A United Nations Family Odyssey: Living and Working in Thailand, South Pacific, China and Vietnam

By Roy D. Morey

Seventeen of the twenty-two years the author served with the United Nations Development Programme were spent with his wife, Delores, on assignments in Thailand, Samoa, China and Vietnam. The main focus of the book is a collection of vignettes describing experiences of living in these four countries.
Some stories are humorous and are to be read just for fun (e.g., living conditions on a small isolated island). Other stories are serious and somber (e.g., retracing major battle sites of the Vietnam War). Some are pure adventure (e.g., the midnight visit to the leatherback turtle beach). Fascinating travel adventures in Malaysia and Burma (Myanmar) are also included.
The first two chapters describe the author’s introduction to values, politics and social justice issues. In addition, the author describes his experiences as a congressional staffer and college professor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781663249784

Roy D. Morey

Roy D. Morey is retired and lives in Tucson, Arizona with his wife, Delores. He is a former Chair of the Political Science Department at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. He was on the White House staff and then served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. For twenty years he was a senior officer with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). He is the author or co-author of several books on various topics.

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Copyright © 2023 Roy D. Morey.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-4970-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4978-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022912750

iUniverse rev. date: 02/02/2023

CONTENTS

Preface

1.Introduction to Values, Politics and Social Justice

2.Congressional Politics and the Eclipse of the Republican Party

3.Granville to Washington to New York

4.Travel and Exploration in Thailand and Burma

5.Samoa and its Neighbors: The Enchantment of Polynesia

6.Living and Learning in China

7.Living in Vietnam on the Cusp of Change

Epilogue

To our wonderful grandchildren,

Ali, Adam, Sara, Mia, Nathaniel, Andrew,

Catherine, Anna

PREFACE

I n the interest of clarity in reading the first three chapters, it should be noted that I consider myself an accidental professional. Without training or advanced planning, I pursued a career in three different professions. When I was a college sophomore, I decided I would become a lawyer. Two years later, I changed my mind and I enrolled in a graduate program in Government rather than law school. Years later, I was a tenured Associate Professor and accepted an unsolicited appointment on the Nixon White House staff in 1971—never to return to the academic world. In 1978, I joined the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and retired after twenty-two years of service. It is the UN career that affords me the opportunity to write this book.

My years at the White House, State Department and UNDP are covered in a book I wrote in 2014, The United Nations at Work in Asia: An Envoy’s Account of Development in China, Vietnam, Thailand and the South Pacific. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2004. The 2014 book is a more scholarly description and analysis of the development work in which I was engaged and the national public leaders with whom I worked. While this book covers the same twenty-two-year time period, its focus and purpose are quite different from the first book. As the title of this book suggests, the focus of this one is on the experiences my spouse, Delores, daughter Carolyn and I had living abroad in Thailand, South Pacific. China and Vietnam. The main body of the book is a collection of vignettes of those experiences. Some stories have a serious focus and others are humorous and are intended to be read just for fun. There is a genre of literature referred to as books on living abroad. This book is in that category.

My personal editor for the book is a dear friend and former UNDP colleague, Robert England. He read and commented on the entire manuscript. Early on in the process, Robert informed me that while he greatly enjoyed the stories, they do not provide the reader with any idea of who I am as a person—where I received my values and how I became interested in politics. As a result of his suggestions, I added the first two chapters.

No doubt, everyone has a story describing how the Covid-19 pandemic impacted their lives, especially during 2020 and 2021 when it was ravaging every country on earth. In my case, Delores and I found a way to maintain our hope and sanity during the dreadful days of quarantine and lockdown. Most of this book was written during this period and we both looked forward to a positive activity each day. I did the writing and she did the typing.

My most imposing debt is to my wife and high school sweetheart, Delores. The book would never have come to fruition without her involvement as advisor and typist. My two daughters Diana Ditmanson and Carolyn Edds and son-in-law, Teall Edds provided support and encouragement. My parents, Lucretia and Douglas, were my first and most important teachers and provided wisdom, inspiration, advice and guidance.

