
4 Reports of Medical Cases, etc., by Richard Bright, M.D., London, 1831, vol. i. p.
431.

In cases of moderate severity there may be few or no symptoms of

active cerebral disturbance, such as convulsions or paralysis, but the
child does not learn to talk, to walk, or to control the sphincters even
at the age of three or four years, and the signs of imperfect mental
development are evident. He is apt to be irritable or mischievous,
and even when not actually idiotic is very backward in evincing signs
of intelligence. There are, however, not a few exceptions to this, and
some children with large hydrocephalic heads are intelligent and
amiable. The cranium of a girl who died at the age of sixteen years is
preserved in the Warren Museum. It measures 24¼ inches in
circumference and 17¼ inches from one auditory meatus to the
other over the vertex, and the bone is in no place more than one-
eighth of an inch in thickness. The child was an inmate of a house of
industry, where she was instructed in the usual branches of
knowledge taught in our common schools, until at length, such was
her capacity, she was entrusted with the teaching of the other pauper
children, and she had an excellent character for intelligence and
moral worth. She died of phthisis. On post-mortem examination “the
brain was found floating, as it were, in a large collection of water.” As
in other chronic diseases, there are often pauses, from time to time,
of variable duration, in which there is some improvement in the
condition of the patient, as well as a temporary arrest in the
enlargement of the head. The growth of the child in stature is often
retarded, and when life is prolonged the individual is more or less
dwarfed. In some cases there is a considerable increase in the
amount of adipose tissue, and the appetite is often voracious. L.
Fürst reports5 the case of a hydrocephalic girl, sixteen years old,
whose height (or, rather, length, for she was unable to stand) was 81
centimeters (nearly 32 inches), corresponding to the stature of a
child between three and four years old. The periphery of the head
measured 511/5 centimeters (20¼ inches). The anterior fontanel was
still open. The age was verified by reference to the registry of birth at
the police-office.
5 “Exquisite Wachsthumshemmung bei Hydrocephalus chronicus,” von Dr. Livius
Fürst, Virchow's Archiv, June, 1884.

The symptoms of cerebral disturbance in chronic hydrocephalus are

much less striking than one would expect, doubtless because the
increase of pressure upon the brain is so gradual. Actual paralysis,
especially of the limbs, is rare, but convulsions are not infrequent, as
is the spasmodic constriction of the glottis known as laryngismus
stridulus or spasmodic croup. A general state of uneasiness and
restlessness is common. Vision is often impaired and sometimes
wholly lost. Strabismus is frequently present, or there may be an
involuntary rolling movement of the eyeballs. The pupils are often
dilated and insensible to light. In consequence of the increased
weight of the head, the child is unable to support it, and in most
cases is compelled to keep the bed. Vomiting is common. The
digestive functions are disturbed. Constipation is an almost constant
symptom, and the sphincters are relaxed in the advanced stages of
the disease. Although in some cases, as already stated, the child
may grow fat, the reverse of this is the rule; there is usually
progressive emaciation, especially of the lower extremities.

The duration of the disease varies much in different cases. The

earlier the characteristic symptoms manifest themselves the more
rapid is its course. Most children born hydrocephalic survive but a
few days or weeks. In cases which are more slow in their
development the patient may live some years, and in rare instances
attain adult life. But his feeble vitality usually makes him an easy
prey to the ordinary complaints of childhood, and a large proportion
of cases succumb to inflammation of the lungs or of other organs, to
diarrhœa, whooping cough, or the eruptive diseases. Most of those
who escape these intercurrent maladies perish from defective
nutrition, the result of malassimilation of food, or else are cut off by
acute cerebral inflammation, with convulsions, etc.

PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY.—It is rarely that a large amount of serum is

found in the cavity of the arachnoid unless a free communication has
been established between it and the ventricles by the destruction of
cerebral tissue. In the pia the quantity may be more abundant than
normal, filling the subarachnoid spaces, separating the convolutions
from each other, and occasionally forming little sac-like elevations on
the surface of the membrane; but it should be borne in mind that a
certain amount of serous infiltration of the tissue of the pia is by no
means rare in cases of death from various diseases, owing to the
obstruction to the circulation during the last hours of life, and should
not be considered pathological unless it exceed the usual limits. The
amount of effusion into the ventricles varies between very wide
limits, from some ounces to two or three pints. It may be transparent,
or turbid from particles of cerebral tissue or epithelial or pus-cells,
and is occasionally slightly tinged with blood. Its specific gravity is
nearly identical with that of water, and it contains a trace of albumen.
The effusion usually occupies the two lateral and the middle
ventricles. Less frequently the dropsy is unilateral, in consequence,
apparently, of an obliteration of the foramen of Monro. The tissues
composing the walls of the ventricles are compressed and hardened.
The ependyma of the walls and of the plexus is thickened and
roughened by the formation of minute elevations, which the
microscope shows to be composed of proliferated and sclerosed
connective tissue. The brain in cases of large effusion is reduced to
a membranous sac, flattened, with hardly any trace of its original
structure at first sight apparent. In the case of James Cardinal,
before alluded to, Bright says, “The brain lay at its base [of the skull]
with its hemispheres opened outward like the leaves of a book.”
Closer inspection shows that all the parts are present, although
atrophied by pressure. The convolutions are flattened and the brain-
substance is pale and softened. The cranial nerves are often
softened and flattened.

