I take a different direction for this moment from Profiles in Service: Peace Corps Roots in American Diplomacy In addition to exploring how Peace Corps service influenced future diplomatic efforts, the narrative follows a personal arc: how the book came together and moments of self-discovery. This passage explores the latter. Read about all the diplomats featured in Profiles here.
Still I wasn’t writing. I had loose renderings, scratchings here and there, sketches and outlines. A structure eluded. I’d had conversations with half a dozen figures and had at least a dozen more I wanted to get to. I considered sending around ten stock questions, but didn’t want to write a bland report based on survey numbers. I wanted color and humanity.
All around was bleak January, short cold days and little light. A perfect time to head to the Pacific Islands and see what Peace Corps lawyers were up to in Micronesia in 1966. Research on my next figure, Donald Bliss, caused me to reflect again on my grandfather.
Founding Fathers
In February 1945, his army outfit, Company C of the 724th Military Police Battalion, steamed toward Iwo Jima on the SS Sturgeon.
I imagine his ship dropping anchor off Saipan along the way, Sergeant S.A. East, Jr. taking shore leave. It’s entirely possible he met a group of island innocents, including nine-year-old Hiroshi Ismael.
Fast forward to summer 1968, a particularly bad year for Vietnam draftees and a high-water mark for Peace Corps recruitment. Harvard Law School grad Donald Bliss is serving his final year as a volunteer lawyer in Micronesia. In his own words:
When the Congress of Micronesia met in Saipan for three months in the summer, I would serve as assistant legislative counsel… I worked in Saipan during the second and third sessions of the Congress.
Bliss would extend his Peace Corps term beyond the two-year mark so he could work that third session, excited at the prospect of gathering with the “founding fathers” of a new democracy.
He helped draft dozens of bills and resolutions, from establishing a social security program to asking the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to construct an airport in Kusaie (now Kosrae).
His good friend and senator from Kusaie, Hiroshi Ismael, asked Bliss to draft a resolution seeking an airport for his island in the Ponape district. Bliss asked what reasons he should give, and Ismael rattled off several: medical evacuations, exporting citrus fruit, importing supplies, etc. When Bliss asked him, “What about promoting tourism?” Ismael offered this:
I’ll shoot the first damn tourist who sets foot on my island.
Spoken just like Sgt. S.A. East: a solitary figure, a U.S. Army sharpshooter, given to the pointed expletive.
Mark Twain
Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, Bliss is the great-grandson of Elisha Bliss, president of the American Publishing Company. Great grandpa Bliss joined forces with another great American cuss-slinger, Samuel Clemens, to publish Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, The Gilded Age and Tom Sawyer.
I had two areas to cover with my fellow Nutmegger beyond his Peace Corps experience and his appointment as U.S. Permanent Representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization.
Bliss, too, had married a volunteer from his group several years after service.
And we were both authors, Bliss having published scholarship on Mark Twain—Mark Twain’s Tale of Today—and penning a play about the great American satirist. As for me, I had published two satiric novels.
The chance to connect with the great grandson of one of Twain’s earliest publishers intrigued me. I’d taught The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at the American School of Asunción before joining the Foreign Service. Years earlier, I’d ride past Twain’s West Hartford home, that unique riverboat design, cycling from college for the weekend with my laundry strapped to the rack.
I shared with Bliss my thoughts about Grandpa meeting Hiroshi Ismael and he launched right into fond memories of his old friend.
Read more about Bliss’s career in his oral history conducted by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.
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