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Oral history
John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection
JFKOH-WAH-02
In this interview Harriman discusses his position in the State Department as a roving ambassador, including his flexibility in making decisions in the field, and traveling around the world; John F. Kennedy's [JFK] conception of the Soviet Union; interactions with Souvanna Phouma and changes in general opinion of him; evaluating options for American action or intervention in Laos; the international meeting in Geneva over Laos, including dealing with the Soviet negotiator George M. Pushking and with the Chinese; comparing JFK and Franklin D. Roosevelt in their respective administration of the State Department; and the Joint Chiefs’ attitude towards Laos and the concept of limited commitment, among other issues.
Oral history
John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection
JFKOH-TK-01
Thanat Khoman was the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Thailand from 1959 to 1971. This interview focuses on the John F. Kennedy [JFK] administration’s policies on Southeastern Asia and Khoman’s founding of the John F. Kennedy Foundation in Thailand to honor JFK after his assassination.
Oral history
John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection
JFKOH-JSE-01
Everton discusses the 1962 coup d’état, Burmese and Chinese foreign policy issues, and Burmese nationalization, among other issues.
Oral history
John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection
JFKOH-KTY-03
In this interview Young discusses the creation of the Dean Rusk-Thanat Khoman Agreement in March 1962; drafting the Internal Security Program for Thailand and urging Thai officials to create their own; Robert F. Kennedy’s visit to Bangkok in 1962 and his support on Thai issues; Thailand’s road building program; the different approach to Asia by select assistant secretaries of State; and working with the country team for Thailand, among other issues.
Oral history
John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection
JFKOH-KTY-02
In this interview Young discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the high level visit; the need for scholarly diplomacy in U.S. relations with Asian countries; the role of an ambassador; the relationships between the Embassies in Thailand and Laos; William Averell Harriman’s meetings with Thai and Laotian leaders; different strategy proposals for and conflicting opinions on Laos; U.S. programs in Thailand; and the Dean Rusk-Thanat Khoman Agreement, among other issues.
Oral history
John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection
JFKOH-KTY-01
In this interview Young discusses issues with American policy in Southeast Asia and the need for more informed decision makers; the process of his appointment as Ambassador to Thailand; Thai distrust over French actions in SEATO [South East Asia Treaty Organization] and inaction in Laos; and the various debates over U.S. actions in Laos and Thailand in the early 1960s, among other issues.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-MR-1996-032-017
Peter K. Shaker served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand from 1984 to 1986 as an English teacher and teacher trainer. A first-generation American, he learned Thai and received technical training in teaching English during his pre-service training in Nakhon Nayok and Maha Sarakham. Shaker was stationed in two provinces, Nakhon Pathom in central Thailand and Nakhon Si Thammarat in southern Thailand. He taught English at secondary schools and trained Thai teachers. He was able to travel throughout Thailand, visiting many parks and temples, and enjoyed the culture and natural beauty. Shaker's experience in the Peace Corps has had a lasting impact on his life and career. It helped him appreciate the diversity of cultures and languages and steered him into a long career in education. Interviewed and recorded by Patrick Preston, May 13, 1994, as part of a Northeastern University public history class. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file). A user's guide is available in Box 122.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-084
Norman Gordon served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand from 1968 to 1970 in a malaria eradication program. He had served in the military prior to joining the Peace Corps. His training started at a site in Hawaii and consisted of language, culture, and cooking. Job specific training was conducted in Manila, Philippines, and an additional four weeks of training was provided in Thailand. Gordon's job in malaria eradication required extensive travel throughout his assigned region, and he visited many remote villages. Gordon also provides some reflections on serving in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War era. Interviewed and recorded by Julius (Jay) Sztuk, June 10, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-079
Elisa Gillette served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand from 1966 to 1968 in a community health project. She served alongside her husband. She talks about how the Vietnam War impacted their decision to join the Peace Corps and the government's decision to put more volunteers in Thailand. She describes training in California and the group she trained with. Once at their site in Thailand, the couple faced a challenge in finding a niche where they could do their work, and also experienced some cross-cultural difficulties. Gillette describes their travels throughout Thailand and the conditions of life there. Finally, she discusses how the Peace Corps impacted her life and what happened after they returned to the U.S. Interviewed and recorded by Candice Wiggum, May 1, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-059
