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[Notices and Restrictions]
NOTICE
Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview. RESTRICTIONS
Opened August, 1984
[Top of the Page | Notices and Restrictions | Interview Transcript | Appendix]
Oral History Interview with
Independence, Missouri
Summary Description: Topics mentioned by Mr. McColm includes his background growing up in Kansas and his father's association with the Forest Service; discussion of Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt in the Conservation movement; his education at the Kansas State Teacher's College, Emporia (now Emporia State University) and at Kansas State University where he received his degree in agricultural science; his experience as a farm loan officer with the Kansas Rehabilitation Corporation, Kansas Department of Agriculture; his experiences as a soil surveyor with the National Soil Survey Program, United States Department of Agriculture; his experience as a soil specialist, Topaz War Relocation Center, Deseret, Utah, War Relocation Authority and his relationship with Dillon Myer and farming techniques used by the Japanese Americans interned at Topaz; his commission as lieutenant in the United States Navy and his assignment as Chief of Agriculture, Joint Army-Navy Planning Staff, the Presidio, Monterey, California working on the planned invasion of Japan and subsequent occupation after World War II; his experience as military Governor of Ponape Island in the Pacific liberated from the Japanese at end of World War II; his experience as Soil conservationist, Navajo Reservation after returning from service in the Navy and his relationship with Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Dillon Myer, whom he had known earlier when he served as management agronomist at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah and Myer's views on termination of Bureau of Indian Affairs; his post Truman period experiences as agricultural adviser in India, United States Department of State and as Agricultural Program Coordinator and technical adviser to the International Mekong Project Committee, South Vietnam in the 1960's. Names mentioned include, Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, William Allen White, Dillon Myer, Major John Hildring, Paul Appleby, Harry L. Hopkins, General Douglas MacArthur, Will Rogers, Jr. and Theodore Cohen and Wolf Ladejinsky, both of whom worked with MacArthur in Japan after World War II and had been at the Civil Affairs Staging Area at the Presidio after McColm left for Ponape Island as Military Governor. Donor: George L. McColm. JOHNSON: Mr. McColm, I'm going to start, as I usually do, by asking you to tell us where you were born, what your birthdate is, and what your parents' names are. McCOLM: I was born at Colby, Kansas, August 2, 1911. My father, Theodore H. McColm, and Jane McColm, his wife, were in western Kansas managing land for an uncle that had gone out there to hunt coyotes and ended up buying a lot of land in that part of the country. It was the period of the first blow-outs [dust storms]. Mother had to keep a wet towel over my crib for the first six months of my life. JOHNSON: Where is Colby? McCOLM: It's in the northwestern corner of Kansas. JOHNSON: They were having dust storms back then? McCOLM: They had the first big blow-out in 1910 and '11; that was the first big period of blow-out. You see, those were abandoned farms that had been farmed a little bit and then people left. They had abandoned the farms. Well, my dad had always been kind of a political agitator, he was one of the guys that helped get the Forest Service started. You know, every generation of young people has to have a cause, and his cause was the Forest Service, to get the Forest Service established, to stop the lumber barons from clear cutting all the western forests. Now, they're back to clear cutting them. But they're clear cutting now to keep people from finding out that we've had 80 years of mismanagement of forests. In other words, they're destroying the evidence of 80 years of mismanagement of the National forests; that was the purpose of clear cutting. JOHNSON: Is there National forest land, though, in that part of Kansas? McCOLM: No, the point is that [Gifford] Pinchot and [Theodore] Roosevelt, in order to get the law passed, organized the youth of the entire Midwest, as well as the East, and everybody had had a cause. Pinchot was a pretty shrewd operator, and he and Roosevelt were going to take the land away from the Interior Department and put it in the Department of Agriculture where Pinchot was in charge of the Forestry Department, but had no forests to manage. JOHNSON: Did your father work for the Government at all? McCOLM: No, he never worked for the Government. But I was going to tell you, he had a cousin, Ed Miller, and as soon as the law was passed, he had Ed Miller go into the Forest Service; he just egged him on to go into the Forest Service, and he did. He ended up as Assistant Regional Forester at Albuquerque when he retired. So, we were connected with it, and I read forest journals all my life. JOHNSON: So, you kind of grew up in this atmosphere of conservation, especially of forests. McCOLM: The forests and land and all; I grew up with that background, and had forest journals laying on the table right there in Emporia, Kansas, all my life. JOHNSON: Did they try to plant a shelter belt of trees that far west? Did they plant any trees? McCOLM: Well, in Kansas my grandfather had planted a big grove of walnut trees; they must have been planted in the 1880s or the '90s. JOHNSON: Out in Colby? McCOLM: At Emporia. JOHNSON: How long did you live in Colby? McCOLM: Until I was about two years old. JOHNSON: Then you moved from Colby to... McCOLM: Dad was brought back to manage the home ranch in Emporia. JOHNSON: At Emporia, Kansas. McCOLM: We had about 700 acres in Emporia, and grandad wanted him to come back and take over management of the place in Emporia. That's how I came back. JOHNSON: So now you are back where it wasn't so arid, and you had trees. McCOLM: They already had this big grove of walnut trees and dad had to sell a lot of walnuts for a very low price to survive during the Depression of the '30s. JOHNSON: Where were you educated? In Emporia? McCOLM: I got my high school education and grade school in Emporia, and then went one year to Kansas State Teachers College at Emporia. JOHNSON: What year was that? McCOLM: That was 1928 and '29. McCOLM: The Kansas State Teachers's College is now called Emporia State University. JOHNSON: Oh, I see. McCOLM: Anyway, they've upgraded the name. JOHNSON: Then what did you do? McCOLM: Well, I built the first large-scale irrigation project in Kansas in 1928 and '29 during the summer, of course, when I wasn't going to school. I put in a four-inch centrifical pump. It was a contractors pump with an old Model T motor on it, and that wasn't big enough to pump the water up 30 feet to the elevation I needed to irrigate the place, so I bought an old light-six Studebaker motor, and that was enough power. So as long as we had water in the creek, Allen Creek, I was able to irrigate. I grew everything I could think of, and I found out very soon that water was not the whole answer to production in Kansas. I tried all different kinds of vegetables. JOHNSON: This was on that 700 acre ranch? McCOLM: No. I tended 28 acres of that for irrigated garden. JOHNSON: Twenty-eight acres of irrigated garden. McCOLM: During the period from the summer of '28 through to 1932. By 1932 Kansas was so dry there was no water in the creek, so I had to go back and work my way through college. I went to Kansas State then. JOHNSON: At Manhattan? McCOLM: At Manhattan. JOHNSON: From what years? McCOLM: From '32 to '35. Graduated in '35. To get a little more of my background, in 1923 I joined the 4-H Club, and we were told that that was the first year 4-H was called 4-H. Before that it was the Extension Youth Clubs. JOHNSON: I see. McCOLM: In other words, they had Extension Youth Clubs long before they had 4-H. But 4-H was a more sexy name for it. It stood for head, heart, hand and health, and that was very appropriate. But the 4-H in those years was very competitive. Everybody was competing for the prizes. It isn't nearly so competitive today as it was then. Well, I was county canning champion when my mother was sick one summer, and I won first prize on a pure bred gilt at the State Fair in 1923. In 1927 I was state crops champion in 4-H. JOHNSON: By the way, did you have any brothers and sisters? McCOLM: My younger brother was Ed McColm and he graduated from high school at the age of 15 and went on to college and made straight A's. He stayed out several years and then he got to come to college after I did. He made straight A's in college and then he went out as a county agent and was picked up by the Army because he was on the National Rifle Team, National Large-Bore Rifle Team, and was sent to the Philippines in 1940 as a reserve officer to train the 57th Infantry. He actually ended up training the new 91st, and was killed in the first battle of the Philippines on Christmas Day in 1941. JOHNSON: Two or three weeks after Pearl Harbor. McCOLM: Yes, he was an Army captain. They didn't have any equipment larger than a .50 caliber machine gun when the Japanese landed with 14 tanks. JOHNSON: Was he the only brother or sister? McCOLM: He was my only brother. And my sister, she's now with her husband in the bee business in Purcellville, Virginia. Her husband was another Americus, Kansas, boy -- from near Emporia. He became head of measurement and control, with the General Services Administration, before he retired in Washington. JOHNSON: You're saying that your father's influence is what helped get you into agriculture, as a career. I suppose your 4-H adviser, or leader, must have been influential, too. McCOLM: My mother was the 4-H Club Leader -- Fremont 4-H Club. The 4-H work had a lot of other things in it. In 1927 or '28, I think it was '28, John Glass the state engineer, conducted a school, an engineering school for 4-H club boys. It was a summer camp in a beautiful wooded place where we studied engineering problems for two weeks. We learned to lay out broad-based terraces. I helped my dad lay out the first broad-based terraces in Lyon County, Kansas in 1928. Then my brother and I went out with an old upside down level that dad had gotten during the World War I period. We laid out broad-based terraces and water spreading devices... JOHNSON: Waterways. McCOLM: And waterways and check dams in gullies. We laid those out for farmers all over that part of the state during the next three or four years when I was out of school. We were working as engineers. JOHNSON: Were you being paid by the Government? McCOLM: No, being paid by the farmers. JOHNSON: By the farmers themselves. McCOLM: We had a really going soil conservation program in Kansas sponsored by John Glass, the state engineer, long before we had the Soil Conservation Service. JOHNSON: That was a New Deal program, the Soil Conservation Service. McCOLM: Yes, we got into that later. JOHNSON: Well, from '32 to '35, you're at Kansas State. What were you majoring in at that time? McCOLM: I was majoring in horticulture, and crop-weather was my major project. I started it as a result of my experience with the Kansas climate. I found that you could not grow crops like cauliflower and crops that required cooler temperatures in Kansas no matter how much water you have for irrigation. One time I was looking at a little field of cauliflower I had, and grandad came by. He never stopped running all his life until he got hit by a stump puller and knocked one leg off when he was 81 years old; he had three operations. Finally, they cut it off at the hip and he lived another seven or eight years running around in a wheelchair. But he came running by when I was looking at this cauliflower, and it was a pretty sad mess. It turned red from the heat, and there were bugs all over it. There was not any of it salable, and he said, "Don't worry about it George, the good Lord didn't intend for you to grow any cauliflower." So I thought I'd better find out what signals the good Lord was putting out with the climate. The next thing to do was to find out why and where and how any area in the world got to be a reliable place to grow a given crop. That was the basic philosophy I started out with. That was even before I got to