An American Childhood in 1950s Revolutionary China (429)

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1:06Bill Hodes:We're not going back to the US. We're not going back to England. We're going to China to live sort of more or less forever. This is Cold War Conversations. If you're new here, you've come to the right place to listen to Cold War history. Please make sure you follow us in your podcast app so you don't miss future episodes. Bill Hodes was a red diaper baby, a baby born to communist parents in the United States. He shares stories about his parents, Bob and Jane Hodes, both convinced communists who were active in civil rights movements during the McCarthy period. He recounts their life in New Orleans, his father's groundbreaking research in neurophysiology, and the family's eventual move to China amidst political turmoil.

1:55Moyle. Discover how Bill navigated this unique upbringing filled with significant historical events and the cultural experiences in China that shaped his identity. I'm delighted to welcome Bill Hodes to our Cold War conversation.

2:11Bill Hodes:The reason this is a Cold War story is because of my parents, Bob Hodes and Jane Hodes, who both graduated from college in 1940. My mom graduated college at Radcliffe College and my dad got his PhD at Harvard, which is where they met. But the reason that turns into a Cold War story is that they were both certainly by that time communists and And, you know, very active in that. I was what we call, and my two siblings, brother and sister, were what we call red diaper babies. I was born in Philadelphia, December of 1943. And my sister Nancy was born in 1946. And then a couple of years after that, we moved to New Orleans because my dad, who was a young up and coming neurophysiologist, got a job teaching at Tulane University.

3:19Bill Hodes:So we moved to New Orleans in 47 or 48. And the third Hodes child, Peter Hodes, was born in 1950 in New Orleans. My dad was a working class kid from Atlantic City. His dad worked for the municipal bus company and eventually was fired for only giving the company half of the receipts and keeping the other half himself. and my grandmother on that side, she ran a rooming house there. My mother was quite the opposite. Jane Sachs was the daughter of Walter Sachs of the famous Goldman Sachs. So she grew up in a big-time, you know, capitalist investment banker household. Her mother, Emonie Sachs, was quite well known.

4:16Bill Hodes:She came from rural Kentucky, from Bowling Green, Kentucky, but had moved to New York and was sort of very advanced for her as a woman in those days. She wrote stories and novels, and she became a fairly prominent painter. She did flowers and and other, you know, those kinds of studies and had shows and so on in New York. And just since we're getting into, you know, how we got to the Red Scare, the McCarthy period and so on. So you have this working class guy, my dad, who grew up, you know, in working class, But all of his siblings became mega powerful scientists and intellectuals of various kinds.

5:12Bill Hodes:He marries this Jane Sax, Walter Sax's daughter. But it's and of course, there's going to be a divergence here as they turn into communists and he doesn't. But one little footnote to history that's not well known is that that same Walter Sachs was in 1904 or 5, I think, right after he graduated college or maybe a little later, he was one of the founders of the NAACP at the time. He was a classmate of Franklin Roosevelt's and was sort of a young man on the make there. What does the NWACP stand for? Oh, NAACP, I'm sorry, for the non-American, that's the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which was originally sort of the mainline civil rights group in the 1940s and 50s before the modern civil rights movement got started in the U.S.

6:19But, you know, all of that leads into where the Cold War story is going to start.

6:26Bill Hodes:We are ensconced in New Orleans. My dad is a young, very up-and-coming researcher in neurophysiology. And the reason he had a joint appointment at the medical school is that he had paired up with a psychiatrist and the two of them were doing some of the earliest work on sleep. My dad was doing the neurophysiology part and literally sticking electrodes into people's brains, starting with cats, but also finding out what's going on when you're sleeping, when you're dreaming, what's firing up. I mean, this was the early 1950s, and most people, that science was just beginning. But since this was getting to the early 1950s, the McCarthy period was starting up.

7:32McCarthyism was a political practice defined by political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of communist and Soviet influence in US institutions and of Soviet espionage. It was very prevalent in the late 1940s through to the 1950s.

7:52Bill Hodes:and my dad in addition to being a leading young scientist was active in the uh communist party usa as was my mom she she worked at a local radio station doing advertising and other kinds of But they were involved in some of the early, the beginnings of civil rights activities in New Orleans. My dad caused a big stir when he invited some physicians. There was a very famous all-black medical school called Meharry. I think it's in Mississippi. But anyway, they came over to New Orleans for a conference. Of course, they couldn't go or they couldn't all attend the same conferences, but they met with other scientists and physicians in New Orleans.