A special thanks is extended to my nephew, Mark Aitken, for his technical advice in preparing the manuscript. I also wish to thank Bruce Marcotte for his technical support. I am grateful to Kay Judge who proofread the entire manuscript. I much appreciate the efforts of Susan Pearce for improving the quality of the photographs used in this book.

Over the years, the vignettes contained in the book have been told (perhaps more than once) to numerous friends and family members including Tim and Sandy Brancheau, Chuck and Linda Pilon, Richard and Donna Webb, Joe and Darlean Worischeck, Chuck and Vera Jones, Bill and Cathy Westwood, Marilyn Dresser, MaryAnne Fay, Pat Roberts and Bill Foster, Herb and Dorie Behrstock, Michael Gonzales, and Audrey Morey Gonzales, Brad Rich and Dick Bodorff. UNDP colleagues who made such a difference for me include William Draper III, James Gustave Speth, Jordan Ryan, Romy Garcia, Alan Doss, Kerstin Leitner, Jens Wandel, Yannick Glemarec, Jan Mattson, Ameerah Haq, Elena Martinez, Tom Cox, Sarah Burns, Liuga Faumui, Nguyen Xuan Thuan and many others too numerous to mention.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Values, Politics and Social Justice

Child Development 101

T he French use the term formation rather than child development. I find it a more descriptive term because it brings to mind the shaping and forming of a child’s character. There were three major sources of influence that affected my formation. The first were the fundamental values I inherited from my parents. The second were the lessons I learned from listening to my parents’ life experiences that had occurred before my birth. The third formational influence was the external environment in which I was raised.

Fundamental Values

Parents will be the most important teachers a child will ever have; that is because children inherit the most fundamental values from their parents. If parents do not have a sound set of values, their children will suffer for the rest of their lives.

The values parents teach do not require a religious base. However, in my case that happened to be true. My mother, Lucretia, was my primary teacher. As I grew older, my father played an important role as well. Mom was a devout Roman Catholic from a large immigrant French family. Therefore, her values were based on her interpretation of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Fortunately, she did not clutter my mind with a lot of questions and quotations from the Bible. Rather, she cut to the chase and condensed Christ’s teachings into a handful of basic principles to live by.

She started with compassion and empathy. She always told me I was a lucky boy. I had two loving parents and siblings (two sisters Audrey and Donna). I had a comfortable and safe place to live.

I had plenty to eat; I had an opportunity to go to school and would develop nice friends inside and outside the extended family. I was reminded that many children (including those in my hometown of Reno, Nevada) did not have some or any of those blessings and I should never ignore the suffering and misfortune of others. She added that I was not too young to start thinking about those in need. By the time I was five years old, my household chore was to dispose of the garbage each day. I was paid twenty-five cents a week for doing so. In the midst of the Depression, a quarter was a generous sum for a five-year old. But the idea was that I would save most of it to help pay for something I wanted such as a pair of ice skates. After World War II began, Mom spoke frequently about the starving children in China. I decided I would give five cents of my weekly allowance to the starving children. My mother combined my contribution with hers and sent it to the Maryknoll Fathers, many of whom were serving in China.

She also taught me empathy. She told me the only way to be happy and successful in life was to be friendly and harmonious with others. To achieve this goal, she emphasized the need to learn what other people had on their minds and try to understand and share their thoughts and feelings. My father later built on this idea when we started talking about what life would be like when I was older and the day in the future when I would get a job and start making a living. He said that getting a good job and keeping it not only would require the application of my intelligence, skills and knowledge, but I would also need to work in a friendly way with others. On more than one occasion he said, Roy, it’s nice to be smart, but if you don’t learn to get along with others, you will not go very far.