Kansas State. In order to do that, I started going up to the offices of the Kansas City Packer, it was just outside of Kansas City. I've forgotten now exactly where it's located, but I studied the weather records in relation to the records in the Kansas City Packer. The Kansas City Packer was written by people interested in growing crops for sale in various areas, and so that allowed me to find out exactly where the cauliflower was grown; exactly where the peas were grown; exactly where the sweet corn was grown, and what time of year they were grown. So, I started developing coordinates. See, this ties in with my work for the Government in World War II, because I started developing coordinates for all the basic food crops of the world, where they were grown and under what temperature conditions they were grown, and under what rainfall conditions they were grown, and when they were planted and when they were harvested. It all shows up in records like the Kansas City Packer keeps. JOHNSON: That was a journal, the Packer? McCOLM: The Packer is the trade paper of the produce industry. Since I'd been a truck gardener I was reading that everyday. I developed great respect for everybody in the world growing produce, because it was a big terrific job. JOHNSON: This got you into geography, and meteorology and biology and botany? McCOLM: It got me into crop geography. The whole field. And my dad and I together, collected over 1500 agricultural bulletins. I had read those by the time I was 14 years old. Every time we'd get a new bulletin, I'd read the bulletin and then file it. I had a file of bulletins, a row of bulletin files this long. JOHNSON: About a yard long. McCOLM: Over a yard long. JOHNSON: You had a kind of a head start by the time you got to Kansas State, as far as knowledge of this field is concerned. McCOLM: In fact I was teaching some of the courses. JOHNSON: Is that right. McCOLM: But it was to my detriment; from the grade standpoint this was a detriment, and not to my advantage. I was telling the professors some theories of my own that weren't quite according to their concept of it. I was telling them that crop rotation wasn't the answer. Crop rotation was the big thing in those days. I told them that what we were actually doing was determining the exact place where a given crop was best suited; and as soon as that was determined, not by science, not by intelligence, but by attrition, then it was wise to grow all major crops where they grow best and have the highest percentage of success. And a lot of that success was determined by the climate. JOHNSON: That also means fertilizing each year? McCOLM: All those things are capital investments that you should not make unless you know exactly that they're going to be profitable. And they're not going to be profitable if the climate is not suitable. JOHNSON: And that has to do with temperatures and humidities and so on? McCOLM: It's all part of the weather record. I had a friend by the name of Isaiah Bowman, who later became the head of Johns Hopkins University. He was the world's best geographer at that time. Isaiah Bowman said, "Facts more valuable than all the gold in the Klondike lie buried in the records of the Weather Bureau." JOHNSON: The facts that lie buried there. McCOLM: Yes. I was trying to pursue those in the '30s and I started to get a lot of recognition for it, but I didn't get all recognition. Kansas was growing and shipping potatoes as far as Chicago, maybe New York. They had whole train loads of potatoes going into Chicago, and you could smell those potatoes two miles out of Chicago because they were harvested at too warm a time of year, and without refrigerated shipping or refrigerated storage. They were spoiling and they had to sort all the Kansas potatoes over before they could sell them. I pointed this out in my first crop-weather paper written in 1934. At the same time the Kansas potatoes were so-called occupying the market, the Shafter long whites started to come in from California. The Shafter long whites were shipped by refrigerated cars, they were beautiful potatoes, nice long white beautiful potatoes, and they were being grown in a climate that could produce those potatoes every year, in the same quality, and with high yields. They were also being grown in an area with suitable soils and an area where the politicians had got preferential freight rates. You see, California had an "infant industry" problem. The Government was putting all this money into developing irrigation out there, and spending lots of Government money, so then it was easy to get the Congress to give them preferential freight rates. So you could ship a carload of potatoes from California to Chicago, just as cheap as you could ship it from Lawrence to Chicago. JOHNSON: The railroads tended to run state politics, I believe, in California too at that time. McCOLM: Well, they had very good politicians. JOHNSON: So then you graduated in '35, got your bachelor's of science degree, BS degree. McCOLM: In agriculture and horticulture, and had minors in two or three things. JOHNSON: So what did you do after you had your degree? McCOLM: Well, before I even got my degree, I didn't have to take any finals in the last year. They let me out two weeks early to go out to Chautauqua County and get all of the farmers off relief, working for the Kansas Rehabilitation program. You've probably heard of that or know something about it. It was the forerunner of the Resettlement Administration. JOHNSON: So you were getting involved with the New Deal. McCOLM: That was the New Deal program. That was 1935. And I got about 49 farmers off relief. Now, this program was basically a program in which we went to the bank. This farmer had been on relief and drawn money for relief for maybe six months, or a year or more, and was able to live and keep on maybe with a little bit of money from chickens, or cows or something, but he didn't have an economic unit. So he wasn't making a living. In '35 it wasn't too hard to be so you couldn't make a living, but our purpose in setting up this program wasn't to just go out and make him a loan. Our program was to make sure that he had the ability to manage a sound economic unit. Then we went to the bank, and you know why the banks were so willing to work with us don't you? Have you got the story of the Kansas Holiday Association? JOHNSON: I've heard about the movement, yes. McCOLM: Well, you know the Oakies [Oklahomans] all went to California, and I explained at the National Academy of Science in 1942 just what happened, why Kansans didn't go to California and Oakies did. The Oakies had a different law. The bankers could literally clean them out. JOHNSON: In Oklahoma. McCOLM: In Oklahoma. JOHNSON: Under state law. McCOLM: Under state law. And in Kansas the banks were not permitted to bid in. I'm not a lawyer and I don't know the legal aspects of it but my dad tried to explain it to me one time. He was a good street lawyer. I don't know that he was ever connected with the Farmer's Holiday Association, but he certainly knew where all their sales were being held. What happened was that when the bank would foreclose on a Kansas farmer, we would have a big picnic at that sale, and we would all go to the sale with whatever money we could scrape up in our pockets, just a little small change, and we would bid in pennies rather than dollars. In other words, if a bull was worth $100 we'd bid a dollar on him. And if he was worth $40, we'd bid forty cents. It was the same way with the land, and we never took anything home from a sale. JOHNSON: But you had to... McCOLM: We got the title transferred... JOHNSON: You'd persuade others not to bid against you, though. McCOLM: We got the title transferred to us on everything we bought. We left the title right with the farmer when we left the sale that day. JOHNSON: I've heard about that. McCOLM: That was the Holiday Association. JOHNSON: Would they sometimes hang a noose from a tree, which was a warning for outsiders not to bid against them? McCOLM: I'll tell you a little interesting story in connection with one sale. I never saw any noose hanging up or anything like that, but we went to a sale near Americus one day, and it was a nice big sale. There was quite a lot of stuff around. Along about the time sale was ready to start, in came a farmer in an old Ford car from Cottonwood Falls. The very first item that came up was a cow or a calf or something that they offered up for bid, and he bid $40 or $50 on it. I've forgotten the exact amount. But he bid some money on it. We had a big burly guy, the nicest guy in the world, just a great big burly farmer, who weighed about 220, which was huge in those days. He walked up to him and he said, "Friend, you really didn't want to buy that cow did you?" This farmer looked around and everybody was looking at him, and he immediately withdrew his bid, jumped in his flivver and headed out of there. He didn't wait to make another bid on anything. So then the sale went on and went its merry way, and we completed the whole sale without any trouble. The farmer got title to his land, and he got title to his property, and he went right ahead farming. That was the story of the Kansas Holiday Association. JOHNSON: They saved a lot of farmers. McCOLM: We saved all of them. So, when I got out to this county and was taking farmers off relief, I never paid any banker over 20 percent of what he had loaned to get title to the property, title to the land, and get title to all of the livestock. The Government took title under the program. And then we went ahead and loaned him enough money to either buy, or rent, additional land that he needed, and enough stock -- if he needed another team of horses, or if he needed anything it took to create a sound economic unit. That is the basic principal of it. If he needed more chickens... JOHNSON: To support one family on the farm. McCOLM: Yes, to support the family. We considered the size of his family, and how much labor he had on the family farm, and we had the idea that he should keep all his kids at work. My dad tried to explain one time why I wasn't a very good success in the produce business, in the vegetable growing business. He said, "There's no way you're going to get into this business unless you have a family of five kids." JOHNSON: You've got to have your own labor force -- like a factory I guess, family factory. McCOLM: Of course, dad was the guy that was feeding a carload of cattle in the spring and a carload in the fall and a carload of pigs in the spring and a carload in the fall. He was selling them for pennies, you know, literally working his fool head off for practically nothing. JOHNSON: So, it was livestock and truck crops. McCOLM: Well, I was the truck crops. JOHNSON: Okay, then your father was in livestock. McCOLM: He was the livestock man, and the only truck crops that I knew that he had when I was just a little kid was that he always rotated the feed lots with asparagus and rhubarb. If he had a feed lot that he figured... JOHNSON: They'd be well manured for sure. McCOLM: Yes, there were two crops that would grow with lots of manure. So he rotated them. And then we also had three acres of grapes, concord grapes on the place. And during the prohibition days I always advertized to sell grapes on night deliveries. I delivered grapes at night all over Emporia during the '20s, and... JOHNSON: Was that bathtub wine or whatever. McCOLM: They all bragged about being the best wine makers in town, but they didn't want anybody to know when they got their grapes delivered. We always let the grapes stay on the vine about another two weeks longer than anybody else, so that made them more desirable. The reason we were able to keep them on the vine that much longer was that we sprayed them with sulfur compounds, and kept the diseases off the grapes in those days. That was fairly unusual. So we were able to grow grapes... JOHNSON: Did they wash that sulfur off before they... McCOLM: It kept the diseases off of the grapes. That also kept them from rotting on the vine. JOHNSON: But it's also a contaminant isn't it? McCOLM: Well, nowadays you might call it that. JOHNSON: After you got out of Kansas State, did you go back to the farm, or did you go with the Government, or… McCOLM: No, I was telling you, I went to the Government two weeks before I got out of college and I didn't even go back to pick up my diploma. I didn't even have time to go back for the