Philip Lilienthal served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia from 1965 to 1967 as a legal advisor, then as Peace Corps staff from 1969 to 1974 in several different positions. He served alongside his wife in Ethiopia and worked as a legal advisor for government agencies. He also started a youth summer camp in response to a request by the emperor's granddaughter, who was interested in breaking down ethnic barriers. This experience and his work running a summer camp in the U.S. later led him to create Global Camps Africa, which operates in South Africa. From 1969 to 1972, Lilienthal worked at Peace Corps headquarters in the General Counsel's office as an Attorney-Advisor, where among other issues, he dealt with free speech related to volunteer protests against the Vietnam War, and the proposed consolidation of Peace Corps into the umbrella volunteer ACTION agency. Next Lilienthal served as Peace Corps Regional Director for Mindanao, Philippines, from 1972 to 1973, then Deputy Peace Corps Director for Thailand from 1973 to 1974. In these posts, he gained a perspective of the other side of the conflict between the central office and the field. In 2013, Lilienthal was awarded the National Peace Corps Association's Sargent Shriver Award for Distinguished Humanitarian Service for his contributions to humanitarian causes at home and abroad. Interviewed by Evelyn Ganzglass, January 7, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-058
Natalie Gee Hall served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand from 1967 to 1969 as an English teacher. She met and married her husband during training in Hawaii. Due to Peace Corps policy, they were forced to resign from training with their first group, Thai 18, because they had been accepted initially as single volunteers. They were required to reapply as a married couple. After being accepted again, they trained in DeKalb, Illinois, with the Thai 19 group that received part of its training during the summer of their junior year in college and part after they graduated. Hall discusses the negatively competitive "de-selection" process that asked trainees to rate each other's likelihood to succeed. Once the Halls arrived in Narathiwat, Thailand, Natalie taught English in the girls' high school and her husband taught in the boys' high school. Together, they also taught English to adults using a language curriculum developed in Thailand. Hall discusses the on-going insurgency in southern Thailand as well as the presence of Air America U.S. contractors conducting secret supply runs to Vietnam, and local support for the U.S. fighting the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. She ends by talking about her advocacy work for Peace Corps funding and changes in Peace Corps health care and disability policy. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, January 16, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-022
Patrick Corrigan served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand from August 1989 to November 1992. For the first two years he taught English in a middle school in Karung, a town in the Banrai district of the Uthai Thani province in central Thailand. In the third year he lived in Bangkok and traveled throughout Thailand as an assistant to the director of the Thai affiliate of the World Wildlife Fund. Corrigan talks about teaching Thai teachers more active instruction methods and teaching children (who couldn't afford to take the bus to the main school) in a small satellite school that he and other teachers built. He discusses building a pig farm for his school and other entrepreneurial projects, such as the production of shampoo and t-shirts. Corrigan also talks about his post-Peace Corps work in Thailand with a conservation and community development project that helped the Karen indigenous people stay on their ancestral lands. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, September 11, 2018. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2017-026
John Michael "J.M." Ascienzo served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand from 2012 to 2015. Ascienzo had experience with AmeriCorps and had been a teacher in Vietnam and South Korea prior to joining the Peace Corps. His training took place in Bangrachan, Singburi Province, where he studied the Thai language. Ascienzo was assigned to Baanluang, a small farming town in the mountains of Nan Province near the Laos border. He trained teachers in a primary and secondary school and embraced the local culture by doing what his host family and neighbors did: farming, fishing, and generally trying to lend a hand. He extended his service for a third year to teach English at Prateepsasana Islamic School near the Gulf of Thailand in Nakhon Sri Thammarat City. In the interview, Ascienzo reflects on how the form of government affects people's lives, the challenges of depending on others to get things done, the community leaders’ aversion to taking risks, and how he learned the value of small talk. Interviewed and recorded by Patricia Wand, 6 January 2017. 2 digital files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2017-005
Stephen Fox served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Thailand 34 group from 1971 to 1975. He taught English in a boys' high school in Burriram, in northeast Thailand near the Cambodian border. The area is heavily influenced by the Khmer empire, which sparked Fox's interest in archaeology. He asked to live with a student and was given a stilt house to share with one of the school’s best English students, who became a life-long friend. During the first year, Fox helped to develop enrichment materials for the English for Thai Students textbook. After two years teaching, he spent another two years as a volunteer working at the Ministry of Education in Bangkok to rewrite the textbook. He recounts going to Phnom Penh just before it fell, and describes a cross-border sugar smuggling operation during the war. Through the Peace Corps, Fox discovered his love of living in foreign cultures and eventually joined the Foreign Service. He believes that the Peace Corps had a significant impact on USAID and the Foreign Service because so many former volunteers have worked for both agencies. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, October 18, 2016. 1 digital file.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2016-056
