SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

The Honorable Survivor - Timely Lessons & Continuing Controversy

(author, Honorable Survivor: Mao's China, McCarthy's America and the Persecution of John S. Service)

John Stewart Service (3 August 1909 - 3 February 1999) was an American diplomat who served in the Foreign Service in China prior to and during World War II. Considered one of the State Department's "China Hands," he was an important member of the Dixie Mission to Yan'an. Service correctly predicted that the Communists would defeat the Nationalists in a civil war, but he and other diplomats were blamed for the "loss" of China in the domestic political turmoil following the 1949 Communist triumph in China. In the immediate postwar years, Service was arrested on espionage charges in the Amerasia Affair in 1945, but cleared by a Grand Jury of wrongdoing.  In 1950 U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy launched an attack against Service, which led to investigations of the reports Service wrote while stationed in China. Secretary of State Dean Acheson fired Service, but in 1957 the U.S. Supreme Court ordered his reinstatement in a unanimous decision.  But that was not the end of the controversy: Service remains a scapegoat to this day.

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