But the real gist of Allman's autobiography was his seven-month internment on Hong Kong Island by the Japanese. For Allman, this was an internment long in the making. Beginning in 1937, Allman worked as the editor and publisher of the Shen Bao, a Chinese-language paper. Through personal connections made at the paper, Allman became an active proponent of the Third Force. But his political views and use of the newspaper to criticize the Japanese occupation of Shanghai landed him on a list of ninety-one journalists who faced execution if they remained in China, which Allman did. The day after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, he was arrested by the Japanese occupiers in China and interned in a prison camp.
While Allman wrote of the interplay among the minority parties and groups that made up the Third Force, as well as the Nationalists and the Communists, that storyline is secondary to Japan's war on China. The country's smoldering civil war between the Nationalists and the Chinese Communists — whether declared or not — was ever present in Allman's writing, but it too was background to the more concerning Sino-Japanese conflict. Allman's one hope and expectation, as seen in the pages of Shanghai Lawyer, was that internal strife would resolve naturally once China's people and leaders united to battle the Japanese. After that, though, China — in his mind — would need America's help.
Allman's hope with Shanghai Lawyer was to show that China, particularly his beloved port city, was a "resilient place," even if the Japanese "burn[ed] it to the ground," what he considered a likely scenario at the time. China, Allman wrote, survived wars, both internal and external, and it would inevitably "rise again." The country, with its "tradition and perfect geographical location," could not be destroyed. Still, Allman argued, "China needed both technical and financial help from Americans." But the Chinese needed to know, wrote Allman, that "they will be safe in accepting such assistance." They needed assurance that America, its people and leaders, "hold no unnecessary political strings."Yet, more than Allman's call to the American people to help the Chinese rebuild after the Japanese attack, his storytelling simply resonated with readers. The Michigan Law Journal named Shanghai Lawyer among "the best law books of the year [1943]," adding "[f]ew who take it up will put it down without finishing it." The New York Times Book Review called Shanghai Lawyer a "refreshing" break from "the stuff to feed the troops." In the article, Burton Crane wrote, "It is honest. Its author has not bothered to edit history for our supposed benefit. He tells his story of twenty-seven years in China with good nature, humor, and a matter-of-factness which is far more palatable than all the wishful-thinking-in-retrospect to which we have been treated." Harley Farnsworth MacNair, a writer with The Review of Politics, highlighted Allman's "comings and goings over many routes" and "innumerable bits of amusing and worthwhile information not gleanable elsewhere." For him, Allman and his social network appeared at the center of a clash of cultures in an intriguing, readable way.
While clearly pleased with the reviews, Allman saw his autobiography as a window into a peculiar time and place both in his life and China. He also came to down play the significance of the book, as he defended his numerous relations with Russians in China. R. Harris Smith suggested that Allman became a supporter for Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists as a "defensive reaction against lingering suspicion of his 'Bolshevik sympathies.'" For Allman, who would go on to work for another two decades, Shanghai Lawyer lacked the twenty-twenty hindsight and revisionist history afforded most autobiographies. Still, his book captures a moment and holds well in the light of history, as it reveals Allman at his most charming and relaxed, if not honest. As a result, Shanghai Lawyer has seen a resurgence of interest in recent years, with Jeffrey Wasserstrom calling it "fascinating" in At the Crossroads of Empires: Middlemen, Social Networks, and State-Building in Republican Shanghai, from 2008.
Going forward in this blog, I'll refer often to Allman's Shanghai Lawyer, but not without some skepticism. Although I have spent a year researching much of Allman's life, I still have unanswered questions about his covert work prior to 1942, the year he joined the OSS.
Clearly, Shanghai Lawyer acted as an interesting precursor to the next stage of Allman's career as an intelligence officer. His 1915 plan to "get a job with the United Fruit Company," so as to earn enough to finish his university studies, suggested no sense of irony in the pages of the Shanghai Lawyer. In fact, I've always wondered if it was a hint or even back then code words for CIA?
Allman, through his eventual work with the CIA in Guatemala during 1953, would indeed come to work with the United Fruit Company, which lobbied its deep ties in the CIA for the U.S. to overthrow the democratically elected president of Guatemala. While such moments in Shanghai Lawyer seem innocent, there is no way — as with so much in history — to know the written word's true intent. By the book's release, Allman was specializing in "psychological warfare," or "the planned use of propaganda," within the OSS. Clearly, as a historical source, Allman cannot be trusted entirely, but his commitment to the Third Force, established well before his work as an OSS officer, seemed genuine — or genuine enough.
Sources:
Image and text: Harvard Law Review Association. Harvard Law Review, Vol. 57, Harvard Law School, 1944, 265 [Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1334819]
A. I. Meyer. "That Rebel Allman!," China Monthly Review, Vol. 102-103, 1946, n. p.
Robert Gale Woolbert. "Review: Recent Books on International Relations," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Apr., 1944) 489-503
Anon. "Shanghai Lawyer," Saturday Review of Literature, Vol. 26, 55.
Norwood F. Allman Shanghai Lawyer (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1943), 280-383.
Coffey R. Hobart. "Review: Law Books of the Year (1943-44)," Michigan Law Review, Vol. 42, No. 6. (Jun., 1944), 1097.
Norwood F. Allman Papers. "Testimony," Box 6, Files 2, Hoover Institution Archives. Collected news clippings (The New York Times, n. d.).
Harris R. Smith. OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1972 and New York: Lyons Press, 2005), 252-253.
Nara Dillon and Jean C. Oi, editors. At the Crossroads of Empires: Middlemen, Social Networks, and State-Building in Republican Shanghai (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2008), 211.
Norwood F. Allman Papers. "Shun Pao" and "U.S., Office of Strategic Services." Boxes 22, 29, Files 29, 16, Hoover Institution Archives.
