“Lawrence of Manchuria”
p. 47 · Read in the full issue
H. W. Kinney to Settle in Tahiti
ANTED to Buy in the South Seas: W Two to five acres in picturesque locality on sand beach, with smooth water available for keeping launch; with or with out house. Might consider 40-50 acre coco nut plantation. Send fullest particulars to H. W. Kinney, 4-3 Nogi-rnachi, Dairen, Manchuria.”
THIS advertisement tucked away in a corner of the Pacific Islands Monthly a year or so ago represented the end of adventure and the beginning of content ment for a long, lean American and his Japanese wife. It meant that Henry Wil liam Kinney, whose exploits in Eastern and Central Asia had won him legendary fame as the “Lawrence of Manchuria,” had decided to escape the stress of civilisation and seek rest and peace in the South Seas, after weary wanderings over a map he had had a hand in making.
Early this year Mr. and Mrs. Kinney, with their son, sailed out of San Francisco on board the Makura for Tahiti, to take up permanent residence on their recently purchased private island, at Mataiea.
The following extracts from a Californian newspaper give some indication of Kinney’s colourful and breezy life in Hawaii and Asia: Born in Hawaii, grandson of the first missionary to South Hawaii, and of Eng lish stock, he was educated in the United States and Denmark, but chiefly in Eng land, concluding with postgraduate work at the University of California.
His education complete, Kinney returned to Hawaii and commenced a career in which he was school-teacher, timekeeper, chemist, detective, plantation manager, purser, editor, correspondent, novelist and semi-diplomat.
In Hawaii, he contracted the first of two strange marriages, marrying a part Hawaiian girl, a direct descendant of King Kamehameha, the great monarch who first united the Sandwich Islands.
His Hawaiian wife died in 1920, and when he went to Peking as a correspondent five years later, he took with him, as evidence of a sincere affection for the Japanese people, his present wife, Teru Hirose, mem ber of an old Samurai family, and a painter well-known in Japan for her artistry.
In 1925 Kinney became foreign contact man for the South Manchurian railway, which is actually the active manifestation cf the Japanese Government in Manchuria.
At the time of the Mukden incident in 1931, which led to the severance of Man churia from China and the creation of the new State of Manchukuo, Kinney served as liaison man between the Japanese mili tary and the world.
Many Asiatic observers consider that Kinney was for a decade the principal link between Japanese statesmen and the pub lic of other countries, the true “Lawrence of Manchuria.” Among his numerous decorations this quizzical American, who is more at home in many foreign lands than his own, numbers the only medal ever pinned on a foreigner by the new State of Manchukuo. It was awarded for “valu able assistance in establishing the empire.”
Then followed service in Geneva as adviser to the Japanese delegation during the stormy session which led to Japan’s withdrawal from the League. A tour of the European capitals, with his finger on the pulse of public opinion in London, Paris and Berlin comprised his next diver sion.
Returning to his headquarteis in Dairen, Kinney for a couple of years moved almost continuously about his Far Eastern theatre of operations, welcomed by diplo mats, statesmen and business men, who accorded him their trust and confidence.
Kinney understands the Japanese better, perhaps, than any living foreigner. None is more familiar with their problems, economic, political and military. But he would not discuss those details when he passed through San Francisco on his way to his mid-Pacific Eden. His mind was occupied with fences to build, a house to paint, an electric generating plant to in stall under his own 90-foot Tahitian waterfall, and coconuts to open.