8:51Bill Hodes:And then they went out for dinner and they just waltzed right into one of the most famous restaurants in New Orleans that people who visited New Orleans would know, which is Arno's. and they just, it was segregated obviously in 1952, 51 or 52, and they just walked in and they just integrated the damn place and that caused a lot of controversy. You know, New Orleans was a little different from a lot of other places in the South, but it still was the South. And so that plus all sorts of things that my dad would say or meetings that they would have at our house about opposition to the Korean War or there was a petition.

9:43Bill Hodes:is called the Genocide Petition. Again, an early, early civil rights activity in which basically there was a petition, I believe, to the UN claiming that the UN ought to look into the situation in the American South of blacks, that it was a form of genocide. And this is not too long after World War II. So it was very controversial. And so long and short of that is that for all of those things, just sort of, you know, doing great science, but also, you know, not being at all shy and very outspoken about his other interests, his political. very definitely left-wing interests. He came to the attention of whatever version of the McCarthy activities were going on at the state level as well as at the federal level in the U.S.

10:49Bill Hodes:And so in 19, I think it was 52, he was sort of brought up on charges, I guess is what you would call it, in the department. And it was a little bit of a Kafkaesque kind of thing. Part of the friction was just relations with lab technicians, you know, that my dad would dress people down, which is probably I'm sure was true. He was a very, you know, very driven scientific researcher, didn't want things done his way and so on. But part of the charges against him was that he was causing friction by, I guess in today's life, we would say getting in people's faces about his political, such as the causing a stir by integrating Arnaud's and those kinds of things.

11:53Bill Hodes:So he was, I'm pretty sure it was 52. They said, we're not firing you. We're just assigning you to no duties because he's paid his whole salary for the next year. But he's, you know, early 30s. He's, you know, a rising bench scientist and he's locked out of his laboratory. He can't do his work. He can't publish papers. and so again in a sort of Kafka-esque kind of thing he demanded a hearing and said well why are you firing me and they said oh no no no we're not firing you we're just you know assigning you you know you know to no duties and so on and so that took place I guess in end of 1952 maybe into 1953 and he was represented by and this will turn into some of the tail end of the story he was represented by a young sort of populist very local very southern uh lawyer who was just a few years out of law school who had been a young prosecutor he this guy ben smith had his own later had his own private firm where he had the very small firm, where he had the first woman partner in New Orleans and the first black partner in any law firm in New Orleans.

13:29Bill Hodes:This was many years later. So he defended my dad at these university hearings. and you could sort of tell reading when I later became a lawyer, which is also part of the story, and I read the transcript many, many years later, and it was clear that my dad sort of wanted in part to make it a sort of a reverse political trial, claiming that the only reason that he was being disciplined was for his political views. And at the same time, and this lawyer, Ben Smith, was putting on that kind of evidence. So what do you mean friction? Oh, you mean friction because he stood up for civil rights or what was the friction?

14:24Bill Hodes:But anyway, in the end, the university sustained the charges. my dad tried to get other employment in other universities. I think he had an interview in Arizona or Arizona State somewhere. But basically, this is now the heart, the depths of the McCarthy period really could, with his specialized practice area, research area, really couldn't get a job anywhere. And so we ended up in the summer of 53, very hush-hush, but we left as if for a vacation in the south of France, but actually to move temporarily, as it turned out, to England, where my dad continued his research for a year or so. Did you see much of your grandparents on your mother's side?

15:30Bill Hodes:Some, but not much. But by then, my grandparents had had long since divorced. My my my grandfather was quite estranged, not 100 percent, but but very much. You know, the big capitalist doesn't like his his daughter marrying a working class Jew and then becoming communists. But my grandmother on my mother's side, and I didn't know my paternal grandparents at all, Emmy still lived in New York City on the Upper East Side. She was young enough. She was still painting. She was also giving lessons. And so I would see her, and in fact, just a tiny little connection. My best friend in high school, when we were in New York City, when we came back from China, which I'll get to, I got us only so far as to England, but we're on our way to China.

16:38Bill Hodes:When we came back, my best friend in high school, his father was a very prominent artist, joe solman and joe was was taking was actually taking lessons from emony and so my high school chum and i paul solman and i would actually go visit emony and she would take us out to lunch and stuff like that but we didn't have any you know sort of childhood much much connection really at all. What was home life like in New Orleans? Was your father bringing personalities back to home? If there was some kind of a meeting, Paul Robeson, I think, came and gave a concert and he sort of stopped by for breakfast or maybe there was a reception for him at our house.