In the dropsy of the head in adults which is the result of mechanical

pressure or of cachexia the appearances are widely different. The
effusion may occupy the cavity of the arachnoid, and even the space
between the dura and the skull, as well as the ventricles. The
amount of fluid is much less than in the chronic hydrocephalus of
children. The ventricular walls present no signs of inflammatory
changes.

DIAGNOSIS.—Chronic hydrocephalus is usually recognized without

difficulty. The chief points of diagnostic importance are the
progressive enlargement of the head, the separation of the cranial
bones, with their peculiar change of position, as already described,
and the evident signs of arrested intellectual development. If the
head be but little enlarged, the case might be mistaken for that of
chronic hypertrophy of the brain, but this is a very rare disease, and
is not accompanied with defective mental development.

PROGNOSIS.—The elements of prognosis include the size of the head

at birth, its rate of enlargement, the general condition of the child,
both physically and intellectually, his hereditary antecedents, and the
hygienic influences to which he may be subjected. A large proportion
of children born hydrocephalic live but a short time; a few survive
one or more years. The number of those who reach adult life is
extremely small. The favorable indications are a tardy appearance of
the dropsy and its slow progress, without marked evidence of
defective mental and bodily development.

TREATMENT.—The treatment of chronic hydrocephalus is general and

local, the first being the most important, although in many cases it is
difficult to enforce it, from lack of intelligence and of means on the
part of those in charge of the patient. Proper ventilation, good
drainage, and cleanliness are essential. The child should be bathed
daily, and should be protected against changes in temperature by
suitable clothing. If his strength allow, he should be taken into the
open air daily in fine weather. A wet-nurse should be provided for
infants whose mothers are unable to suckle them. Older patients
should take milk, cream, animal broths, farinaceous substances,
etc., with wine or brandy. Tonics, especially cod-liver oil,
hypophosphite of lime, and some preparation of iron or of the iodide
of iron, are important, the choice being determined by the effect
apparently produced. The internal and external employment of
mercurial preparations, once in vogue, is now almost entirely
abandoned by the best authorities. The evacuation of the fluid by
puncture, followed by compression of the head by bandaging, has
been occasionally resorted to, and in a few instances with success,
but the cases in which it is indicated are rare. Thomas Young
Thompson6 reports a case in which puncture was followed by
recovery. The child, fourteen days old, fell, apparently without ill
effects, but three weeks afterward a protuberance appeared on the
crown of the head which continued to enlarge, and the signs of
chronic hydrocephalus were unmistakable. In three months the
circumference over the parietal eminences measured 20 inches, and
a year afterward 24½ inches. In spite of energetic internal and
external treatment the enlargement continued to progress, until the
head was punctured, and about three hundred grammes of a clear,
transparent fluid, free from albumen, were evacuated. Five weeks
later a second puncture was made, and sixty grammes of a milky
fluid withdrawn. The child recovered, and two years later was in
good health, the head not being disproportioned to the rest of the
body. West considers the cases in which the effusion is apparently
external—that is, confined to the arachnoid cavity, rather than
ventricular, and in which there are no indications of active cerebral
disease—to be the most favorable for the operation. The proper
situation for the puncture is the coronal suture, about an inch or an
inch and a half from the anterior fontanel. A few ounces of fluid only
should be withdrawn at a time, and compression should be carefully
applied both during the escape of the fluid and afterward.
6 Med.-Chir. Transactions, vol. xlvii., 1864.
 CONGESTION, INFLAMMATION, AND
HEMORRHAGE OF THE MEMBRANES OF THE
SPINAL CORD.

BY FRANCIS MINOT, M.D.

Congestion of the Spinal Membranes.