exercise. So, my diploma was mailed to me. JOHNSON: You began work for what... McCOLM: For the Kansas Rehabilitation Corporation. JOHNSON: Which was a part of the Department of Agriculture. McCOLM: It was a Kansas organization at that time, but it had... JOHNSON: Was it a part of state government? McCOLM: Part of state government. But Federal money was being supplied. JOHNSON: I see. McCOLM: It was being run with Federal money, but it was being run by Kansans, with Kansas employees. Before the 1st of July I got transferred to Allen and Neosho Counties. By the fifth of August, all the welfare farmers in these counties were off relief. I was learning how to speed up the paper work. Then on the 10th of August, I was called into Topeka, the head office of the Rehabilitation and was awarded a certificate. They had a ceremony, and I was the outstanding Rehabilitation agent in the state of Kansas and that was great. Two weeks later I got fired for being a Republican, when the Federal Resettlement Administration took over. JOHNSON: Your family was still Republican. McCOLM: Well, I had been a junior delegate to the Republican convention, sponsored by William Allen White in 1928. I was working for William Allan White as an ag reporter at that time. JOHNSON: For his paper, on his newspaper. McCOLM: I learned to write from William Allen White. JOHNSON: That was good training, I'm sure of that. McCOLM: Well, Julian Fryant was the patronage officer of the Democratic Party, and he was making sure that nobody was ushered into the Civil Service for any new agency that wasn't politically correct. In other words, if they were creating a new agency, then they selected the staff and the staff immediately gained Civil Service status at whatever grade they placed them in. JOHNSON: So you were at the point where you were going to be entering the Federal Civil Service and that's when you were sort of phased out, so to speak. McCOLM: I had to be separated because I was a Republican. JOHNSON: Then what did you do? McCOLM: Well, I had already passed five Civil Service examinations, you know, for junior jobs. JOHNSON: Oh, okay. McCOLM: For junior jobs and those weren't the ones that the politicians were interested in. I'd have had a higher grade if I had gone in politically, but at the same time the Kansas Extension Service said, "We've got a job for you. Go back to your home city of Colby." So, in 1935 I went back to Colby, and what do you know, they were having another blow-out. JOHNSON: One of these dust storms? McCOLM: Another dust storm period. So I dug out the law that my dad had gotten enacted in 1911, and found that it was still on the books. We plowed to control the dust, 48,000 acres of non-resident land in and around Colby that year. So I had charge of that. I was called Assistant County Agent in charge of this erosion program. The wind erosion control program was just as successful in 1935 as it had been in 1911. Wind erosion of soil was greatly reduced. JOHNSON: The year 1936 was the worst, wasn't it? McCOLM: Yes, it got dryer even then, but by then you see, one of these Civil Service examiners called me in the spring of '36, so I left the county agent job and took a junior soil surveyor job. In those days, they didn't ask you whether you were a horticulturist or an animal science man, or what. You asked the question, "What do you need?" And then you said, "That I am." I had passed all of these exams. When they called me for soils, I became a soil scientist by government decree all of a sudden. I'd made good grades in soils and I knew a little about soils because I had been involved in it all my life. But I was not a soils man. I went to Springfield, Missouri and we got kicked out of the survey in Springfield because the real estate people thought we were classifying the land too low. We were marking everything "rough, stony land" and they said it was the best strawberry land in the country and would grow the best small fruit and all. They were selling it to people from Illinois and declaring it was so fertile. JOHNSON: The soil survey, is that part of the... McCOLM: It is the National Soil Survey program. JOHNSON: What department was that in? McCOLM: The Department of Agriculture. JOHNSON: Within the Department of Agriculture. McCOLM: It was called the Mobile Soil Survey Group. JOHNSON: Okay, within the Department of Agriculture. McCOLM: They had a Bureau of Plant Industry surveys that had been running the soil surveys up to then. All of our inspectors were old Bureau of Plant Industry people that had been transferred over into the new organization, in the Soil Conservation Service, that was going to run the soil surveys from now on. So, E.A. Norton, head of the Soils Department in Washington under Hugh Bennett, became head of soil surveys in the United States. He had these mobile surveyors running around from one county to the other making soil surveys for the new districts that were being formed. JOHNSON: Soil conservation districts. McCOLM: Since we weren't going to be permitted to survey in Springfield, we went then to Winona County, Minnesota, and I was put in charge of the survey there. Because I had had two weeks training, I was well qualified to head a party. We went up there and we surveyed some of the best land in the United States in Winona County, Minnesota. We made it with aerial photographs that they had furnished us. So when A.T. Strayhorn, the inspector, came along and saw the survey made with aerial photographs, he said, "This is the best soil survey I have ever seen, and I am recommending to Norton that he not survey anymore with plane tables." Before that we were surveying with plane tables on our shoulders and we were using any kind of a base map that we could get to survey the county. They were not very good when they had to make it with a plane table because you couldn't figure out just exactly where all the draws were, and where all the good land was located. With the soil survey made on an aerial photograph, we knew the edges of every field and we had everything just the way it should be. So it was determined in 1936 that no soil survey would be started until aerial maps were available for the District or the County. So you see, we became a very mobile organization because they didn't have very many counties flown at that time. On my next project, I got transferred to Atlanta, Georgia, and got to survey Gwinnett County, Georgia, the winter of 1936 and '37. Stone Mountain was part of it, and we had several surveyors on the job. My block included Stone Mountain, and so I had enough acreage to be ahead of everybody very soon, when I got through mapping Stone Mountain. JOHNSON: Were you still single? McCOLM: Well, I married the daughter of the head of the milling departments of General Mills in Minneapolis, while I was in Minnesota. JOHNSON: The daughter of the head of the milling department. What was her name? McCOLM: Davis. JOHNSON: Her first name? McCOLM: Emma Davis. JOHNSON: Okay, so now you're married while you're in Georgia. McCOLM: I married in Minnesota and her dad was the fellow that brought the patent for Gold Medal Flour from Sweden when he was a kid. He grew up in the milling business in Sweden, and when he came to the mill at Northfield, Minnesota, he started making the best flour that has ever been made in the United States. It was recognized by the General Mills people and they brought him in to make the flour for General Mills, and it became known as Gold Medal Flour. JOHNSON: And what was his name? McCOLM: Charlie Davis. His name was Davidson in Sweden. When he got to the United States he called it Davis. JOHNSON: So now you have, you might say, agriculture on your wife's side of the family too. I mean it's all agriculture. McCOLM: She was involved in it indirectly. Of course, she was a local socialite in Minneapolis. JOHNSON: Yes. So now, you're in Georgia. McCOLM: So we went to Georgia that winter and it was quite an experience for a girl from Minneapolis. We lived in an apartment -- an upstairs apartment. She was a very devout Lutheran and she could look down into a church and see people were dancing in the basement of the church. It just happened to be a Mormon Church. She also learned something else about the South. In other words, there's more about the South you're going to learn when you go south. One morning we woke up early. A very loud high pitched voice was shouting below our upstairs apartment window. It said, "Nice fat 'possum! Nice fat 'possum! Nice fat 'possum!" Em rushed to the window and looked out, here was this colored boy with a 'possum, with the 'possum's tail hanging over his finger, walking down the alley selling a nice fat 'possum. So she became quite fascinated with the difference between the south and the north, and she insulted all the neighbors because she had to hang out my long-handled underwear which I insisted on wearing because Georgia really wasn't that warm. So she hung the long-handled underwear out on the line every morning while I was surveying in Georgia...for one survey period from the fall of 1936 to the spring of 1937. The next survey was on the project at North Ogden where the Pine River Dam [was located]; North Ogden had to have a soil survey of the land that was going to be irrigated. JOHNSON: What state was that? McCOLM: That was in Utah. So I got to move to North Ogden, Utah from Georgia. That was my first experience of working in the West, at North Ogden, Utah. The first thing I noticed there was their cherry trees; in the finest sweet cherry growing area they had in Utah, they had zinc deficiency. JOHNSON: Had what? McCOLM: Had zinc deficiency. I recognized the zinc deficiency because my father had discovered zinc deficiency on potatoes in Kansas in about 1924. He went to town one day to buy some arsenate of lead. Now, in those days we really knew how to kill people with our spray materials. Nowadays we have very safe sprays. With due respect to everything that we're hearing about how bad we are, what terrible people we are to be spraying anything, we spray very safely nowadays and we're very carefully controlled. In those days we used the most deadly poisons in the world to spray almost anything to kill almost anything that we needed to kill; whether it was grasshoppers or cabbage worms or what, we sprayed. Now, we got away pretty well with killing all the cabbage worms, because when we cut the cabbage head, we peeled it all back and then we washed it all off and we didn't kill anybody with our cabbage. Nevertheless, we were spraying with arsenate of lead in the '20s and '30s. So he, father, went to town to buy some arsenate of lead to spray the apple orchard. We had about three acres of fruit. He went to town to buy the arsenate of lead to spray the apple orchard and spray the potato plants to kill the potato bugs. They told him they didn't have any arsenate of lead, but they had some arsenate of zinc. So he sprayed the potatoes with the arsenate of zinc, and about two weeks later he noticed that half the field was green and the other half had a little yellow tinge. So, he said, "What's going on here?" So he found his old bags; you know, the farmers always threw the bags away right in the field in those days, and nowadays you're supposed to pick them up and burn them. Well, he found the bags all right. The bags with the arsenate of zinc were right where the green potatoes started. And so we sprayed the potatoes with arsenate of zinc from then on and we didn't have any zinc deficiencies and we grew more potatoes to the acre. Well, at the same time we noticed that there was a certain yellowing and curling of apple leaves that couldn't be explained. And also of cherry and peach and pears. We couldn't really tell on the peaches. But on the apples and some of the pears and the cherries particularly, we could learn to identify zinc deficiency and we could correct it by spraying with arsenate of zinc. We never told the college anything about it, but we went right ahead doing it. Well, when I started surveying the cherry trees, the area with the cherry trees in North Ogden, I spotted the zinc deficiency. So, I just put it in the report, and Dr. Jennings up at the state college said, "There cannot be any deficiency of any minor nutrients in that formation of soil, because that soil is a bed of mix outwash that has all the nutrient elements for life, and that's why we're so prosperous in Utah. The Mormon farmers are doing very well because the