17:36Bill Hodes:And Linus Pauling, who was the famous chemist and also lefty guy, probably not sure whether he was communist, but he was definitely, you know, good enough for the McCarthy period. He was involved in the, in peace, Stockholm peace petition and so on. So there was always just, just a lot of political activity, a lot of, you know, breakfast table conversation about politics, even when we were, you know, pretty young and people coming and going. Probably not at that point the Communist Party leadership, although that'll be part of my story later, but just in and out there, there were always people like that coming and going.

18:26Bill Hodes:And it was very much an overtly left-wing upbringing for sure. So you're now in England. Presumably you go to school in England. What What was that like for you? Well, at that point, it was like, you know, any young American whose parents are diplomats or scientists or whatever. I didn't fully know. I knew that there had been the trouble at Tulane. I thought we were there, you know, sort of, you know, as if my dad was a visiting professor. And so it was sort of in that sense, it was fairly normal. I played soccer or British football instead of American football as a kid. So I was at one point I was at just the regular local, you call it grammar school, I think.

19:30Bill Hodes:but then for the for the last quarter i was at a it was called the north oxford preparatory school and i take it that is like where the cofs in britain would you know send their kids on their way to wherever they were going to go sort of the the equivalent of of choate and those for U.S. people. And it was certainly, you know, interested in being in England and learning to be a devotee of Gilbert and Sullivan and going to theater. And I was getting a little older so I could appreciate theater and some of the other cultural things in Britain. But it was fairly fleeting and what was not nearly as formative as the next five years that were to come in China.

20:23Absolutely. So when did your parents tell you that you were moving to China?

20:30Bill Hodes:I think we learned when we were on vacation in the south of France that we were going to go to England, not go back to New Orleans. And then when we were in England, we sort of weren't sure exactly how long we were going to be in England since we were obviously spending a whole school year, not back in our old school in New Orleans. And during that time, it's very clear that my, in retrospect, that my parents were looking to emigrate, you know, to escape McCarthyism because they didn't think my dad would ever be able to get back. Well, we didn't know how long it was going to last. And so because he had being a physiologist and having grown up, you know, in the as Pavlov and the other Russian scientists, he had a affinity for the Russian scientific community.

21:33Bill Hodes:And he wanted to move and really sort of continue his career in the Soviet Union. chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month each lasting four hours or more can make me feel like a spectator in my own life botox on a botulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine it's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month it's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment prescription botox is injected by your doctor effects of botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing speaking breathing eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition.

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23:37Bill Hodes:Oh, and by the way, that was one of the things that was raised against him back in New Orleans. They said, you know, you're a physiologist, you're teaching students, but you're always pushing this Russian Pavlov guy, you know, namely Nobel Science Prize winner Pavlov. But they were definitely thinking of, and we kids knew nothing about this, So they would go to the Soviet embassy and they would, you know, talking about what it would take. And I much later learned that the Russians said, yes, you know, we'd love to have you. My dad had, he had translated not Pavlov, but another Russian physiologist book, Bikov, into English.

24:23Bill Hodes:You know, we'd love to have you. But they had a condition, I don't know whether it was for scientists generally or everybody they did in those days, that in order to go, we would have to renounce U.S. citizenship. So it was the 1950s. And I don't know whether take up, I guess that would mean, yeah, become Soviet citizens or not. And I don't know whether my dad would have gone for that, but my mother definitely did not. And there may have been some friction between them on that. But in any event, at the same time, they were also talking to people in the Chinese embassy and China. And remember, this is 1954, early part, end of 53, early 54.

25:18Bill Hodes:China was only not even five years after the 1949 revolution. They were eagerly seeking out, you know, any kind of expert help they could get in the sciences and all sorts of areas. They had had a big brain drain because of all the years of war and, you know, including, you know, the Japanese war and then the internal civil war and so on. And so they invited my dad and family without any kind of strings. And so that's what was accepted. and again still unbeknownst to the kids and so at let's see it was after the summer of 1954 we went on the five of us two parents and the three kids went on another vacation to Switzerland.

