Upton Close

Upton Close

Upton Close at his home office

Josef Washington Hall (27 February 1894 – 13 November 1960), better known by the pen name of Upton Close, was an American journalist, author, columnist for the Hearst newspapers and radio commentator.

Biography

He was born at Kelso, Washington. His father was a New Englander who moved out west and became involved in the mining business. His mother was from a French family that settled in Portland, Oregon and had relatives who were geologists, archeologists and Arctic explorers. Hall went to school in Walla Walla, Washington, supporting himself by selling books in Montana, Wyoming and Washington during the summers. He later attended George Washington University, specializing in theology.

He went to the Qing Empire as a Seventh-day Adventist missionary, later becoming a spy and news correspondent. He acted as editor of the Peking Gazette. During the First World War he worked with the American diplomatic service at Shantung in the Republic of China, gathering intelligence on German and Japanese interests. During this time he was put in charge as reporter of political news from the war theater: he would end them with the words “up close” indicating to his editors his eyewitness presences at the front. Due to a misunderstanding, "up close" was rewritten as Upton Close, becoming his nom de guerre, which would stay with him for his entire career.

He acted as adviser to Chinese students during the revolution of 1919 and later as chief of foreign affairs under the dictatorship of Wu Peifu. During the Manchurian invasion he acted as an observer for the League of Nations. He was still in China at the time of the Gansu earthquake and helped in the rescue work following the disaster and the famine that resulted from it.

Close published The Revolt of Asia: The End of the White Man's World Dominance (1927), in which he described a passing era of empire by conquest and an emerging era of empire by attraction, service, and business.

In 1935, after the publication of his book Challenge: Behind the Face of Japan, Close was refused permission to enter the Empire of Japan. The circulation of the book was also banned by the Tokyo Foreign Office. On October 1937, he lectured at the Brooklyn Jewish Center on the subject "Japan, China and the White Man."

In 1942 NBC gave him a Sunday afternoon spot sponsored by the Sheaffer Pen Corporation, where he became more outspoken in his attacks on the Roosevelt administration, labor unions, the Soviet Union and Great Britain. In December 1944, his sponsor and the network dropped him, thanks in part to the pressure campaign of CIO-PAC. He then began broadcasting on the Mutual Radio Network, which had a number of political commentators representing a broad ideological spectrum. In 1946, Leon Milton Birkhead's Friends of Democracy led another campaign against him.

In July 1945 Close and Merwin K. Hart formed the American Action Committee in Chicago. The group was later renamed American Action, Inc.

His attacks on Bishop Bernard J. Sheil of Chicago, a supporter of labor unions and founder of the Catholic Youth Organization, played a big part in his eventually being dropped by Mutual. By then a number of radio stations, particularly on the East Coast, had dropped him after continued pressure from groups such ICCASP and Jewish organizations.

In 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy sent an apology letter to David Rabinovitz and other Jewish leaders in reply to sharp criticism for having inserted in the Congressional Record an article by Upton Close. The article criticized two prominent Jews, Felix Frankfurter and Harold Laski, for their influence on State Department personnel. In 1953, Close published the pamphlet The Commentators' Story, in which he blamed the Anti-Defamation League, Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson, for the 1944 Sedition Trial. He also claimed to be victim of Zionist-directed character assassination because of his pro-American, anti-communist views.

He contributed to Saturday Review, Reader's Digest, The Nation, Cosmopolitan, The New York Times Magazine and The American Mercury among other periodicals.

After living in Palm Beach, Florida, he retired to Mexico. In 1960, Upton Close died in an auto collision with a train near Guadalajara.

See also

• Fulton Lewis Jr.
• Henry J. Taylor

Works

• An Outline History of China (1926; with Herbert Henry Gowen)
• Moonlady (1927)
• The Revolt of Asia: The End of the White Man's World Dominance (1927)
• In the Land of the Laughing Buddha: The Adventures of an American Barbarian in China (1928)
• Eminent Asians: Six Great Personalities of the Near East (1929)
• Challenge: Behind the Face of Japan (1934)
• The Ladder of History: A World History (1945)

Selected articles

• "The Mandarin Psychology," Millard's Review of the Far East, Vol. XV, No. 6 (1921)
• "Would China Profit by a Japanese-American War?," Millard's Review of the Far East, Vol. XV, No. 11 (1921)
• "The Chinese Bankers Assert Themselves," Millard's Review of the Far East, Vol. XV, No. 12 (1921)
• "Wu Pei-Fu, a Chinese with One Idea," The Outlook, Vol. CXXXII (1922)
• "'Where the Mountains Walked'," The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 5 (1922)
• "A Key to Prosperity," The Outlook, Vol. CXL, No. 11 (1925)
• "Newspapermen and the Pacific Asian Crisis," The Quill, Vol. XX, No. 6 (1932)
• "The Opposition in Japan," The Nation, Vol. CXXXIV, No. 3476 (1932)

References

• Allen Jr, Charles R.; Arthur J. Dlugoff (1953). "McCarthy and Anti-Semitism," Jewish Currents, Vol. VII, No. 9, pp. 4–16.
• Carlson, John Roy (1946). The Plotters. New York: E. P. Dutton.
• Cogley, John; Merle Miller (1971). Blacklisting: Two Key Documents. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times.
• Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth A. (2006). Waves of Opposition: Labor and the Struggle for Democratic Radio. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
• Forster, Arnold (1950). A Measure of Freedom: An Anti-Defamation League Report. Garden city, N.Y.: Doubleday.
• Forster, Arnold (1952). The Trouble-makers: An Anti-defamation League Report. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
• Lewis, Walter K. (1946). "Closing In On Upton Close," The New Leader, Vol. XXIX, No. 37, p. 5.
• Pierrot, George F. (1929). "Historian or Side Show Barker?," The Quill, Vol. XVII, No. 1, pp. 3–5.

External links

• Works by Upton Close at Unz.com
• Works by Upton Close at Hathi Trust
• Works by Upton Close at Internet Archive