minor nutrient problems had already been solved by mother nature. Well, he wouldn't let us put anything in the soils report about a zinc deficiency in Utah. But there was a young boy that was just through with college, and he was ready to start graduate work, and I took him down to these orchards. I explained to him how to spot zinc deficiency. Well, by 1944 he not only got his master's degree, he got his Ph.D. degree by working on zinc deficiency in Utah. You can find his dissertations in the records. So then another thing, while I was surveying the soil in Utah, I discovered that the Cicada channeling had -- I wasn't a soil scientist, I was just becoming a soil scientist. I was really a horticulturalist. Maybe I was an agronomist, I don't know what I was. JOHNSON: Interdisciplinary. McCOLM: Maybe I was a vegetable crop specialist. But anyway, I discovered that the cicada channeling had completely obliterated the normal process of consolidation of the "B" horizon of all the soils that was covered by the sage brush in eastern Utah and western Colorado. And [I discovered] that if you dig down into the soil you could not only determine the soil structure influenced by the cicada channeling, but you could also determine the rainfall that had occurred in the area, because when you got up just above the 18 inch rainfall zone, the cicada channeling disappeared. JOHNSON: The cicada channeling, what is that? McCOLM: Well, you've heard the cicada making a noise. JOHNSON: Yes, the locust. McCOLM: Well, they spend six or seven years, sometimes they call them two-year locusts and all that. JOHNSON: Seventeen years. McCOLM: Seventeen-year locust. We had the seventeen-year locust here; they had the seven- or eight-year locust in parts of Utah. Anyway, it doesn't make any difference how long they stay in the ground, but they never look back; they always leave a channel of soil back of them. The world's authority on cicada was Dr. Beemer over here at Lawrence, Kansas. So Dr. Beemer and I worked on that, and we studied two things. The amount of alkali in relation to the amount of cicada channeling in the soil; and the rainfall range of cicada channeling. The amount of lime and it's location in the soil profile determined a crop zone, because where the lime was on the surface, it was too alkaline and too arid, to grow beans, or some dry weather crop. But if you were within an area where soil was leached down to cicada channels; by mapping the soils you could determine where you could grow beans and where you could grow other crops, small green crops, grass crops that are tolerant to drought, big tall wheat grass, and short wheat grass, and crested wheat grass. They all grew in that zone, and that could all be determined by examining the soil. So that became part of soil science. JOHNSON: Did you write this up in reports then? McCOLM: Well, I had another group of boys from the college that were following up on that. Another thing I accomplished on soils in Utah, was that I was selected to be the Region 8 representative on the National Committee that set up land-use capability tables. That was in 1938. I was transferred to Utah, and became attached to the Utah survey group. JOHNSON: You're still talking about the soil survey group in the Department of Agriculture. McCOLM: In the Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service located in Salt Lake City. I was logically the one that they sent to help in Washington, in negotiation. I was in Washington part of the time, and in Salt Lake City part of the time, working on the committee that developed land use capability tables. I had a big battle with the easterners over the classification, because they just wanted "one, two, three, four, five and we're through classifying soil because everything else is too bad to be [classified]." And I said, "Now, look, we have soils all over the West that's very good forest lands." There again, I came into this forest business because we recognize in forestry certain lands that have a very high sustained yield potential. In other words, there was enough productivity, enough rainfall, enough of everything, but maybe too steep a slope or too much rock. But still [you might] have high fertility and we wanted a classification that we could put those lands in. Then when they got to be a little more erosive on the steeper slopes, we needed another class for the tree slopes where you shouldn't really clear cut or do any intensive management of the forest. Now, we had in mind that sooner or later the Forest Service would start to manage the forest. They never did, but we had in mind at that time that sooner or later the Forest Service would become the organization that Pinchot envisioned. Pinchot, you know, got fired. Do you know why he got fired? Have you ever heard the story of Pinchot? JOHNSON: What was the story? Well, he was Teddy Roosevelt's favorite wasn't he for awhile, and then he got on the outs with President Taft, didn't he? McCOLM: You see, Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt succeeded in getting the law passed to have the Forest Service. Amongst other things they got, they had to make peace with the politicians in California so they gave them 25 percent. The Congress didn't want to give this money to Pinchot, to [let him] manage the money that he got out of the forest to create a sustained-yield forest or anything like that. What they wanted was to get the money turned into the national treasury like it had been under the Interior Department. But the politicians in the West said, "If you're going to transfer anything out here, you're going to have to give us 25 percent of the income before we'll vote for it." So they made a little deal that all the counties in California and the
other timber-producing parts of the West would get 25 percent of the revenue.
The rest of the revenue went to the treasury. JOHNSON: That's when Gifford Pinchot kind of parted company? McCOLM: Gifford Pinchot got his forests; he got all these forest lands, and he got control of them. Then he started out to try to develop an organization for sustained yield of forests. Well, he only got to grow [forests for] two or three years because up in Alaska all of the mining claims had been issued on land that later became his forest land. They, the mining interests, went in and started clear cutting and messing around and destroying his forest. He issued a cease and desist order. He said, "You cease and desist." JOHNSON: Did he get by with that? McCOLM: No, he didn't get by with it, because these mining interests went to the Secretary of Interior. They said, "We have prior rights. We can cut these trees any time we please, and we can do anything we want to do with these trees because we have the mineral rights on this tract of land." Well, the Secretary of Interior agreed with them. So he went to Taft. He didn't go to the Secretary of Agriculture, he went to Taft himself... JOHNSON: Who was President at the time. McCOLM: Taft was President at the time. Roosevelt had big ordnance depot. JOHNSON: Was that Tooele? McCOLM: No, I have another story about Tooele. Out at Tooele I built the camouflage and the plantings for all the bunkers, and they worked fine until they got a real drought and then they looked greener than the rest of the country. JOHNSON: What ordnance depot is there you say, out by Salt Lake? What was the name of that? McCOLM: It was called the Utah General Supply Depot. The ordnance depot was the dumps where they had them in bunkers. JOHNSON: At Tooele? McCOLM: Tooele. JOHNSON: Ammunition? McCOLM: That was a big ammunition dump up there. There I got a chance to meet the world's greatest hydraulic engineer. My first wife died (1959). While I was in Vietnam (1966), I kept visiting with him and I met his daughter. I married her after... JOHNSON: This is 1970. McCOLM: …America would not take action. JOHNSON: I see. McCOLM: All those years he was keeping us out of war, but, we finally had to go to war anyway. JOHNSON: Was your dad for intervention before that time? McCOLM: He was for intervention just as soon as the Kaiser started to move, and of course, Teddy Roosevelt was too. JOHNSON: Was your dad still living in 1937 and '38? McCOLM: Yes, he lived until about 1960. JOHNSON: So he saw World War II as well. You were in Utah until when? McCOLM: Well, what happened was that I stayed on the staff of the Soil Conservation Service and I became acting state soil scientist in about 1939. JOHNSON: In Utah? McCOLM: In Utah, and I was holding that job when the Army started to develop their plants in Utah. The first thing I came in touch with was the big ordnance depot they tried to build in North Ogden. They bought a big block of land leading back from the Great Salt Lake, to build an ordnance depot. When they got the engineers out on it they found out that the farmers had abandoned it and had been willing to sell it to them because the water table was 18 inches. It was from 18 inches to three feet on the entire area they had bought for an ordnance depot, and they had planned to run railroad cars through it. JOHNSON: So that would make it kind of spongy ground? McCOLM: It was a little bit spongy. You couldn't even run a truck on it. So they came to me to find out what they could do about it since I was the state soils representative. The state soil scientist was a World War I gassed veteran that couldn't work in the field, so we just left him in the office. I did all the field work. So I looked at it and said, "Well, you're not going to build anything here until you get this drained." They said, "Well, can we drain it?" I said, "I don't know, but you're going to be able to find out, because I want you to run a line from your property clear to the Bear River where it enters Salt Lake. Right to the point where the Bear River enters the Great Salt Lake, you run me a line on that and give me the elevations at that point where it enters the Great Salt Lake and right on back to this land, and I'll tell you whether you can drain it or not." JOHNSON: Was this pipe you mean? Were they going to lay pipe, or tile? McCOLM: Well, they would have to in order to drain that land. I told them, that's what I need to know. They had all the engineers out there; running that line, and in less than a week they gave me the readings on all the elevations up to that point. I looked at it and I said, "Well, you can drain it all, but you'll need to put down about a seven foot deep line right here. You'll be able to run a seven-foot deep line right through the main part of your property and that will drain into Salt Lake." So, they did. They had drag lines out running clear to Great Salt Lake. You never saw so many drag lines in your life as they had out there running water down to Great Salt Lake. When they got through, they ran tile lines in, and I showed them how to lay the tile in there. Even the best Army engineers didn't know how to lay tile. I'd shown Kansas farmers how to lay tile back in '28, in training from John Glass. JOHNSON: Yes, it all adds up. They drained that land and they were able to build... McCOLM: They drained it all and they were able to build the big ordnance depot. JOHNSON: Was that Tooele? McCOLM: No, I have another story about Tooele. Out at Tooele I built the camouflage for all the bunkers. I designed the camouflage and the plantings for all the bunkers, and they worked fine until they got a real drought and then they looked greener than the rest of the country. JOHNSON: What ordnance depot is there you say, out by Salt Lake? What was the name of that? McCOLM: It was called the Utah General Supply Depot. The ordnance depot was the dumps where they had them in bunkers. JOHNSON: At Tooele? McCOLM: Tooele. JOHNSON: Ammunition? McCOLM: That was a big ammunition dump up there. There I got a chance to meet the world's greatest hydraulic engineer. Then after my first wife died (1959), while I was in Vietnam, I kept visiting with him and I met his daughter. I married her after... JOHNSON: This is 1970. McCOLM: No, in 1967 I married the daughter of this engineer. JOHNSON: What's her name? McCOLM: Her name was Constance Lee. Charlie Lee was called the father of earthquake engineering. Charlie Lee carried a notebook; he was a young man just out of hydraulic engineering and had a degree in hydraulic engineering. He walked all the streets of San Francisco right after the earthquake and made notes on what buildings stood and what buildings didn't. So he