The other Christian principle my mother emphasized was equality. She told me that there is a popular song that tells us we are all God’s children and added it is really the truth. She told me that as a person, I was as good as anyone else, but I should never think I was any better. She said in the eyes of God, we are all the same. It doesn’t matter what color we are, what language we speak, what country we come from or how much money we have—we are all the same. You must believe that we are all equal, not just because Jesus said so, but we also must believe it because we are Americans. This country was started by people coming here from countries throughout the world. We may not wind up in the same place but we all start out on the same foot.

Life Lessons Learned from Parents

It takes some of us half our lives before we realize the only thing that brings lasting happiness to our lives is loving relationships among family and friends. My parents were older and more mature when I was born (my mother was 37 and my father was 50). They also had faced hardship, disappointment and tragedy in their lives. As a result, they both fully understood the importance of family and friends. They tried to teach the importance of loving relationships by telling my two sisters and me stories about their lives before we were born.

My mother was raised on a farm near Leavenworth, Kansas not far from the Missouri River (the state line with Missouri). It was a family of four boys and four girls and Mom was the oldest of the girls. As a result, she was introduced to cooking, housekeeping and child rearing at an early age. She was born in 1900 at a time when suppression of Blacks, especially across the river in Missouri, was in full force. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) had a large membership and was the leading organization in the suppression. The KKK was not only hostile toward Blacks, but against any race, nationality or religion it viewed as alien to American native culture. They saw Catholicism as an alien abomination. One night, when Mom was six-years-old, the Klan crossed the river and burned a cross on the front lawn of the Jacquot family homestead (my mother’s family). It was a frightening event that left an indelible memory. Mom died in 1968 at the age of sixty-eight from a stroke caused by high blood pressure. Hence, she did not live long enough to witness the insurrection at the National Capitol Building on June 6, 2021. This insurrection was instigated and fomented by President Donald Trump just before he left office. Mom would have been horrified because she would have seen the similarity of the modern hate groups involved in the insurrection and the KKK seared into the mind of a young girl.

Like many young girls in the 1920s, soon after finishing high school, Lucretia was anxious to leave the farm and head to California which she and many others considered to be the land of opportunity. Eventually her three younger sisters (Charlotte, Mabel and Josephine) made the same trek. Mom got a job working in an olive processing plant and soon met a handsome German-American (Gus Hummel) and they became a happily married couple. A year later, Mom delivered a healthy baby boy they called Johnny. They were the happiest threesome in San Diego until twenty-two months later, when Johnny was stricken with spinal meningitis and soon after, Gus was admitted to the hospital with an incurable case of tuberculosis. They both died within a nine-month period. On several occasions I asked Mom how she could endure such a tragedy. Her answer was always the same. She said that it was her belief in God and Jesus Christ. She was convinced (and she certainly convinced me) that Gus and Johnny were in heaven and she hoped that she too would go to heaven and see them once again. She also said, Roy, you don’t go to church every Sunday to gain points to go to heaven. As you get older, you will find that your religion gives meaning and comfort here on earth. More than fifty years later when Mom died, I learned she was absolutely correct.

Psychological research clearly shows that people who learn to cope with adversity make them stronger and more able to navigate life’s setbacks. The Apostle Paul recognized this truth 2,000 years ago when he said in his Letter to the Romans (5:3-4), Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. My mother was a very strong woman. Learning to overcome the grief associated with the near simultaneous loss of a spouse and a son helped make her a stronger person. I learned the same lesson with the death of my sister, Donna, in September 2006.

My father, Douglas (who was most often called Morey even by my mother), was truly a young frontiersman. He was born in a cabin in the village of Maysville at the base of 11,000 ft Monarch Pass in the newly created state of Colorado. He was born in 1887 at a time when there were only a few small villages in Central Colorado. There were no paved roads and sometimes the family’s cabin would be buried in five feet of snow. He rode his horse twelve miles round trip to school in Poncha Springs. The Poncha Springs Schoolhouse, built in 1883 is well-preserved and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1962, Delores, Diana and I traveled to Colorado with my parents and we stopped by the schoolhouse for a visit. The wooden shed where the students’ horses were hitched was still standing. A docent was our guide and I told her that I thought my dad was a good student, but nonetheless I asked her to see his record. She asked my dad if he attended school after 1900. When he replied that it was before 1900, she turned to me with a smile and said, We will never know.

