Transcripts For CSPAN3 U.S. Japanese Perspectives On World

I am the host of todays discussion. Since 2003, the director of the Hauenstein Center for president ial studies named after colonel ralph hauenstein, whom we will be speaking of. I am joined on stage by two individuals for whom world war ii is no abstraction. Two your right is the daughter of the late ambassador. Her father is remembered as the envoy who tried to negotiate peace with america while the , Japanese Military was secretly trying to attack pearl harbor. Her mother was american from new york city. After world war ii, she married an american, worked in commercial real estate, and lived much of her life in the grand rapids area. One of her greatgrandchildren , garrett, is in the audience. Is a candidate in the Cook Leadership Academy. To your farright is the youngest grandson of colonel ralph hauenstein. Brians grandfather is pressed is best known as eisenhowers u. S. Army officer who liberated paris and places of unbelievable horror. After the war, ralph discovered his vocation as an entrepreneur and recognized as the father of goldfish crackers. [laughter] throughout his career in the private sector, he also became one of west michigans lead philanthropists. I will say later and brian will it is more than the fact that also his name is on buildings. ,a lot more. His grandson has spent most of his adult life in west michigan. He works with oasis Senior Advisors he is the , where he is the organizations Senior Advisor and serves on the Hauenstein Centers cabinet. Brians daughter, lily, is also in the audience, a recent graduate of the Hauenstein Center Cook Leadership Academy and she is soon going to be taking a job in tokyo. Congratulations, by the way. On a personal note, two things. One of the highlights of my life of my time at the Hauenstein Center is when i introduced them over lunch and to listen to them share stories of their different wartime perspectives. Two people who in a previous era might have regarded themselves as enemies, but now met as friends. It was a beautiful event. Finally i want to say that, in , life, we often seek one thing and find another. To me ralph became more than the , centers figurehead. In the 12 years i knew ralph, he was a wise advisor, a faithful mentor, and a terrific and treasured friend. We met for lunch every wednesday in town. We met on saturday mornings over a cup of coffee. I not only learned history, not the kind of history you get in textbooks not only laughed at , his arch sense of humor, not only experienced his gift of friendship, but also by his example understood what it is to become a better man. Ladies and gentlemen, please soladies and gentlemen, please, welcome. Hite and Brian Hauenstein [applause] to begin our conversation, we should get to know your people better. If we could take four or five minutes each. Pia, tell us what you think we ought to know about your father, the famous ambassador. Pia he was primarily known as a person who signed the tripartite act, not a good idea according to my father, but the ranking japanese ambassador in europe. Although he had no part in negotiating pact, was ordered to sign the agreement. The architect on the japanese side of the pact was unable to come to europe. They did not have the flights they do now. [laughter] he wasnt able to attend. My dad was appointed to perform that task. Unfortunately he didnt really care and more or less signed it under duress. The other thing he was possibly known for, was he was a special envoy sent to washington to negotiate some sort of peace, avoiding world war ii. Unfortunately it did not turn out to be successful. He regarded it as the worst part of his career, because it ended then, and he wasnt successful in attaining his goal. As a result, the war came ,and he lost his only son in the war. Thank you for that introduction. Brian, tell us more about your grandfather colonel hauenstein. Brian he was eisenhowers chief of intelligence. That is where his world turned around in many ways. Leading up to that point, he was stationed in iceland. He was there well ahead of the troops in europe. [indiscernible] sorry. Hello, everybody. [laughter] so, if you want to start. Brian maybe i can start over. Most notably, he was eisenhowers chief of intelligence. He was for a couple of years in iceland. Backing up further, he was editor of the grand rapids herald. That led his path. He was a lieutenant in the civil conservation corps, the ccc. All of this expertise in being a reporter and military experience, all of those things culminate into the perfect person to work in an intelligence division. In iceland he was assigned to the intelligence division. He was an aide de camp to a general. While there, most people dont know this, but we were already actively engaging with the germans. They were sinking merchant ships. We were shooting down planes. It was one of those planes they had shot down that they noticed a codebook was amidst the wreckage. There might be an image of that here. He took that codebook to the to bletchley park. Many know the story where they were decoding the german enigma. Code breaking was in part took place because of the codebook recovered during that time. He was in such turning points of the war throughout. One story, he arrived into paris. And of course he was the first , to arrive. And as he is coming into town, they had landed on the outskirts of town and he is coming into town and all of a sudden, boom, bomb goes off. He is thinking he is under attack. Well it was actually the vehicle he was in backfired, [laughter] so he was ok. [laughter] there are so many Great Stories to tell about the war. I could go on forever. But maybe i will save them for the after war experiences. Thank you. Both of your relatives involved in the war had a distinguished career of Public Service. It is interesting how they got to Public Service, because it was not a linear path. I think for the young people present, it would be interesting how your father ended up in that diplomatic corps when no one in his family expected that. Pia his father owned a Shipbuilding Company and apparently did some business with people from overseas. I