developed all the theories in regard to earthquake engineering, and he was the first guy to drive pilings to build buildings on in the United States. At the ordnance depot, I got in touch with him, because the Army had hired him and sent him out to work with me on camouflaging the depots. Well, that really wasn't his thing, but I had a chance to get acquainted with him. JOHNSON: Now, what years are we talking about? McCOLM: That was 1940, along in '40 and '41. See, the Army started a big build-up long before we got into the war. JOHNSON: But you're still in the Soil Conservation Service. McCOLM: I'm still in the Soil Conservation Service. JOHNSON: You did some work for the Army to prepare the land for these depots and the ordnance depot, and in '41, of course, December, we have Pearl Harbor. You're still a civilian, right? McCOLM: Yes. JOHNSON: And you're still in Utah with the Soil Conservation Service? How long did you stay in that position? McCOLM: Well, in 1941, you see, Pearl Harbor occurred. In 1942 we were faced with the problem of getting the Japanese out of California in order to protect them. In other words, the state police, the city or state police and everyone else, came to the Government and said, "We cannot protect the Japanese people in California. JOHNSON: Did they really see them in danger from neighbors? McCOLM: Yes. They were in danger from the terrorist elements that were building in California as a result of Pearl Harbor. JOHNSON: Did you know General [Karl] Bendetsen, by the way? He was one of the Army generals in charge of transferring Japanese-Americans. McCOLM: I knew where he was. I didn't get to meet him. I knew Dillon Myer, I knew... JOHNSON: Dillon Myer? McCOLM: I knew the fellow that was ahead of Dillon, the one that was in charge before Dillon took over. Dr. Milton Eisenhower. JOHNSON: What involvement did you have with that Japanese relocation? McCOLM: Well, as soon as they bought the land, they did exactly the same thing they had done with the ordnance depot. JOHNSON: This was for the relocation? McCOLM: The relocation. JOHNSON: In Utah? McCOLM: In Utah. They bought all the land west of Deseret, Utah that had been abandoned by the farmers when they couldn't grow sugar beets out there. And even the Mormon Church had a $350,000 project, and they lost that money. They never lost money in anything except that. They lost the money because they had based their studies of sugar beets on trials conducted at nearby Oak City, which was a very good sugar beet growing area. But when you got out on the desert, it was too cold at night, and the sugar beets were delayed in their growth. They left them in the ground too long, and the sugar beets froze before they could get them into the sugar plant, before they could get high enough sugar content. So they lost that area. By then they had the alkali so high in that whole area that nobody could grow anything else. They couldn't even get a new stand of alfalfa started. JOHNSON: Do you know how much acreage or square miles we are talking about? McCOLM: They bought three thousand acres for the Japanese. JOHNSON: Three thousand acres for relocation. McCOLM: For the relocation center. JOHNSON: And that was near... McCOLM: West of Deseret, Utah. And so then they asked me to come down and see if you they could grow any crops on any of this land. Well, since I had had a lot of experience with alkali soils by then, I had become quite a specialist in alkali soils. I had experience with the Mormons over irrigating in all kinds of places, and we had to put in drainage and we had to use excess water and we had to do all kinds of things to get production again. But I didn't have time to do that at Topaz. I had to go in there and take this alkali ground and grow crops on it immediately with a bunch of people from California that had never seen an alkali field before. JOHNSON: Topaz, is that the name of the... McCOLM: That was the name of the relocation center. JOHNSON: So this was for the Japanese Americans to grow their own crops? McCOLM: To grow their own food to feed themselves. That was the idea. JOHNSON: So you... McCOLM: And the first thing I did when I got down there, I saw them building the center and they were piling up a lot of lumber to burn. I said, "Don't burn any lumber. I'm a conservationist so far as lumber is concerned and these Japanese will find something to build with this, so we don't want to burn any lumber here. Don't even stack it up, just pile it out there and I'll let the Japanese stack it up when they get here. Don't destroy any materials that you have left over when you finish building this camp." That was the contractors out there. It was an interesting time for any contractor, too, because the contractors had to work with local farmers, working as carpenters that had never seen a carpenter hammer in their life. So that's the way that Topaz was built. We had a chief carpenter, and I got to attend the big going-away celebration. The chief carpenter was the big "kenacky" from Hawaii; he was a tremendously efficient carpenter and he had all his crews buffaloed. They'd just work for him like tigers. He had to teach every one of them how to use a hammer and a saw, but he succeeded in getting the center built real quick. When they had the final meeting there at Topaz, they asked him to make a speech. He got up and said, "You know, when I came in here Topaz was a ghost town. We had 300 pairs of overalls walking around , and there wasn't a carpenter in any of them." JOHNSON: What a change. McCOLM: Yes. But Topaz got built, and I was there before they ever moved the Japanese in there. I was looking it all over and I was running a soil survey on it, trying to decide if there was any land they could grow anything on. I finally decided that since they had plenty of water, that we would grow anything they needed to grow out there, but I would have to teach the Japanese how to do it. Everybody assumed that we were bringing in people that knew all about how to grow crops. Well, when we brought them in we found that we had only 200 out of the 8,000 that had ever lived on a farm. JOHNSON: So they weren't all truck farmers, were they? McCOLM: Well, we had about a dozen or two. We had a few landscape gardeners, and we had quite a few greenhouse men. The minute the greenhouse men landed, they wanted to build a greenhouse and grow the plants for us. So, I said, "Great, there's the lumber pile out here. You guys get to work and build yourself your greenhouse, and then I'll show you how to grow these plants." Their response was, "Oh, no, we know how to grow the plants. We're all professional greenhouse men. We know how to grow the plants." Well, the trouble was that what they didn't know about the greenhouse was we had to irrigate that greenhouse with well water, not the good water used to irrigate the fields, but with water used for the interior of the center, which was 7.6 ph water. JOHNSON: So you're talking about alkaline... McCOLM: Alkaline water. High alkaline water. The doctors passed it okay. It was suitable for human consumption. Anyway, this was the water they were going to irrigate with, to grow their plants. I let them build the whole thing. To build flats we had the Army bring in all the ammunition boxes they could find; we cut the ammunition boxes in half and made flats. I had a lot of experience growing greenhouse crops because as soon as I got my high school diploma, I rented a 300-foot greenhouse at Emporia. It was the only greenhouse in town. I had been working part time for this greenhouse man, so I rented the house when he decided to leave. In 1928 and '29 I grew three million vegetable plants. I had a half acre of cold frames, and I had all Mexican kid labor because they couldn't work for the railroad. Their dads all worked for the railroad and the kids worked for me. I learned quite a bit of Spanish but I didn't use it at all. I insisted on them learning English. But anyway that was another story. I knew how to grow vegetable plants in a greenhouse and I also knew how to grow vegetable plants with 7.6 ph water. Well, the first crop of plants in that greenhouse all withered up and died for the Japanese. After that was the first time they would let me in the greenhouse; well, they'd let me walk through before, you know, but this was the first time I could tell them anything. In other words, here were the best professional greenhouse men in the United States, and I, being a soil scientist out there, they didn't know I had had any greenhouse experience at all. They weren't about to let me run the greenhouse. Their first planting came up and grew just real well for about two weeks, and then all withered over and died. Then they said, "Well we're going to have to bring in other water; we can't grow anything with this water." And I said, "Now, look, you can grow anything you want to with this water and I'll show you how to do it. You use the same flats and I'll show you how to do it." They had some plants that had just come up, some later plants that had just come up. So I took their sprinkler off the hose and I started walking through the greenhouse and I filled every box clear full of water, at least an inch over the top of the plants that they had there. Well, this water had to drain down through the soil they had in the box, and we ended up growing all their plants at 7.6 ph, because we didn't allow any salt to accumulate due to evaporation in the boxes. JOHNSON: That's what the problem was. McCOLM: See why that solved the problem? JOHNSON: So, it was the accumulation of alkali on top. McCOLM: It was the salt. All one had to do was wait two weeks until this accumulation of salt on the surface of those boxes killed the plants; by then it was 8.5. JOHNSON: Did you notice any resentment by the Japanese-Americans over their fate, over their being forced to move to these camps? McCOLM: Oh, that resentment came later. The resentment all came later. At the time they were all very glad to get out of California. JOHNSON: They did perceive a threat to their safety while they were in California? McCOLM: Yes, they knew exactly why they were there at the time, and they also knew what the plan was. The plan was to allow them a chance to relocate in any other part of the United States they wanted to go to, just as quickly as arrangements could be made for them to do it. Two weeks after we got to the relocation center, my wife had already made arrangements for one family to go to Minneapolis and be sponsored by her family. They went to Minneapolis and they all made great grades and they all became very successful in Minneapolis. I sent another big group to Minneapolis that helped form the Chung King food company. They couldn't call it Japanese, so they became a Chinese organization. JOHNSON: But it was Japanese-founded and Japanese-operated? McCOLM: Well, I don't know what the origin of it was, but our Japanese went up there to work, and also to Seabrook Farm in New Jersey. My best man, I hated to lose him, one of the best Japanese helpers I had went to Seabrook Farm. My very best young man that showed the greatest ability with vegetable crops was a 15 year old by the name of Bob Sakata. Bob Sakata became my right-hand man. The head man that I had was T. Hase. Hase owned about 1,100 acres around San Jose, and he had been a tenant farmer in Japan. We may have had some Japanese in the center that had been landlords in Japan, but they showed no interest in the Topaz farm. JOHNSON: They're absentee landlords? McCOLM: They're all absentee landowners. That's the reason the land reform program succeeded in Japan, tenant farmers were experience farm operators. JOHNSON: Did this acquaint you then with some of the Japanese methods of farming? McCOLM: Yes. And another thing I found out from the Japanese farmers, when we started looking through the seed catalog they would say, "Now, this is very good to sell, no good to eat. We don't want to grow that." So they picked out of the seed catalog only those varieties that were good to eat. They rejected the varieties they grew for market, eggplant, was a good example. JOHNSON: What would sell would be good for somebody else to eat, but not for them. McCOLM: They grow it for somebody else to eat, but they didn't eat that themselves. So I learned a lot about what would be found in Japan when our troops got to Japan, what their attitude would be if we tried to help them by bringing in our seed. That wasn't going