26:25Bill Hodes:And we went to Zurich, which is in the German part rather than the French part. And I thought I was old enough to say, well, that's a little odd. You know, we all spoke a little bit, a fair amount of French. Why would we go to Zurich? And it was, I think when we got to Zurich, that our parents told maybe first me and maybe not even my two younger siblings right away. No, we're not going back to England. We're not going back to the U.S. We're not going back to England. We're going to China to live sort of more or less forever, as far as we knew. and yeah that was the first I learned of it and I remember my just you know lickety split my first reaction was oh but I don't like rice but but anyway there we were on our way and we we traveled to Beijing, through Zurich, through Prague, and we're there just for a couple of days, Prague and Czechoslovakia, then through Moscow, we're there for a few days.

27:45Bill Hodes:And then, of course, in those days, they didn't have 747s or whatever air flight was flying that could go from Moscow to Beijing in one shot. We actually, in effect, took a commuter flight from Moscow to someplace to someplace to Irkutsk. We had one stop in Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia and then on to Beijing. It took us about, oh, maybe a day and a half to fly stop by stop by stop. And so we end up in Beijing in more or less October. Let's call it October 1st, 1954, which would have been the fifth anniversary of the 49 revolution. And what were your first impressions of China? Yeah. It's hard now to separate first impressions from, you know, spending five years and then going back a few times.

28:53Bill Hodes:But it was, you know, very new, very few cars on the streets, hundreds of thousands of bicycles everywhere. You know, there were traffic jams of bicycles. There were no skyscrapers, certainly. But even apart, you know, there were no apartment buildings higher than maybe three stories, maybe maybe four. But I I'm not sure that does it justice because mainly it was just the newness. Here we are. You know, we don't speak. We don't speak the language. We don't we're we're young kids. And my my my brother was only four and a half when when we got there. um and my sister was and i was only just about to turn 11 so you know so we were really we were really very young and so what happened the the what what we did is they they they got us i think we spent the first month or two in a an old style western hotel um and they they decided to since we We were all so young and even I, as the oldest, was only 11.

30:14Bill Hodes:They decided since, you know, as far as we knew, we were going to become. We're still probably going to be Americans, but we were going to be, you know, long term Chinese people living there. We would learn Chinese immediately through the immersion method. So I went to a not far away from where we were to a grade school. I think I started in the fifth grade. And I just sat in class in the regular thing doing, you know, the kids were doing beginnings of algebra, whatever you do in fifth grade and Chinese history. And of course, the Chinese kids had to learn how to read and write Chinese, which is not as easy as reading and writing English.

31:08And I just sat there and just took it all in and I would play basketball or ping pong on the playground during breaks.

31:18Bill Hodes:I just sat there and sat there. We did have a little bit of Chinese tutoring at home. and then I just repeated I repeated fifth grade and by the time the end of fifth grade came around and I went into sixth grade I was completely fluent in Chinese speaking and I was reading and writing okay because my peers who were also 11 and 12 and just learning to read and write Chinese were basically, you know, I was close enough. And then I went on into high school, uh, to junior high, first three years of junior high before we went home in 59, which I'll, which I'll get to. And yeah, I remember absolutely clearly, it must've been towards the end of my first go at fifth grade the teacher was teaching us fractions and um he somehow he got to eighths you know one eighths and and so he asked the class well how many are there in one and somebody said three and then And he got around and then he asked the class, how many eighths are there in one?

32:43Bill Hodes:And I raised my hand. And I said, you know, the first time I had ever said anything out loud, I guess. And he just, you know, he said, wow, you know, Bill Holtz is going to, you know, the American kid is going to answer. And I definitely wasn't going to answer in English because there was nobody in there that spoke English. He said, how many eighths are there in a whole? and I raised my hand and he smiled and he called me and I said, there are eight. And he just beamed left and right. And I remember I was so proud that I answered, yeah, there are eight eighths in one. But I said it in Chinese and that was pretty cool.

33:25That's a brilliant story. Brilliant. What sort of accommodation were you put in?

33:30Bill Hodes:Yeah, that was very interesting And after we were for a while in this hotel, it's called the Peace Hotel. And I think it was an old American style hotel that, you know, they had taken over and they put up a lot of foreigners there, including, by the way, a lot of Russians. I mean, most of the foreigners in China in 1954 were Russians who were who were helping with science and engineering and agriculture. And, you know, this was long before the Sino-Soviet split in the late 1950s. But they found a little, I don't know who had lived there before, during the imperial period, but it was in the eastern part of the city, straight east from Tiananmen Square, in a little courtyard, in a little compound, which was not unusual.