My grandfather, Edward Morey, was a self-proclaimed preacher, but he seemed to spend more time in saloons and gambling halls than he did in church. He ruled the family with an iron fist and Dad finally had his fill of his father’s abuse. Dad was thirteen when he finished the eighth grade. He left home right after graduation. He became a gifted apprentice blacksmith and the next two years he worked in underground gold mines including those made famous in Leadville and Cripple Creek. When he was fifteen years old, he went to the Naval Recruiting Station in Denver. The naval recruiters were most impressed with his blacksmith background which was a skill in great demand in those days. Much to the recruiter’s delight, he lied about his age, was enthusiastically recruited and shipped off to his first post which was the U.S. Naval Yard in Yokohama, Japan. He was working and bunking with men more than twice his age. He was very inquisitive and engaged them in conversation. He much enjoyed learning about Japan and the Japanese. He also learned a lot about Western and Eastern Europe because his shipmates were first-and-second generation immigrants from Poland, Hungary, Germany and Ireland.

His second posting was Manila, Philippines. He arrived not long after the U.S. gained control of the Philippines in (1898). He much enjoyed life. He was perfecting his trade. He was learning a lot about people and places. He had congenial shipmates and a few bucks to spend. However, he said that throughout his entire stint in the Navy, he only made one major mistake and that was when he got a tattoo on his right bicep in a sleazy Manila tattoo parlor. He regretted that decision for the rest of his life and he never wore a short-sleeved shirt.

Douglas Morey’s third posting was by far his most exciting. He arrived in Shanghai, China just as the Boxer Rebellion (1889-1901) was ending, but there was still the occasional lingering skirmish. When Dad was given leave, he traveled and observed the Chinese in their daily lives. On his visit to Beijing, he caught a brief glimpse of the Empress Dowager Cixi as she passed by with her entourage.

After Dad returned to the United States, he held a variety of jobs in a variety of locations. He continued to hone his blacksmithing skills and developed new skills as a master mechanic working on trucks and heavy equipment. In the late 1920’s, he moved to San Diego, California where he got a job in the shipyards. He met Mom in San Diego and their meeting seemed to be preordained. Dad was a friend of Mom’s dying husband, John; they first met in John’s sanatorium room. They immediately recognized each other because they were living in the same boarding house. John’s dying wish to his friend, Douglas Morey, was to keep an eye on Lou (Lucretia) after he was gone. Dad fulfilled the wish in great style. Lucretia Hummel became Lucretia Morey in a civil marriage ceremony on March 14, 1931 in Yuma, Arizona—a 170 mile-drive from San Diego. They had a warm and loving marriage for the remainder of their lives. Mom died at the age of 68 from a stroke in October 1968 and Dad died of old age and emphysema in January 1973.

Dad had a great impact on my childhood formation. In his quiet and understated fashion, he taught me discipline, perseverance and pride of workmanship. Most importantly, he gave me a sense of adventure and a desire to live life to the fullest.

The Impact of the External Environment

My most formative years as a child were during World War II. For Americans, the war started on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941 with the bombing attack by the Japanese on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I was four-years-old and I can recall my dad assembling the family around the kitchen table to announce this grave event. I had no idea where or what Hawaii was. However, I knew American ships were sunk and U.S. airplanes were destroyed and thousands of Americans died. From that point on, the family listened to the 6 o’clock news on the radio each evening while we were having dinner. My Uncle Ted Jacquot was a fighter pilot in the Pacific Theater. Since he was one of my heroes, I had a special interest in the Pacific war news.