to go at all. So I learned a lot about that right at the relocation center. JOHNSON: How long were you involved with that kind of thing. McCOLM: Well, almost two years. JOHNSON: '42 to '44. McCOLM: To the spring of '44. In '42 we grew a small crop. JOHNSON: That was the first crop. McCOLM: The first year. In '43 they grew a tremendous crop. JOHNSON: Was this all greenhouse, or would they grow outside too. McCOLM: Not just greenhouse. I showed them how to grow it in the field, too. They had pretty good water in the field. We took advantage of the fact that they had good water from the Seviere River in the field, reasonable ph, down to 7 or just a little over. It was good water. By using good water and using a technology that would allow all of the alkali to go to the top of the ridge, we could grow the plants along the side. You see, instead of building little furrows like they have in California and little ridges and growing the crop on top like they do in Salinas, we had great big ridges... JOHNSON: Like terraces? McCOLM: Like terraces, almost looked like a Kansas terrace. JOHNSON: How about the Japanese, didn't they have a lot of terrace farming? McCOLM: They knew all about terrace farming, but we had absolutely level land at Topaz. We had absolutely level, flat land, and what we did was make great big berms there and run the water in the middle; then plant the plants at the level of the water in the furrow, and make the alkali go up to the top of the furrow. JOHNSON: By capillary action. McCOLM: By capillary action. We had fields of cantaloupes with all the cantaloupes laying up in that alkali. You'd pick one up and dust the alkali off of it, and it was a great cantaloupe. JOHNSON: The roots were down below the alkali. McCOLM: Yes. JOHNSON: The roots were actually down below. McCOLM: The roots were all down in good growing condition furnished by the change [in alkaline levels] that the water was able to make in that given year. We changed the ph of the soil in the root zone every year. JOHNSON: Just by the way you furrowed the soil? McCOLM: The way we furrowed the fields. JOHNSON: And then using capillary action to move the alkali up. McCOLM: To move the alkali up. You see, I wasn't caring about who farmed it after I left. I was there to grow crops for the Japanese and help the Japanese grow all they could eat. JOHNSON: You still worked for the Soil Conservation Service, or had they transferred you... McCOLM: No, I was transferred to the War Relocation Authority. JOHNSON: So, you're with the War Relocation Authority, in '42? McCOLM: In '42, '43, until the spring of '44. JOHNSON: Who was your immediate boss then in the War Relocation Authority? Who did you report to? McCOLM: Roscoe Bell. He was the politician of the group. JOHNSON: So in the spring of '44... McCOLM: In the spring of '44 I got a telephone call from the Navy Department. They said, "Would you like to have a commission in the Navy? We're able to offer you a Junior JG commission as a lieutenant in the Navy, for a special assignment?" They didn't say Japan, they never mentioned the word Japan. They didn't want to mention Japan. JOHNSON: So you got a call from where? McCOLM: Apparently it was from Washington. I never knew. I never knew where it came from. They just asked a question and I said, "Yes." So the next thing I knew I had the forms to fill out. They sent me all the forms to apply for a Navy commission. I applied and immediately got the commission approved and was sent to the finest place to learn about the Navy in the world, and that was Tucson, Arizona. JOHNSON: Where were you living during this time? McCOLM: I was living at Topaz. JOHNSON: With your family. McCOLM: With the family. JOHNSON: In Government housing probably. McCOLM: In Government housing. JOHNSON: So now you're going to go to Tucson. McCOLM: Well, my wife couldn't be in Tucson. I took her back to my parents in Kansas, and got my daughter started fishing for catfish in the Allen Creek, so she'd be... JOHNSON: What's her name, by the way? McCOLM: Carol. Carol McColm. JOHNSON: And so now you immediately got a commission? McCOLM: I had a commission and was sent... JOHNSON: What was the grade? McCOLM: A lieutenant junior grade (jg) and had to report to Beardown. That is the big gymnasium on the campus of the University of Arizona. All 1200 of us were living on the gymnasium floor while we took basic officer training in the Navy. That was in 1944. And just as soon as that was completed, I was sent, during the early fall of 1944, to the Navy Military Government School at Princeton University. JOHNSON: In New Jersey. McCOLM: In New Jersey. My wife could go along there but she couldn't live on campus, so she spent a miserable winter season. That was while I was at Princeton, barracked on the campus. I graduated with all these so-called sociologists and every other specialty you could imagine they had assembled to learn how to do military government. JOHNSON: Okay. What outfit was this? McCOLM: That was the Navy Military Government School at Princeton University. All the records of that have been transferred back to the Navy, so that Princeton doesn't have any records left of our... JOHNSON: They're in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.? McCOLM: Well, somewhere. JOHNSON: With the records of the Navy. McCOLM: Yes, they're with the Navy records. I think the statement was that out of a class of 200 and some, I ranked 11th in grades and I would have been probably one or two, except that I had the wrong answer on the final exam. They said, "When this war is over, do you think they'll make the same mistake they made before the end of the World War, that they'll go in and subdivide Germany or will we know better?" The answer was that we were supposed to know better, and I said, "No, we'll do the same thing." That's exactly what they did; it was the same thing. JOHNSON: Were they referring to the division of Germany into zones? McCOLM: Yes. JOHNSON: Well, when was it you took this final exam? McCOLM: Along about Christmas time in 1944. JOHNSON: So we already knew about the zones that were to be established in Germany, the division? McCOLM: No, that hadn't come yet. It was at Yalta when that happened. JOHNSON: So that was still in the future. McCOLM: I was right, and the head that was teaching this was wrong. But it hurt my grade. JOHNSON: Which raises a question. Do you know the name Major General John Hildring? McCOLM: Yes, Hildring was the guy that put together the whole Military Government unit proposition. He was the guy that established the Charlotte School and he... JOHNSON: That's the school in Charlotte, Virginia. McCOLM: For the Army. The Navy was at Princeton. JOHNSON: Okay. McCOLM: All of us in Charlotte and from Princeton were sent to the Presidio in Monterey. From there we were to be transferred to Japan when the war was over. We were sent out there, to the Presidio, ostensibly to study Japanese. JOHNSON: After you finished at Princeton, you were sent out to the Presidio. McCOLM: To study Japanese. At the Presidio they were forming teams. In other words, this was the first detailed pre-planned operation the United States ever did in connection with Military Government. It was a highly planned operation. Theoretically we were going to study Japanese, right up to the time we went to Japan. All of the teams that were supposed to go to each of the prefectures were formed there. We had our agricultural officers, we had a fisheries officer (if it was a coastal area), we had an economics officer, and we had a courts officer, and a legal officer. We had a whole team that was supposed to go into Japan and go to a certain prefecture. Now, when MacArthur finally set it up, he used a lot of these people, but he spread around a different kind of organization than we were planning. But a lot of those people did get sent to the same place they were trained for. JOHNSON: What was the date? When were you sent to the Presidio? McCOLM: I've got copies of my orders here. You could make copies. JOHNSON: You're talking about early '45? McCOLM: Yes. JOHNSON: Okay. I'm going to mention some things from a book by Theodore Cohen, Remaking Japan: The American Occupation as New Deal (edited by Herbert Passin; New York: The Free Press, 1987). McCOLM: Theodore Cohen, and [Wolf] Ladejinsky came in to the Presidio almost the same day I left the Presidio. Wolf Ladejinsky was sent in to take my place. JOHNSON: Okay. McCOLM: That's where he comes in. He was sent in to take my place at the Presidio in Monterey. JOHNSON: Does the name Leo Pasvolsky ring any bells with you? McCOLM: No. JOHNSON: How about Hugh Borton? McCOLM: Hugh Borton was one of the officers that did this preplanning. You see, when we got to the Presidio in Monterey in the spring of 1945, all of the basic policy in regard to what was going to happen to Military Government when we got to Japan had already been decided. It had to have been decided before I was ever selected, because the day I got there, they called me in and they said, "You're not going to study any Japanese here. Your primary official job is [to be] chief of agriculture of the joint Army-Navy staff preparing for the occupation of Japan. Your unofficial job is chief of agriculture on the joint Army-Navy planning staff for the invasion and the occupation of Japan. You have two hats, in other words. You're not going to study Japanese because this second job is going to take all your time. In fact, that is the thing you're going to do first, and you're going to be introduced to all of these Ag men as their chief of agriculture. You can use all of these people." They said, "You can use all of these people that you need and send them on any assignment that you want to send them on, but they're not to be told anything about the purpose of it, other than a training exercise for the Military Government of Japan." JOHNSON: Was this under the War Department or the State Department? McCOLM: Under the War Department. You see, we're at the Presidio at Monterey. JOHNSON: Was this under the Military Government division? McCOLM: Under the Military Government Division, under Hildring. It was Hildring's organization, but we didn't have a general yet. We got a general later. When all the fun was over we got a general. But Colonel Dillard was head of our particular unit at the time I first got there. JOHNSON: Cohen says on page 22, that there was a Military Government Division in the Provost Marshal Section of the War Department, but it did not have the confidence of President Roosevelt, because apparently it wasn't staffed with New Dealers. So Roosevelt put Paul Appleby, from the Agriculture Department into the State Department to report only to the Secretary of State." McCOLM: Do you know who Paul Appleby was? I can show you some letters. He was a friend of mine. JOHNSON: When did you first meet Paul Appleby? How did you know him? McCOLM: Well, only through correspondence, but I knew him in the Department of Agriculture in the '30s. He was interested in this crop weather business I was doing. JOHNSON: So he was a very competent... McCOLM: Along with Henry Wallace, who wrote articles about me. I can show you some of those. So Appleby and Wallace and another character, Isaiah Bowman, also got mixed up in that preplanning. This preplanning was the basis. This preplanning for the occupation of Japan started long before I was ever recruited, and I started to put these things together to know what actually happened. JOHNSON: Now, Cohen says for instance [p. 25], that Hildring organized a committee on Civil Affairs Studies, to include representatives from State, War and Navy Departments, the OSS, the Treasury and Agriculture Departments, and the FEA [Foreign Economic Administration], and they were to review the guides. I see you have a guide here. McCOLM: I suspected that the fellow that wrote this had had a lot of training in Russian or might be a Russian. I suspected it, because he was able to translate Russian literature. JOHNSON: Oh, Ladejinsky? McCOLM: Yes. JOHNSON: He was an immigrant, I think, from Russia. McCOLM: Well, I found out all about him later, but he wrote this manual. JOHNSON: It is Army Service Forces Manual M354-7, titled Civil Affairs Handbook: Japan; Section 7, Agriculture. Headquarters Army Service Forces, April 1, 1944. So this was already available. [This document is on file in the Truman Library's Miscellaneous Historical Documents Collection, Item #698.]
