Raymond P. Ludden

Raymond P. Ludden (June 6, 1909 - 1970) was one of the United States State Department's China experts and spoke fluent Mandarin. He was born in Fall River, Massachusetts. He graduated from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and went to China in 1932.

Ludden was interned by the Japanese in Shanghai the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor but was released the following year in what was then Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique) as part of a diplomatic exchange arranged by the Swiss Red Cross. He volunteered to return to China and was subsequently detailed to Joseph W. Stilwell as a member of an elite political team. The other three members of the team were John P. Davies, a China expert and leader of the team; John S. Service, a China expert; and John Emmerson, a Japan expert. All were "on loan" to Stilwell from the State Department.

Ludden held the rank of a field grade officer and served in Burma and later in China as Stilwell's liaison to the 20th Bomber Command in Chengdu. When Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek) finally relented under pressure from President Roosevelt and allowed Stilwell to send an observer section to the Chinese Communist base area in Yan'an, Ludden was chosen to be part of it. The observer section was known informally as the Dixie Mission, and Ludden's role was to travel behind enemy lines with a small field group of seven Americans and a guerrilla bodyguard to the Communist Jin Cha Ji headquarters near Fouping. The other members of the field group were Brook Dolan, Paul Domke, Walter Gress, Simon H. Hitch, Wilbur J. Peterkin, and Henry C. Whittlesey. The trip would last some four months and cover 900 miles in the dead of the Chinese winter with Japanese patrols in pursuit.

Ludden's objective was to find out if what Jack Service, John Emmerson, and the other observers had seen of the Communist organization in and around Yan'an was true throughout the Communist-controlled areas. That information would be a critical factor in Stilwell's decision whether or not to work with the Communists. On the way back to Yan'an, Henry Whittlesey and his interpreter were captured and killed by the Japanese. Ludden was later awarded the Bronze Star, as were the other members of the field group.

The Dixie Mission stood against a backdrop of political intrigue within the American camp. Patrick Hurley, who had been sent by Roosevelt to China with express instructions to press Jiang Jieshi into cooperating with Stilwell, had instead sided with Jiang and had Stilwell recalled. When Ludden returned to Yan'an in January of 1945, Hurley did not want to hear what he had to say but instead upbraided him for having gone to Fouping in the first place. Ludden never fully told his side of the story. Hurley subsequently became Ambassador to China and began to advocate a policy of unconditional support for Jiang. This soon undermined the negotiations between Yan'an and Chongqing.

Ludden spent several months in the United States, and was then reassigned to China following Hurley's resignation. He remained there until the Communist takeover in 1949, and it was during that time that he came to know several key players on both sides; the salient among them was Zhou Enlai. Ludden was convinced that Hurley's policy of unconditional support for Jiang had not only alienated the Communists, but set the stage for conflict in Korea and Vietnam as well, to say nothing of the hardship it would bring to the Chinese people during their period of reconstruction. He believed that if peace and equality were truly the goals of American policy, the line between friend and enemy had been drawn in the wrong place.

Ludden later went through the loyalty-security hearings of the McCarthy period, and though cleared, he was still considered too controversial for another Asian post and finished out his career in Europe. He died in 1970.

References

• Carolle J. Carter, Mission to Yenan: American Liaison with the Chinese Communists 1944-1947 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1997).

• John Colling, The Spirit of Yenan: A Wartime Chapter of Sino-American Friendship (Hong Kong: API Press, 1991).

• John Paton Davies, Dragon by the Tail: American, British, Japanese, and Russian Encounters with China and One Another (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972).

• E. J. Kahn, The China Hands: America's Foreign Service Officers and What Befell Them (New York: Viking Press, 1972, 1975).

• Colonel W. J. Peterkin, Inside China 1943-1945: An Eyewitness Account of America's Mission in Yenan, (Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1992)