Events quickly caught up with State Department 649 as before the year was
out this early 1949 release was already out of date as the Chinese Communists
kicked out the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-Shek and exiled him to
Formosa. Almost like poor William Lundigan died for nothing.
Oddly enough Lundigan is just the kind of man that the Foreign Service had on its China desk. Like Lundigan many were brought up in the Far East, like Lundigan they may well be the children of missionaries. Unlike Lundigan they reported back that the Kuomintang government stank from the Shantung peninsula to the Tibet border and we'd better cut our losses. The kind that Joe McCarthy branded as traitors because they told uncomfortable truths.
Lundigan is a Marine Corps veteran of the late World War who goes into the Foreign Service and given his background is sent to China and later specifically to Inner Mongolia. Has to be Inner Mongolia because Mongolia itself had gone Communist post World War I and was a Soviet Union protectorate at the time.
In any event there is 'bandit' activity a euphemism for the Communists. Chiang himself referred to Mao's bunch as such many times. A local leader thought dead is very much alive. Richard Loo and Philip Ahn who got plenty of work during the second World War playing cruel Japanese now play Communists.
Also in the film is Virginia Bruce who went to Foreign Service school and training with Lundigan and they get reunited in China. But things never really get kindled as the relationship is kind of stillborn.
If the message of State Department 649 is that we've got to back up our ally Chiang Kai-Shek it sure was wasted here. Not even Secretary of State Dean Acheson wanted to do that and he got flayed but good by the rightwing of the GOP.
This rather earnest but sad tribute to our Foreign Service in the State Department is properly left in the dustbin of history.
Oddly enough Lundigan is just the kind of man that the Foreign Service had on its China desk. Like Lundigan many were brought up in the Far East, like Lundigan they may well be the children of missionaries. Unlike Lundigan they reported back that the Kuomintang government stank from the Shantung peninsula to the Tibet border and we'd better cut our losses. The kind that Joe McCarthy branded as traitors because they told uncomfortable truths.
Lundigan is a Marine Corps veteran of the late World War who goes into the Foreign Service and given his background is sent to China and later specifically to Inner Mongolia. Has to be Inner Mongolia because Mongolia itself had gone Communist post World War I and was a Soviet Union protectorate at the time.
In any event there is 'bandit' activity a euphemism for the Communists. Chiang himself referred to Mao's bunch as such many times. A local leader thought dead is very much alive. Richard Loo and Philip Ahn who got plenty of work during the second World War playing cruel Japanese now play Communists.
Also in the film is Virginia Bruce who went to Foreign Service school and training with Lundigan and they get reunited in China. But things never really get kindled as the relationship is kind of stillborn.
If the message of State Department 649 is that we've got to back up our ally Chiang Kai-Shek it sure was wasted here. Not even Secretary of State Dean Acheson wanted to do that and he got flayed but good by the rightwing of the GOP.
This rather earnest but sad tribute to our Foreign Service in the State Department is properly left in the dustbin of history.