B. Margurette Norris served with the Thailand IX group from 1964 to 1966. She recounts her experience teaching English to 10th, 11th, and 12th graders in a girls school in Surin, near the Cambodian border. Although it was a girls' school, some of the students were boys who didn’t get into the boys' school. English instruction was important because the secondary school graduation exams were 50% English and 50% Thai. Norris also taught English in a summer school in Phuket. After her volunteer service, she traveled extensively with friends in Asia and Europe. When she returned to the U.S., she worked at Peace Corps headquarters as Deputy Director of Public Affairs doing recruitment in the southern region. This led to a career in talent searching for a number of organizations in both the domestic and international arenas. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, August 24, 2016. 1 digital audio file.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2016-012
James V. ("Jim") Zurer served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand (Group 12) from January 1966 to December 1967. Jim recounts his experience as a community organizer in the Nikhom Self-Help Land Settlement in Sugneigolok, Amphor Waeng district, in the province of Narathiwat. Jim and his wife, Diana, and another volunteer worked with a small team of Thai government workers to help resettle poor ethnic Thai families, who were given free land and loans to become agriculturists and bolster the Thai ethnic presence in this largely Muslim Malay highland jungle region right near the border with Malaysia. Although his experience was transformational for him, he does not think he contributed much to the betterment of the lives of the communities with which he worked. In subsequent years, many of the ethnic Thais who resettled in this region sold their land to the Muslim/Malay population and used the profit of their sales to move back to the regions from which they came. Both he and his wife talk about the training they got to prepare for the unstructured nature of their jobs in Thailand. 1 digital audio file. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass on November 14, 2015.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2016-011
Diana Zurer served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand from January 1966 to December 1967. She served in the Nikhom Self-Help Land Settlement in southern Thailand across the river from the border with Malaysia. Diana speaks of the frustrations of being one of six female volunteers (all married to other volunteers) in a largely male oriented program. She discusses midwifery training she received and the influence she had in getting village women to seek better prenatal care in a hospital in a larger, more distant town. She also talks about how the difficulties and time-consuming nature of "keeping house" in the settlement kept her, at least initially, from having much time to carry out her development activities. She tells a wonderful story of her parents visiting her and her husband in the settlement and staying in the Queen Mother's fancy house in this town. In addition, she talks favorably about the training her group received at the University of Missouri, including a field assignment in Centralia, Missouri, home of the John Birch Society. 1 digital audio file. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, November 14, 2015.
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2020-023
William Shaw served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand from January 1966 to March 1968. He did construction work as part of a community development program, first in Satun province near the Malaysian border, and then for the last 9 months, in the Nakhon Phanom province in the northeast on the Mekong River near the Laos border. He was reassigned there because a lot of money was pouring into the region during the Vietnam War since it was near the Ho Chi Minh Trail where active bombing was being conducted. After his service, Shaw became a Peace Corps trainer in Hawaii, where he met his Thai wife who was a Peace Corps language instructor. Because of his excellent Thai language skills, he also served as a State Department escort interpreter for Thai officials visiting the U.S. After retirement from a 25 year career in the information technology business, Shaw and his wife lived in Songkhla, his wife's hometown in southern Thailand, for 15 years while he taught English and business classes. To this day he maintains his close ties with the remaining members of his Thailand 12 group. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, September 10, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-113
Mark Troy served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand from February 1972 to May 1975 as an English teacher. He and his wife, Mary Fran, joined as a couple. Their preferences were South America and Africa, but they accepted the first invitation to Thailand. They attended a pre-invitational staging in Denver where they were given a brief introduction to Thai culture. Training in language, culture, and teaching techniques was conducted in two locations in Thailand, a small fishing village and a college. The Troys were given a choice of being stationed in a town with or without a U.S. military presence, and they chose one without (Phitsanulok). Mark's job was to train teachers at a college. They extended for a third year, and he took a new assignment at Chiang Mai University. After completing Peace Corps service, he applied for a job at a local university and the couple stayed in Thailand for another two years. Interviewed and recorded by Julius (Jay) Sztuk, June 23, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).