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The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet; Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, 2002.

The CIA book hardly deals with events inside Tibet under Chinese occupation, mainly because few of their trained Tibetans were ever inside Tibet. The CIA of this book are not the ham fisted bumbling folks of the current middle east. They are competent, most often decorated veterans of WWII. They know to consult experts like Heinrich Harrer (Seven Years in Tibet) and to employ noted Buddhist scholar Mongolian Geshe Wangal as interpreter, teacher, and translator. It was Wangal who helped develop a Tibetan phrase code book for use in coded radio transmissions.

Much technology was developed for this effort including long range high altitude airdrops and steerable parachutes pioneered by Missoula smoke jumpers who were recruited by the CIA for this effort.
Yet, in twenty years of efforts, their most notable success was the accidental ambush of one jeep carrying a Chinese commander with a satchel of documents. Most Tibetan trained agents were captured or killed upon entering Tibet.
This book is mostly a history of the ever changing geopolitical realities for the US, India, Pakistan, China, and the Soviet Union. Tibet and the trained Tibetan fighters somehow get lost and forgotten in these “bigger” realities including Indian Pakistan warfare and the Vietnam war. Two groups of fighters were trained and armed, one in India after the Chinese invasion in 1962 and the other in Nepal in the sub kingdom of Mustang near Pokhara and Annapurna.

The only serious fighting ever done by these Tibetans was their Indian sponsored use against Pakistan during the East Pakistan war of independence leading to the formation of Bangladesh. In this war, the Tibetans proved very able and successful fighters.
Still, the book is interesting reading, revealing little known details about the CIA involvement in South Asia. For instance; Nepal today boasts a number of successful Tibetan businesses including carpet manufacturing and hostel hotel operation. These business were made possible by CIA contributions as the Mustang Tibetan fighters were relocated and retrained.
The Dalai Lama appears occasionally in this book but the focus remains clearly on CIA activities.

Manchurian Adventure; Sylvain Mangeot 1974.

Manchurian Adventure is an incredible tale of a Chinese Manchurian soldier of fortune. Trained by the Japanese as a pilot and possessing uncommon skills with machinery and language, Lobsang Thondup (assumed name) moves from one impossible situation to the next in Siberia, Manchuria, China and Sinkiang, Tibet, and Bhutan. In Tibet he becomes the lover of Dhorji Paghmo, Tibet’s only woman “Living Buddha” and ranked third in the Buddhist hierarchy. When the Dalai Lama escapes to India in 1959, Lobsang also escapes to Bhutan where his engineering skills lead him into friendships with the King and the Prime Minister. Of course things go wrong and he ends up imprisoned in a jail of his own design.
In addition to being a great adventure read, this book gives a better idea of life in the area during this time of historic upheaval.

For more on the CIA’s history throughout the world see

Update June 21, 2013. In 2011 allegations of fabrication and misconduct were made against Mortenson and CAI. For a comprehensive summary of his book “Three Cups of Tea”, the 60 minutes expose, and Jon Krakauer’s findings see Wikipedia‘s entry.

David Oliver Relin’s book “Three Cups of Tea” documents the life and work of Pakistani school builder Greg Mortenson. Mortenson is the son of missionaries who grew up in Tanzania where his parents built a teaching hospital. Mortenson climbed Kilimanjaro when he was eleven and became hooked on climbing. He became a nurse in the San Francisco bay area to support his rock climbing living in his Buick.

Greg Mortenson and kids.

After rescuing a French climber during an attempt on K2, Mortenson got lost on his descent out of the mountains and ended up in the Balti village of Korphe not on his map. The village headman Haji Ali and his wife offered the hospitality of their own home while Mortenson recovered and Mortenson promised to build the village a school (emulating his parents and hero Sir Edmund Hillary).

Mortenson wrote an article about his K2 experience for a climbing journal where venture angel Jean Hoerni learned about Mortenson’s wish to build a school. Based on a single phone call (from a pay phone) Hoerni sent Mortenson a check (to a P.O. box) for $12,000. Mortenson bought materials for the school only to realize that the materials couldn’t be delivered to the village without a bridge. Mortenson met Hoerni at the annual Himalayan Association meeting where he was given another $10,000 for the bridge and $20,000 to live on so he could work full time on his school.

Hoerni died of Leukemia shortly after the school was finished leaving Mortenson $1,000,000 to build more schools.