The blood-vessels of the spinal membranes communicate freely with

the general circulation, and there is less opportunity for their
obstruction than in the case of the meninges of the brain.
Hyperæmia of the dura and pia mater is therefore seldom met with,
except in connection with disease of the cord; and, indeed, but little
is known on the subject, which is only alluded to as possible by
authorities of the present day, although the affection was formerly
supposed to be a common one, giving rise to various symptoms,
such as numbness and formication of the extremities, muscular
weakness, and even paraplegia—symptoms which are now known
to be caused by structural diseases of the cord only. As Erb1
remarks, “It is hardly possible that any considerable hyperæmia of
the meninges should exist without a similar condition existing in the
cord also, as the vascular supply of both is the same.”
 1 “Krankheiten des Rückenmarks,” von Wilhelm Erb, in Ziemssen's Handbuch,
Leipzig, 1876; Am. trans., vol. xiii. p. 99.

ETIOLOGY.—Hyperæmia of the spinal membranes is found after death

from convulsions, especially in cases of tetanus, hydrophobia,
eclampsia, strangulation, poisoning from narcotics, etc., in which the
effect is evidently due to asphyxia. An interesting case of extensive
hyperæmia of the spinal membranes, as well as of those of the
brain, complicating mania, is reported by M. R. G. Fronmüller.2 A girl
of eighteen years, previously well, being accused of theft, fell into a
state of melancholia, passing into mania, with frequent convulsions,
screaming, etc. There was no spinal tenderness. The urine
contained no albumen. The temperature was never elevated. No
opisthotonos. The sphincters became relaxed, and she died at the
end of about three weeks. The dura was found to be normal, but the
pia mater of the brain, cerebellum, medulla oblongata, and cord was
strongly injected. The brain and cord were normal; no ventricular
effusion. Here the meningeal hyperæmia was doubtless caused by
asphyxia resulting from the convulsions.
2 See Schmidt's Jahrbücher, 1883, No. 7.

Congestion of the spinal membranes has been attributed to sudden

suppression of the menstrual flow or of hemorrhoidal bleeding, and
to portal obstruction, but the evidence of this is very meagre.
Exposure to cold and wet, as from sleeping on the damp ground, is
an alleged and plausible cause.

The SYMPTOMS attributed to hyperæmia of the spinal membranes are

pain in the back extending to the legs, with numbness and tingling of
the toes, sensation of weight in the limbs, muscular weakness,
appearing suddenly without fever and usually of transient duration.
There is no evidence that it gives rise to paralysis. Considering that
temporary congestion of the membranes must occasionally happen
from convulsions, as in epilepsy, etc., it is remarkable that no
symptoms attributable to it have been observed under these
circumstances.3
 3 See Epilepsy and other Chronic Convulsive Diseases, etc., by W. R. Gowers, M.D.,
London, 1881, p. 106.

MORBID ANATOMY.—We must be careful not to mistake post-mortem

staining of the tissues from imbibition of the coloring matter of the
blood—the result of decomposition aided by the position of the body
—for true congestion. The latter is recognized by fine vascular
arborization covering the surface of the dura or pia, often
accompanied with small punctate hemorrhages. More extensive
extravasations in the connective tissue, surrounding and between
the membranes, are sometimes found. The spinal fluid is usually
increased in amount, and often tinged with red. On account of the
free vascular connection between the membranes and the cord the
latter almost always partakes of the congestion.

DIAGNOSIS.—From what has been said it follows that simple

hyperæmia of the spinal membranes can hardly be distinguished
from that of the cord. (See the article on DISEASES OF THE SUBSTANCE
OF THE BRAIN AND SPINAL CORD.) When the symptoms are
unaccompanied by fever, are of very moderate severity, and of short
duration, we may perhaps infer that the lesion is confined to the
membranes.

The TREATMENT is the same as that for congestion of the spinal cord.

Acute Inflammation of the Spinal Dura Mater.

SYNONYM.—Acute spinal pachymeningitis.

Acute inflammation of the spinal dura mater is chiefly confined to the

outer surface of the membrane (peripachymeningitis), and is almost
always consecutive to either injury or disease of the vertebræ
(fracture, dislocation, caries), to wounds penetrating the spinal
cavity, or to suppurative disease in neighboring organs or tissues,
which makes its way into the peridural space through the
intervertebral openings. The symptoms are complex—in part caused
by the original disease, and in part by the pressure of the products of
inflammation exercised upon the nerve-roots, and even upon the
cord itself. Pain in the back, corresponding to the seat of the
disease, is rarely absent, and all movements of the trunk are
extremely painful. When the exudation is sufficient to compress the
nerve-roots, the pain will extend to the trunk and the limbs, and other
signs of irritation, such as a feeling of constriction by a tight girdle,
and tingling, numbness, and cutaneous hyperæsthesia in the limbs,
will be observed, varying in situation according to the seat of the
lesion. In some cases the compression of the cord may be sufficient
to cause paraplegia. General symptoms will vary according to the
complications of the case. Severe injury or extensive disease of the
vertebræ will be accompanied with high fever; but if the external
inflammation be moderate and the meningeal complication be limited
in extent, the fever may be subacute.