Our next-door neighbors and friends were a Japanese-American family whose family name was Oshima. The parents had two grown children. The daughter was married to a Japanese-American whose name was Sho. The son was a tall, scholarly young man named George who had a degree in engineering from the University of Nevada, our hometown university. He joined the army after graduating. He became a pen pal with my sister, Donna, and George was also one of my heroes.

A grandmother (obaasan) also lived with the family. Since the Oshimas were living inland, they were not rounded up and incarcerated in a Japanese internment camp. However, they were prohibited from traveling outside of Washoe County, Nevada.

It will come as no surprise to many of my friends that I was an extroverted and loquacious little boy. Starting when I was three or four years old, periodically I would walk next door to the Oshimas and soon I would be greeted by obassan. She would take me by the hand and lead me into the sitting room where we would sit for hours playing checkers and looking through picture books—especially a large picture book on Japan. In warm weather she would lead me into the backyard and show me the fruits and vegetables in Mr. Oshima’s Victory Garden. She would describe each fruit and vegetable to me in Japanese. Of course, I did not speak Japanese, but somehow her speaking to me in Japanese did not bother me at all nor was she offended when I spoke to her in English. We simply enjoyed spending time together and that was enough.

Occasionally we would all pile into our 1936 Chevrolet and drive to Los Angeles to visit Dad’s sister, Aunt Bess. Overall, the aging car performed well with the exception of the radiator boiling over going through the mountains. This problem required Dad to hang a canvas water bag on the front grill. We generally took US Route 395 to California’s Mohave Desert and then we would take a northwest route to Los Angeles. This route followed the high desert foothills on the east side of the California Sierra Range. Despite the beauty of the mountain peaks, it was an inhospitable landscape. It was very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. Between the small California towns of Lone Pine and Independence, the Army Corps of Engineers supervised the construction of Manzanar—one of the largest and most notorious of the ten Japanese internment camps in which more than 120,000 Japanese were incarcerated during World War II. The highway was only about 150 feet from the barbed wire fence and armed guard towers of the camp. On one journey as we drove along the fence, I saw men, women and children standing facing the highway. I said, Dad, these look like Japanese people. And he confirmed they were. I then said, They look like they are in prison; can they get out? Dad confirmed that they could not leave the camp. I then asked the quiz show $64,000 question, Dad, why are they in prison? I don’t remember the answer, but I do remember that it was confusing and did not satisfy my curiosity. The whole scene created a disturbing mental picture that I can recall to this very day. Years later, I discussed this incident with Dad and he said, Roy, no wonder you were confused by my answer; it was just a lot of words because I simply did not have a satisfactory answer--no one did. This episode instilled in me a sense of fairness and justice that grew stronger as I grew older and read about the true nature of the Japanese internment camps.

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The interior of one of the 14 barracks at the Manzanar lnternment Camp.

Each barrack was divided into four 20x25 ft rooms separated

by a curtain for any combination of 8 individuals.

Shortly after service men returned home, the accepted practice was for neighbors to go to the service man’s home and listen to his war stories. The highlight of this practice was the evening we went next door to listen to the stories of son-in-law Sho and son George. I knew from his comments that Sho was involved in deadly combat in Europe. But it was not until 1951 when watching the movie Go for Broke I realized Sho was a member of the all Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team which became the most decorated army unit in U.S. history.

My hero, George, had an even more astonishing story. Shortly after his enlistment, he was sent to a Japanese language school in Minneapolis. After gaining fluency, he became a senior officer in Army Intelligence. Shortly after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (killing 202,000 people, mostly civilians), George was a member of the first group of U.S. military that was sent into Hiroshima to assess the damage and loss of life. The Oshima family was originally from Hiroshima. When George received leave, he set out on a quest to find Oshima family survivors. He eventually discovered that one uncle was killed by the blast and another died two weeks later from radiation sickness. Here were two genuine war heroes whose family was not trusted enough