Nexus - 1904 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

DOUGLAS DIETRICH ON THE HIDDEN SIDE OF HISTORY DOUGLAS DIETRICH SIDE THE HIDDEN HISTORY A former US Department of Defense military librarian and Marine reveals hidden imperial and World War II history, including how Nazi Germany was the first power to develop and deploy the atomic bomb. Part 1 Thomas Kirschner [TK]: How did you start out so young, with a career in destroying classified military documents? Douglas Dietrich [DD]: When | was in what is normally called high school, I was learning a vocational trade in commercial illustration. During that period of time, all the while I was at this vocational institute, there was an Albanian secretary who was working with the Department of Defense with Radio Free Europe in the United States, sending broadcasts to behind the Iron Curtain in Albania. Because of that, she knew that there was an opening with the Department of Defense library for a librarian's aide at the Presidio military base in San Francisco. The reason that this is important is because the Presidio military base was something that I had access to as a military dependent. Since my father was military, | had a dependent's ID—meaning that I could go on base, shop in the commissary and use various military facilities. So because | already had access to the base, | got the job as a librarian's aide at age 16, around 1982, just shelving books originally, and everything got more in-depth from there. This means that I was working as a civilian on a military base, but the Presidio military base was particularly important because it was where the United Nations was founded, just three days and three weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. What happened was that President Franklin Roosevelt founded the United Nations with its original five Security Council members, one of which was Nationalist China, and that is important because I was born in Taiwan, where Nationalist China ultimately re-established itself. TK: But you are an American citizen aren't you? DD: That is correct. | was born in Taiwan, but my father was an American serviceman, so that made me automatically a naturalised American citizen and, as a result, that is why I was able to get military dependent status, why | was able to work for the government. In terms of some of the difficulties behind my personal situation, why | appreciated the history of what | was looking at in terms of document destruction was because, as a military librarian, one of my primary responsibilities was document destruction. The reason why I appreciated history so much was that my mother was Asian, and Asians were classified for a long period of time as enemy aliens. You see, because they all looked alike, the Americans claimed that all Asian Pacific Islanders and mainlanders were enemy aliens. No Gls were allowed to marry them, so what happened was that all of the officers and servicemen who were trying to marry Asian women overseas ended up suing the US military. The Supreme Court of the United States overturned all of these women being enemy aliens. It overturned that uniform code of military justice as unconstitutional. At the same time, the Treaty of Peace with Japan was An Interview with Douglas Dietrich © 29 April 2012 by Thomas Kirschner Publisher of the German edition of NEXUS Magazine Website: http://www.douglasdietrich.com An Interview with Douglas Dietrich © 29 April 2012 by Thomas Kirschner Publisher of the German edition of NEXUS Magazine Website: http://www.douglasdietrich.com JUNE - JULY 2012 NEXUS ° II www.nexusmagazine.com