MORBID ANATOMY.—The connective tissue between the dura and the

bone is the seat of inflammatory exudation, usually purulent, of
greater or less extent, and more abundant in the posterior than the
anterior part of the spinal cavity, owing to the position of the patient.
A more or less abundant exudation, either of pus or of dry caseous
matter, is found upon the outer surface of the dura or infiltrating the
connective tissue between it and the bony walls. The dura is
thickened, and sometimes the exudation is seen upon its inner walls,
but the pia is seldom involved in the inflammation. The cord may be
compressed or flattened when the amount of exudation is large, and
may in consequence show signs of inflammation in its vicinity. The
spinal nerves likewise are sometimes compressed, atrophied,
softened, and inflamed. The disease rarely occupies the cervical
region, on account of the close union of the dura with the bones of
that part; hence there is an absence of pain in the neck and of
retraction of the head.

DIAGNOSIS.—The diagnosis is founded on the presence of general

symptoms of spinal disease—pain in the back, but not extending to
the neck, increased by movements of the trunk; cutaneous
hyperæsthesia, tingling, or numbness in various parts of the surface
of the body; paresis or paralysis of the lower extremities in severe
cases; along with a history of vertebral disease or injury or of
suppurative disease in the neighborhood of the spine. The history of
the case will generally be sufficient to exclude myelitis, tetanus, or
muscular pain (rheumatism, lumbago). From acute leptomeningitis
the diagnosis must also be made by the history, but it should be
borne in mind that the pia may be involved at the same time with the
dura.

PROGNOSIS.—In complicated cases the prognosis is grave if the

spinal symptoms are well marked and severe, especially when there
is evidence of much pressure on the cord (paraplegia). If the signs of
spinal irritation were moderate, the danger would depend upon the
nature and extent of the external lesion.

TREATMENT.—This would be addressed mainly to the primitive

disease. For the spinal symptoms the treatment would not differ
materially from that of inflammation of the spinal pia mater.

Chronic Spinal Pachymeningitis.

This affection generally coexists with chronic inflammation of the pia.

Like the acute inflammation of the dura, it is seen in connection with
disease or injury of the vertebræ, and it may also arise from tumors
of the membrane (chiefly syphilitic) and from myelitis. It is frequent
among the chronic insane, and in them is sometimes associated with
hemorrhagic effusions analogous to the hæmatoma of the cerebral
dura mater. Chronic inflammation of the spinal dura is of unfrequent
occurrence, and but little is known of its history and pathology. In a
case reported by Wilks4 the membrane was thickened to nearly its
whole extent, and in the cervical region presented numerous bony
plates. The pia was also thickened at this part and adhered closely
to the dura. The symptoms, which seemed chiefly due to disease of
the cord from compression, were retraction of the lower limbs and
violent jerking from excessive reflex action.
4 Transactions of the Pathological Society of London, vol. vii., 1856.

A special form of the disease, occupying chiefly the cervical region,

was first described by Charcot.5 The membrane is thickened by a
deposit of successive layers of fibrin, compressing the cord, which is
flattened from before backward and inflamed. The nerve-roots are
also more or less compressed. The course of the disease may be
divided into two stages: First, that of irritation of the spinal nerves,
with pain in the back part of the neck, extending to the head and
along the upper limbs. The pain is permanent, but liable to
exacerbations, and is accompanied with stiffness of the neck and a
feeling of numbness and tingling, with muscular weakness of the
arms. Sometimes the skin of the arms is the seat of trophic changes,
as shown by the presence of bullæ or pemphigus. The second
period is that of extension of the disease to the cord. The pain
ceases, and is followed by paralysis or muscular atrophy, especially
in the domain of the ulnar and median nerves, resulting in extension
of the hand on the forearm, with flexion of the fingers toward the
palm, giving rise to a claw-like appearance (main en griffe). In some
cases an upward extension of the disease implicates the root of the
radial nerve, and the hand then assumes a prone position from
paralysis of the extensor muscles. The lower portion of the cord may
also become involved, with similar results in the lower extremities.
Although the disease is generally progressive, it is not always so,
and Charcot cites one case in which great improvement took place in
the course of some years, though not apparently in consequence of
any special treatment.
5 Leçons sur les Mal. du Syst. nerv., par J. M. Charcot, Paris, 1875, vol. ii. p. 246.
See, also, Maladies du Syst. nerv., par A. Vulpian, Paris, 1879, p. 127; and Clinique
méd. de l'Hôpital de la Charité, by the same.