About the book:
An important book on the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, by a controversial American correspondent suspected of having Communities leanings.
About the author:
From LA Times:
Haldore Hanson, 80, a former war correspondent for the Associated Press who was hounded out of government service during the McCarthy era because of his writings on China. Hanson wrote for the wire service in China from 1934 to 1939, and in 1937 was briefly imprisoned by the Japanese as a suspected spy. In 1950, U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy charged that Hanson’s 1939 book on the China war, “Humane Endeavour,” promoted the Communist cause of Mao Tse-tung. Although Hanson was cleared of all charges, he was forced out of his job with the State Department in 1953. On Sept. 24 in Mexico City of heart failure.
From the New York Times:
Haldore Hanson, a State Department official who was cleared of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s accusation of being a Communist sympathizer, died Sept. 24 at a hospital in Texcoco, Mexico. He was 80 years old and lived in San Nicholas, Mexico, and Arcola, Va.
As a foreign correspondent in the 1930’s, Mr. Hanson covered the Chinese civil war and the invasion of China by Japan. Traveling rural roads on bicycle, he rotated among the warring forces and was occasionally arrested by one side or the other.
His book on the war, “Humane Endeavor” (Farrar, Rineholt, 1939), was praised as a rare close-up from the remote front lines. Because of his expertise, the State Department hired him in 1942. After World War II, he became assistant director of the Point Four development aid program for Asia. ‘