dont know if that was a fact, but i suspect that might have been a factor in my father developing an interest in the rest of the world. Immediately he made up his mind to enter the Diplomatic Service because immediately after graduation from university he entered the Japanese Foreign service. He, as a result, we were dragged, the whole family, all over the world. At times, especially when i got to my teenage years, i used to tell my mother, when i grow up, i am going to stay in one place. [laughter] but it was an interesting experience. In retrospect, i would have not missed it for anything. It provided your family with amazing experiences to see the world. Pia it was difficult because my mother believed if you want to learn to swim, you put them in the water. Whatever country we arrived in, the first thing that was done was to put me in the local schools without knowing a word of the language spoken there. But oddly enough, as a child, i was able to pick it up rather quickly. So, i did not have to look at the children looking at me and saying things that i knew were bad things about me. [laughter] thank you. Brian, tell us how ralph got to Public Service. His distinct military career was not obvious when he started out. Brian first, i should say he was very much a religious man. His path was guided through his faith belief. Between world war i and world war ii, he was smart enough to see we were not going to get out of this next round. I think that, from an early age, and i suppose he was in his early 20s at the time, he realized for the betterment of our country and himself in some ways, it sort of protected him because he went in as an officer versus an enlisted man. There were opportunities that presented themselves. He pushed things along as well. He didnt just let things happen. Public service after the war, the opportunity came to serve on eisenhowers committees. He was in the inner circle of washington. He took advantage of those opportunities. The jamestown foundation, served there for a number of years, ensuring our country would be safe from communism. He was appointed, and somewhere around 1961, all the way through and most notably, the first free russian elections, there he was with gorbachev and the chief of intelligence and the like. His whole life was dedicated to country and family and to building business. All that tied together nicely for him. Go ahead. Both of these individuals had a real sense of what a nation needed. You cant have everybody always in the private sector doing their own thing. They knew the sacrifices Public Service entailed. Both of them were in view with that intelligence and that grace to be able to do that. Pia, i think you teased us a bit, telling us what it was like to be a child of this famous diplomat, someone who would become a world figure. Tell us what it is like to be the child of someone that highprofile right in the middle of so much happening in the world. Pia one thing was a burden. From an early age, somehow, i knew that my behavior would have consequences, not just for my family, but possibly even, heaven forbid, for the country. So, it was something you either adjusted to all the movement and change of countries, or you just had to drown. So, fortunately, due to my mothers attitude toward things if you cannot change it, go with it. The other thing is that i became older and was aware of things going on in the world. It became fascinating to be allowed, many times, to listen to what my father recounted, as the result of something that happened. For instance, to illustrate, what a diplomats job was, when i was three years old my father was posted to lima, peru. It was a period when many okinawa citizens emigrated to peru and it was creating an issue. Economic stresses, and the fact that there were so many who entered in such a short time. So, it was my fathers job, as the lead japanese diplomat in the country, to find a solution to this issue that had arisen. He was able to negotiate with the peruvian government, to have made available a sparsely populated section of peru, since many of the people of okinawa were farmers. To relocate them to that land. The issue just dispersed. The farmers, the okinawans, or doing what they were trained to do. And there was no more economic issue in the city. Those are the kinds of things that, at the time, i did not realize. I was only three years old. In learning and listening to my father speak, or my family discuss, i became very aware of the fact that a diplomats job was not an easy one, but a great opportunity to do good wherever they were posted. Just a followup. Did you feel you are watched, your behavior . Pia yes. I do not recall that anyone ever told me that. But i definitely had a feeling that my behavior and especially in public was rather important. To be good. [laughter] what is so interesting about ralph is that he did not reveal all he had done in world war ii. So, when you are his grandchild, growing up around him, maybe you hear some stories. But it is only in the latter part of the 1990s he starts to reveal who he was. You mentioned the codebook earlier. Lets put it out on the table now. Ralph probably saved tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives to be the first to discover that codebook and get it to the british, so the code breakers could start working on it. Churchill would end up saying, nobody could know we had broken that code. Truth is too precious not to be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies. That was the saying that ralph would tell us, you and me, and the family. You find out as an adult who he is. Brian it was interesting. As family we all knew he was in the military. We knew that he fought in world war ii. We knew his rank. But we really did not understand to what extent he really contributed. Would be five 1985, celebration of dday past, i think it was because washington allowed this thing to happen, to talk about the enigma machine, the coding, and so forth. He started speaking, at the ford museum and there was a piece in the newspaper. Because he operated most of his life in the shadows, he was not very forthcoming with many of the answers we were looking