McCOLM: This was handed to me as my text book to teach the course in agriculture of Japan. JOHNSON: At what point? McCOLM: At the Presidio, Monterey. The very day I got there. JOHNSON: So it was in January of '45 you were given this manual. McCOLM: Yes, in January '45 I received copies. We didn't have too many of them, but we had enough that I could pass them out. For example, you can see in the back, where reference material is listed, I've got certain things marked CL? JOHNSON: Yes. McCOLM: Well, I sent a fellow up to the California Library to go through all the literature available in the State of California. He went through the California Library and marked anything that was available for reading matter that we could send people to study. So when you see CL, that's California Library. JOHNSON: I see. So these things you could go to the library and read. McCOLM: We could go to the library and read it ourselves. JOHNSON: There in San Francisco? McCOLM: In Berkeley. That was the library in Berkeley, not in Davis. See, this fellow initialed it; he put in what it was he found. Now, one suspicious thing about it was he didn't find a single thing that Wolf Ladejinsky had used himself for reference, and we didn't find a single thing that he had written in the library there. JOHNSON: That Ladejinsky had written? McCOLM: Yes. JOHNSON: He had written U.S. Department of Agriculture bulletins, I guess. McCOLM: Yes. So he, naturally, was using his own material. JOHNSON: I think he did his masters at Columbia University. MCCOLM: Yes, and I really think that from the way he handles this, and the things he mentions in this, that probably some of his relatives were killed in the [Bolshevik] revolution as landlords. [See research paper by Steven Schwartzberg, "Wolf Ladejinsky, The Japan Hands and the Political Background of the Japanese Land Reform," in Truman Library MHDC #698.] JOHNSON: That could be, yes. McCOLM: I think that's why he was so anxious... JOHNSON: Did you find that a well-done manual, a helpful manual? McCOLM: This was the most complete, probably the best manual that was available to us. This is the best of the Hildring manuals as far as I was ever able to determine. There is another one that was pretty good because the author of that was right there on the staff. And that was written on fisheries and it was written by a guy that owned fish canneries in Japan, and he was a member of our staff. JOHNSON: What was his name? McCOLM: I've been trying to remember that. You see, I didn't meet these people except when they had staff meetings. JOHNSON: Do you have any idea how many people received this manual, or how many American agricultural specialists received this? McCOLM: I had one for myself, and I may have had a half a dozen of them, but I don't think I had enough for the whole 72 officers. But every one of them had to read it. JOHNSON: Were there 72 officers that were going to be involved in agriculture... McCOLM: In Japan. JOHNSON: In the occupation. McCOLM: In the occupation. They were mostly Army officers, but I had charge of them. JOHNSON: Okay, so you were being trained to help with the occupation of Japan, but you also apparently got involved in some of the planning for the invasion of Japan. McCOLM: Well, we called ourselves the Working Group of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because we worked on details. All of the policies had already been determined. We had absolutely nothing to do with policy, except that one officer, Colonel Hartman, said, "We will do anything we can to work out the land reform program." JOHNSON: Who initiated that? Who said that? McCOLM: Well, that was Colonel Hartman. And then also... JOHNSON: What was his first name, do you remember? McCOLM: William A. I've got a letter or two from him I can give you. Colonel Hartman before the war was the head economist at Wisconsin University. He was the guy that wrote the Wisconsin zoning laws. So he had a little experience with law. During the war he was involved in some of the invasions over there, for a short period of time, he was the Governor of occupied Italy. So he came out with some Military Government experience, and he became chief of the economics section of Military Government. JOHNSON: For Japan. McCOLM: For Japan. I actually held that job myself for about six weeks after they transferred Colonel Hartman out, and I never did find out where they sent him. But I found him after the war. After the war he became Assistant Chief of the Department of Agricultural Economics in Washington. And my other boss there, Dr. Nichols, Dr. John R. Nichols, became head of the Indian Bureau. So we had some pretty heavyweight people. JOHNSON: Do you remember a Lieutenant Colonel [Charles E.] Kades? He was apparently Assistant Executive Officer for Hildring, for General Hildring. McCOLM: He wasn't at the Presidio that I know of. JOHNSON: Do you remember this document JCS-1380/15? McCOLM: 1380/15 was the one that was prepared as a kind of an overall statement of policy. JOHNSON: But it also had details in it. It was a rather lengthy document, according to Cohen. According to him, every paragraph called for some kind of a program to implement. McCOLM: Well, you know, we just had our own. I just worked with... JOHNSON: Did you have input into that JCS directive? McCOLM: Everything we did at the Presidio, Monterey, whether it was planning invasions, or planning the occupation, everything we did there got into the orders that went to MacArthur. JOHNSON: So you wrote up reports, or what would you call these, what you had to prepare? What kind of documents were they? McCOLM: Well, they were called planning recommendations. We just made planning recommendations. They were all top secret -- everything that went out of there. Now, I can go back and give you a little background on it. When I reported there, the first thing they told me about my assignment was, so far as the planning is concerned, that they had decided sometime apparently in 1944, that we would not invade Japan with any crops in the field. JOHNSON: Now, who told you that? McCOLM: That was Colonel Hartman and that group. I've forgotten who all was present, but it was a very small group. The planning staff was just a small group at the Presidio. I don't remember whether there were 30 or 40 officers, but it was a very small staff, that is, out of the whole 900 that were there that studied Japanese. JOHNSON: But when you enlisted, didn't they bring these issues up at Princeton, when you were there at Princeton? McCOLM: At Princeton, we were just studying all of the background of Military Government. JOHNSON: You were just studying the background. But when you got to Presidio you were told that they wanted to invade at some time other than when the crops were in the field? McCOLM: That's right. They said that we cannot invade Japan with any crops in the field. That has been determined. In other words, apparently it was determined before I was recruited because of the fact that… JOHNSON: It had already been made a policy statement. McCOLM: Apparently it was, because I don't find anything. I've been searching for a lot of material that would lead up to my time, and also some of the material that we created at the Presidio. The Army has always been closed-mouthed about the intelligence work that's been done at the Presidio in Monterey. They've tried to hide, as far as I can determine, what they were doing -- the work they were doing there from everybody including the President and the Senate and the House of Representatives. The intelligence work that was carried on at the Presidio in Monterey is still secret. JOHNSON: What was the reason for the decision on when to invade? McCOLM: They had three very definite reasons for not wanting to invade Japan with any crops in the field. They told me, first, that the most important was the military reason. They said that Japan was a rice-growing country and they planned to bring 1400 tanks ashore in the first wave. And flat rice land, with water on it, would slow both the troops and the tanks; it would be a hazard to military operations. So they needed to know not only the crops but the bearing power of all of the soils of all the coastal areas of Japan. There also was the fact that the rice period coincided with the rainfall period. And the rainfall periods of Japan created too much flow in many of the streams for tanks to cross safely. During the dry season they could cross safely, but they couldn't cross safely during the wet season. They had to be able to cross because the only bridges that would support the tank in Japan were on the main roads. You see, a lot of thinking went into this planning. JOHNSON: You're talking mainly about Kyushu, I suppose, as the first invasion objective. McCOLM: Yes. You see, we decided on Kyushu, and there was a number of reasons for deciding on that. You see, it's a separate island, and we could consolidate everything there in a hurry. It's rice is grown on benches, and they also grow barley in the wintertime. So we planned to invade right when they were plowing the ground for the barley. JOHNSON: Which would be... McCOLM: I gave them the 30th of October as the date. My documents, if you can ever find them, says October 30th as the recommended date for the invasion of Japan. JOHNSON: Do you think you originated that date? McCOLM: Well, they've used the 1st of November as the date. The "Top Secret" invasion plan "Olympic" used that date. They made all of the plans based on that date. We knew by the 4th of July that the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington had accepted the recommendation I'd made at CASA. JOHNSON: Because see, a lot of documentation that I've seen just refers to the "earliest practicable date." And what made that date practicable was, as you say, that was after the fields had been drained -- the rice fields had been drained of water? McCOLM: The rice fields are all drained, they're all dry enough to support a tank. JOHNSON: Right. And it's just before the barley... McCOLM: Before they plant the barley. JOHNSON: Okay, what would have been the problem to invade after they planted the barley, what would have happened? McCOLM: Well, you're getting into crops again. JOHNSON: Then you would destroy the barley crop. McCOLM: You'd be destroying the barley crop. JOHNSON: And you didn't want to do that, for what reason? McCOLM: Well, there were two other reasons for not wanting to destroy crops. Japan had been using food from a lot of conquered countries as part of their foodstuffs to keep the Army and the civilian population going. There was no visible way they could do that without importing food. We were going to create a "friendly invasion." In other words, the whole idea of a "scorched earth" invasion was out. That had been ruled out. We were not a scorched earth people, we were going in to make friends with the Japanese and they told me at CASA that we had to make friends with the Japanese in order to be able to stay there with a small force for our Military Government. We had to have a friendly occupation. JOHNSON: You mentioned CASA, what is it? McCOLM: Civil Affairs Staging Area. JOHNSON: That's at the Presidio. McCOLM: That was the Presidio group. There were 900 of us there training, learning Japanese ostensibly, and learning all of that and being formed into all of these teams to go to Japan; an ag man, an economist and everybody, were being formed into teams. And so the planning staff was just a little group of us. I never did know; I never did meet all of them. JOHNSON: But you were part of that. McCOLM: I was part of them. And everything we did was Top Secret. JOHNSON: And it went to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. McCOLM: It went right to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington [D.C.]