David Newsom Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Page 1 of 4
Ambassador Newsom, welcome to Berkeley, or welcome back to Berkeley, I should say.
Thank you.
Where were you born and raised?
The East Bay, in Richmond. I have to stress now, being a Virginian, that it was Richmond, California.
In looking back, how do you think your parents shaped your character?
My father was a major influence. He was part owner of a now defunct newspaper, the Richmond Independent. He instilled a love of writing, a love of the world beyond Richmond. Even though I didn't follow the course of journalism that he set out, I benefited greatly from much that he taught me.
Was there a lot of talk about the news and politics around the dinner table?
There was a lot of talk about politics, because the newspaper was the center of Contra Costa County politics. And if you know anything about Contra Costa County, it has -- at least in the past -- had lively politics. So I was brought up with conversations about whom shall we back this year as supervisor or sheriff, and I got a sense of the political realm and the essence of politics.
Do you remember any books that you read as a young person that shook you up or made you think about your future?
One book I remember, because it related so much to the politics that I knew growing up, was The Last Hurrah, even though it was about Boston politics. And Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion had a great deal of influence on me. And then at the School of Journalism at Columbia, I had some professors who were very much into modern politics -- Douglas S. Freeman, the biographer of General Lee, and Walter Pitkin (author of Life Begins at Forty), who was an interesting character. So I grew up with a lot of access to influences, not so much on international relations until later, but on the political realm and its ways and means.
Where did you do your undergraduate work?
Here at Berkeley, Class of 1938.
And what did you major in?
English.
What was the campus like then?
Well, it was living up to Berkeley's reputation. Even in 1938, I remember a demonstration when Earl Browder, the Communist Party chief, was banned from speaking at Sather Gate.. I had two sons who went through Berkeley later in the 1960s, so I could see that Berkeley was maintaining its tradition of provocative politics.
How did your Berkeley education affect you and shape your future?
There was a marvelous English Department here at that time. The department taught me writing and discipline, and the riches of the whole vast world of literature. There was an English comprehensive exam at that time, which I think has been abandoned since, in which you had to concentrate on Milton, Spencer, Shakespeare, and Chaucer. Now, those may all seem like "dead white males," but they had much to teach us on the richness of our language and the development of character and characters.
After Cal, you decided, at least initially, to pursue a journalism career.
That's right.
And went to Columbia.
Yes.
At Columbia you were awarded, among other things, a Pulitzer traveling scholarship. Tell us about what that was and what it led to.
The School of Journalism has under the Pulitzer will, three traveling fellowships that they award to graduates or to those that receive Master degrees. I was lucky to get one in the spring of 1940. The fellowship was really nothing more than a check for $1,500 and a requirement that we stay out of the country for nine months. I wanted to stretch that into going around the world. The cheapest way to get around the world at that time was on the Osaka Syoshen Keisha (OSK), a Japanese line, for $630. So I went on Japanese ships to Japan, to the Dutch East Indies, to India, East Africa, South Africa, South America -- just on the edges of the war that was developing at that time.
And the year, again, would be?
1940, '41.
How old were you then?
Let's see -- twenty-two.
So this was a moment in history when the world would be changed forever by the Second World War, and then by all that emerged afterwards with the Cold War and the decolonization process. Any particular things stand out, in terms of what you saw?
It certainly gave me a deep interest in the world beyond the Golden Gate. I saw Japan during the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. I went into occupied North China. It was my first glimpse of occupation. I saw the Dutch East Indies with Dutch administrators thoroughly frightened about the growing Japanese menace. I spent six weeks in India. I had a chance to interview Gandhi and met with Nehru and Patel, and some of the other leaders of the Indian Congress Party. I got deeply interested in what I saw as the forthcoming challenge to the European empires, which I've written about since. And then I went through South Africa, where the tension was not so much black and white as it still was English-Boer.
Anything stick out in your interview with Gandhi that made an impression beyond the fact that, obviously, this was a great historical figure?
I felt that I was meeting not with a deity, but with one of the sharpest politicians that I would ever meet. It was interesting when I saw the film Gandhi, with Ben Kingsley -- that comes through in the film. I had the same impression. He had a vision of how the independence movement was going to be pursued, and how he would get there. I was impressed.
When you came back after this trip, I guess we can say you put aside the mantle of journalism, and took up the mantle of diplomacy.
I arrived back in July of '41 and realized that we would probably be, one way or another, drawn into the war. So I applied and was accepted in Naval Intelligence, and spent most of the years of the war in the United States, but the last year in Hawaii. After the war I went back into journalism; my wife and I ran a weekly newspaper in Walnut Creek. But I heard about the Foreign Service examination, a special exam for veterans, and I decided to take it. Life is often turned by chance encounters with notices and opportunities, and so I've never looked back.
Next page: The Work of Diplomacy
© Copyright 2002, Regents of the University of California