for. But we would still hear stories over the dinner table. I was telling somebody earlier, the first time i brother and i were using chopsticks at his house he said i learned how to use chopsticks in paris, when i had dinner with chiang kai shek. [laughter] the other was corn on the cob, we had at the house. He says, i taught general molotov how to eat corn on the cob. [laughter] ok. The molotov cocktail. Brian right. I dont think those are tied together. [laughter] it was fascinating, as he aged, to hear the stories. Many in the room have heard many of these Great Stories as well. But not those on cspan. He was also called up by the vatican to be a vatican observer. And he was deeply involved with the catholic church. I do not know how many popes he spent private time with. But he was very passionate about his faith, as was grace, his wife. One of the tricks i learned, anyone who learned new ralph, if ralph, if you wanted him to open up and talk, get him a glass of finlandia. On the second when he is ready to start telling his story. He would open up. Let me ask a different question. You grew up in an environment where japan was changing a lot. And you would go to western europe or south america. You had different experience with different kinds of regimes. Im sure that made you think a lot about what it is like to grow up in freedom and have an environment in which you are able to do what you can. Tell us about your experience, though, when you went back to japan, after it and began to change under tojo. Pia we spent three years in europe. We had left japan in 1936, and returned in 1939. Before we left for europe, japan seemed to be a fairly free and normal country. When we returned in 1939, such a dramatic change had taken place in the culture. I remember that apparently fraternization between the sexes was very discouraged for some reason. I know not why. But i had a cousin, a boy, who was the same age as i was. We went to the same school. And we had to go there was a section in tokyo where there was one bookstore after another. They had different specialties. Some specialized in certain countries literature and so on. We needed to go to some bookstore to acquire a text for school. And we passed by the bookstore that specialized in russian literature. So i said to my cousin, i want to go in there and he said no, we do not want to spend the time, lets go look for what we need to look. He started to walk away. So i chased him and grabbed him. Trying to get him to go into this russian literature store. Well, there was a police kiosk nearby. The policeman came out and politely asked us to come into the kiosk. And i thought, oh dear, that is all i need. My parents are going to read the paper and see this, that their daughter was accused of being unethical. [laughter] and my cousin, fortunately, was a fastthinking fellow. He said, we are sorry, this girl is a student from the philippines and she has been here a short time, so she is not aware of the rules. And i really did not want to bring her down, but my mother insisted that i bring her down, to get this book that was necessary for schooling. [laughter] and that was a great thing to happen to me. Anytime i got into trouble, i became a Philippine Exchange student. [laughter] and that took care of of a lot of awkward circumstances. [laughter] the other thing that was interesting. I guess all leaders have things they like to do, that they feel connects them to the people. General tojo was then the Prime Minister of japan and he is the one who developed this very militaristic regime. His thing was to ride his horse every morning in various neighborhoods. If there were people there that he could speak to, he would stop and speak. There were a lot of media people following him. I was waiting for my bus to go to school one morning when i heard this clap, clap. And i looked and thought, oh dear. [laughter] this will not bode well. [laughter] so, i quickly went from where i was sitting on the curb waiting for my bus. And i got up and ran into the front yard of a house nearby. So that i would not have to be interviewed by mr. Tojo. [laughter] but that was how, in the short three years that we were away, the total atmosphere and culture of the country had changed. I found that rather amazing, that it could happen in such a short time. And ralph referred to himself as a kid from the midwest. The prohibition midwest, when he was really young. And he is called to iceland and then europe and he sees the contrast between what is happening in the United States and in the midwest, which had been isolationist. Now hes confronted with tyranny and fortress europe. It changes him. It broadens his outlook. Brian, would you talk about that . Brian certainly. You can imagine, a west michigan native, born in fort wayne, indiana, but at a young age moved to grand rapids. His roots were grand rapids, and very midwestern. To see what he saw with his own eyes and experience that, must have been a tremendous undertaking. He talked about, and you mentioned earlier, dachau concentration camp and the experience he had there with the prisoners. You can imagine. He is on the hunt for hitler. He has been to the eagles nest. He is heading for berlin. As an intelligence officer, you have reports from the field these things are going on. But is is not concrete and so when he saw this firsthand, and the prisoners come up to him and he still had a scar on his hand until the day he died. Sombody squeezed him so hard, they were so happy they were there. To see the stacks of bodies. And the horrific things that he did see. He interrogated that Camp Commander of dachau, and his sergeant next to him, had all he could do to restrain him, from doing the wrong thing he realized that later, to shoot this guy on the spot. But it was an awful experience. All right. That segues into the next question i want to ask. Your father, your grandfather, are really sensitive souls in a lot of ways. For example, your father spent time in his youth in a zen temple, studying. A very spiritual man in addition to having a very sensitive soul. How did he deal with so many of the difficult things that came up in world war ii . The at