. JOHNSON: You already had orders, the JCS directive that said no scorched earth policy? McCOLM: That was the policy established apparently by the old "Japanese hands," and I really think that [Eugene] Dooman and I think [Joseph] Grew, I think they had a lot to do with that. JOHNSON: There was a "soft line"? McCOLM: There was a soft line, including the idea of retaining the Emperor and retaining the stability and the concept that we were going to go in and take control of the Japanese Government. We were not going to go in and destroy the Japanese Government, or try to create anything else. That was the Russian plan, to destroy the government. The Russians planned to come in and create a Communist Government, and they had a... JOHNSON: Yes, but they weren't too well received, some of those rather soft line policies, were they, by the U.S.? McCOLM: Well that was why it was so secret. We had a lot of opposition to that line. And we even had a problem with our own officers at the Presidio over the fact that the Russians were planning to invade the same time we were, because that had been arranged by Roosevelt at Yalta. JOHNSON: In February 1945, at Yalta, there was an agreement that the Russians would invade within 90 days of the surrender of Germany. Within 90 days of the surrender of Germany they would start a second front, or they would invade Japan, Japanese territory, right? McCOLM: Well, that was the general idea, but the final deal with Russia was that they would invade the same time we did. In other words, that was the general idea that we had. I don't think Truman ever trusted Stalin because Stalin was moving much more rapidly, and was able to get his troops in a position to invade Japan much more rapidly than the plan called for. JOHNSON: Was your plan based on the idea that there would be a Russian invasion through Manchuria? McCOLM: To Hokkaido, through Manchuria, and come down from the north. We would come in from Kyushu, and our worry was that the Russians would get to Tokyo first and get the rebellion organized. JOHNSON: Like they got into Berlin. McCOLM: Yes. They had it set up, they had the people, and that was most disturbing to me, and I understand also to Truman. Everything I knew about Truman was hearsay. See, I had no direct contact with him, so everything I can tell you that people said about Truman's ideas or Truman's theory was all hearsay; no real historic value as far as what I see. But Truman was not too pleased with Roosevelt's giving Eastern Europe to Russia. JOHNSON: Of course, Churchill was involved in that too. McCOLM: Churchill was involved, and we regarded Harry Hopkins as a Russian agent. JOHNSON: Who did? McCOLM: Our staff. JOHNSON: Harry Hopkins, you thought was an appeaser of Stalin? McCOLM: Yes. We regarded him just as good as a Russian agent. He didn't have to be one, but he was helping Russia more... JOHNSON: So there was a strongly anti-Soviet mood in your planning staff? McCOLM: Very definite, from the day I got there. Because we had to plan it after Yalta, and after Yalta we had some officers on our staff that had been right in the forefront of the taking of those southern European countries, and they were really upset over the fact that the Russians were getting control of them. JOHNSON: They were forcing collectivization, for instance, in agriculture. McCOLM: Yes, everything was to be set up that way. JOHNSON: You were concerned there would be collectivized agriculture in Japan if the Russians took... McCOLM: They'd already had it planned, because we had intelligence information. We even had the names of some of the leaders of the tenant farmers organization in Japan, that had been taken to Russia. This was while Russia wasn't at war with Japan. They were trained and told how to take all these local associations and form them into communes. Do you know, we were discussing who we should interrogate and who we should detain. There are two words for that. One, we'd interrogate a lot of people that had been involved with this so-called Russian take-over in Japan, and we had made... JOHNSON: Your planning staff now... McCOLM: The planning staff. JOHNSON: You interrogated... McCOLM: No, we had no way. You see, we were planning what we were going to do when we got to Japan. In other words, we had to decide how extensive this interrogation program would be, and how extensive the detention program would be, for war criminals and all that kind of stuff. There was the whole Zaibatsu set-up. The colonel was just knee-deep in Zaibatsu. JOHNSON: Big cartels. McCOLM: The big cartels. He was trying to figure out who the leaders were and which leaders would be useful leaders in developing the postwar economy of Japan, and which ones were too closely associated with the old militarist war element. And heck, we had all kinds of intelligence information and that's why I want to go to this meeting. There's a meeting in Washington on the 11th and 12th... JOHNSON: Concerning the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and its history. McCOLM: An OSS meeting. I can ask them a lot of questions. I don't know whether I'll get any answers or not. JOHNSON: Did you have the names of leaders of agriculture in Japan, so that you might interrogate them? McCOLM: Yes, I did. Well, we were going to interrogate them but we were not going to detain them. I had the theory, based upon my experience with the Japanese in California, that all in the world these people wanted -- and that's the reason these people came to California -- was to own land. That all we had to do was to have a land reform program, and that's why my original statement was that that should be one of the first proclamations. I wrote it as a memo to Truman, or to his Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington. I wrote what should be in that memo, explaining the land reform program and giving the reasons for immediate release of that information, that we were going to have a land reform program. JOHNSON: So you wrote a memo on this and it went through your planning staff. McCOLM: The planning staff in Washington [D.C.]. JOHNSON: Went through Hartman? McCOLM: Went through Hartman. JOHNSON: To the planning staff of the JCS. McCOLM: I'll tell you one thing that I can recognize that showed up in literature, even MacArthur's literature, and that was a statement I made in that the purpose of this program is to make Capitalists out of every Japanese farmer. JOHNSON: Family farmers. McCOLM: In other words, there's no use creating a farm unit unless you make it a sound economic unit. Otherwise, the whole program will deteriorate to the point where the Communists can take it over. That will happen unless you create sound economic units. That was the basic theory. JOHNSON: Right. How about this statement of Cohen. Cohen says that in September 1945 he was furnished with a draft of the economic section of the draft JCS Directive 1380/15, which we have mentioned. It was in a secure room. I mean it was really highly secret. One provision called for the breakup of "large landed estates." Cohen claims that there were no large landed estates in Japan, but there was a landlord class made up of 900,000 small rentier landowners. What is the difference between, let's say, large landed estates and these so-called small rentier landowners? McCOLM: Well, you see, we had two classes of landlords that we studied in connection with the occupation. We had the very large landowners, and that included the Hommas and the Yamaguchis. I had a whole list of them that had over, you know, 1500 or 2000 acres or more, of land that they owned. We had a list of all these people. JOHNSON: Were these, by the way, corporations? McCOLM: No, they weren't corporations. They were just big family landowner groups. They didn't have any corporate farming. JOHNSON: Yes, but were some of the industrialists also big landowners? McCOLM: Not very many. There were a few that were joint. JOHNSON: They lived out on the land. McCOLM: They lived in the village usually. And they owned all the village or almost all; some of them did. They had all these tenant farmers, and the reason that I knew this program could succeed and would succeed was the fact that every farmer in Japan was a private operator of his farm business, not a peon. JOHNSON: He was a renter though, a tenant. McCOLM: He was a renter. He was a tenant. JOHNSON: And he paid... McCOLM: He paid the landlord in rice usually. Usually paid half his crop. JOHNSON: In kind, I guess, rather than in cash. McCOLM: Rather than in cash. JOHNSON: Like a sharecropper. McCOLM: He was a sharecropper in every sense of the word. JOHNSON: Just like many southern farmers, especially the Black farmers who were sharecroppers. McCOLM: A lot of them had to leave Japan and go to California. JOHNSON: Okay. So they didn't have ownership. McCOLM: Didn't have any ownership and he wanted to own the land. We had another fairly sizeable group that owned a little bit of land, what they had been able to scrape up. They owned a little bit of land, but they couldn't make a living on it so they rented a little bit more from the landlord. So those were another class and those we weren't too much worried about. We weren't too much worried about those people. We were primarily worried about this 70 percent of the farmers that were tenant farmers. JOHNSON: But no land ownership. McCOLM: But no land. Only 16 percent of the rest of the group owned any land. JOHNSON: Okay. These 900,000 so-called rentier landowners; I wonder if those were the ones that owned a little bit of land but not enough to make a living on, so they had to rent other land from larger landowners. McCOLM: You say there's that many landowners? JOHNSON: Yes, 900,000 small rentier landowners. That's what I'm trying to get defined. McCOLM: Well, I think he was referring to the people that needed to rent additional land. That's probably what they are referring to. See, all of this material that we developed at CASA, had all fit into the Joint Chief of Staff group... JOHNSON: So that would be in the records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the reports, and... McCOLM: A lot of that should be; that's what I'm trying to find. JOHNSON: So that would have ended up in the records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. McCOLM: We were sending it to the President, through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. JOHNSON: And that was all stamped Top Secret, or... McCOLM: Yes. All stamped Secret, everything. I don't think a single document left the Presidio Monterey that wasn't classified. JOHNSON: How long were you out there at the Presidio? McCOLM: From the first of the year, in January, to along in September. JOHNSON: Oh, it was as late as September. McCOLM: I left there just about the same time that Cohen and Ladejinsky arrived, because Ladejinsky took my place at the Presidio. He was not a planning officer there. The title I had was Chief of Agriculture for the Training of Officers to be Assigned to Agriculture in Japan. That was his title. And that was my title too. JOHNSON: How come he replaced you? Why did you leave? What did you do? McCOLM: That was very simple. I was a Navy officer, and as soon as the Atomic bomb was dropped, Admiral [William] King found out that he was not going to have any authority or any responsibility in connection with the Military Govern |