When he had spent the money, Jon Krakauer “Into Thin Air” and “Under the Banner of Heaven” introduced Mortenson to the editor of Parade magazine who ran a cover story on Mortenson’s work. The article resulted in a deluge of letters and contributions, allowing Mortenson to continue building schools. To date Mortenson has built 55 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Along the way, he turned down a U.S. military offer of surreptitious funds. Mother Teresa would probably have accepted the money.

Mortenson seems to have an instinct for surrounding himself with able associates. He has defeated two fatwa’s from fundamental mullahs using the Shia legal system. The first ruling came from Qom in Iran praising Mortenson’s (the infidel) work including the education of girls. The second ruling from Pakistan nullified the Fatwa and ordered the mullah to pay for the material his thugs had destroyed when they attacked a school under construction.

Mortenson provided an important source of information via his extensive contacts in the mountains of Pakistan after the recent earthquake.
Greg Mortenson on the Pakistan Earthquake

Emperor of Japan, Meiji and His World 1852-1912, Donald Keene 2002

The most remarkable changes in the history of Japan occured during the sixty year reign of a single emperor, Meiji. Keene’s book tries to unveil the man Meiji about which little is known or has been written.

Meiji

Diplomat Makino Nobuaki said of Meiji:

The emperor had almost no private side to him. He also had no preferences. There was nothing to choose between his living quarters and those the the aristocracy. If anything, his were simpler. They merely served his needs. When he made a journey, it was never for pleasure but always for the sake of the country. He initiated public works but never because of his own tastes; everything was done because it was necessary for the nation. He did not give permission for public building to be erected unless they were needed to receive foreign visitors or for state business. He did not buy things because he wanted them but in order to encourage industry or protect art. He led almost no life apart from his work.

The London Times wrote:

He possessed a remarkable faculty of judging character, and where his confidence had once been given, occasion to recall it never occurred. He possessed also a rarer trait, absolute willingness that others should wear the laurels of success, for he asked of the nation nothing except that it should honour and trust the Throne’s servants, reserving to the Throne only the reverence form of prestige.

1889 Celebrating the new Constitution of Imperial Japan in Kyoto

The emporer’s name was chosen by casting the I Ching Oracle and deriving a reign name (nengo) from the resulting passage: “The sage, facing south, listens to the world; facing the light, he governs.” The name Meiji came to be interpreted as meaning “enlightened rule”. For the first time in Chinese or Japanese history the reign name Meiji applied to his entire life and was not changed at his death.

King Kalakaua of Hawaii was the first foreign monarch to visit Meiji. Next to Meiji at 5’4″, tall for a Japanese at the time, Kalakaua was a giant. Kalakaua was traveling to Japan unanounced until an American diplomat tipped off the royal court who pulled out all the stops to prepare a welcome worthy of a visiting monarch. For Japan it was a means of learning the practices of Western state visits and protocols. Kalakaua was overwhelmed by the magnitude and scale of his welcome. Kalakaua proposed that his niece Kaiulani, then only five and future Queen of Hawaii, be accepted as bride to Prince Sadamaro, who was later legally adopted by Meiji. Meiji turned Kalakaua down.

Just prior the the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, the annual lecture delivered before Meiji was a strangely prophetic reading from David Hume’s History of England describing the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the British. Japan destroyed the entire Russian naval fleet during the war.

President Theodore Roosevelt played a key role in the Russo-Japanese peace negotiations for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. The English wife of a Russian prisoner was unimpressed:

Peace as she is hammered out at the American Cronstadt! … Japan and Russia have not made peace – nor wanted it. Oh, no! That terrible American President, Il Strenuoso, he has made it. He wanted it, he would have it. And I believe him capable of locking the conferees in a room and starving them into obedience.

King Edward VII conferred the medieval Order of the Garter on Meiji. When Prince Arthur was buckling the garter below Meiji’s knee he pricked his finger getting blood on the garter. Meiji remained unperturbed and dignified throughout the presentation but once retired to his private chambers, he broke out laughing and asked “What am I supposed to do with such a thing?”

(via) Empress Huruko preferred western style clothing and developed her own style, influencing fashion throughout Japan.

Meiji was fated to be surrounded by enlightened and farsighted advisers including notably Iwakura Tomomi in Meiji’s early life and Ito Hirobumi in Meiji’s later life. He also benefited greatly from the presence of his longtime teacher Motoda Nagazane who taught Meiji to look to the East for moral and ethical guidance even while looking to the West for science, technology, modern universal education, and constitutional governance. Meiji was also greatly assisted in his lifetime duties by the extraordinary Empress Huruko (posthumously known as Shoken)

Meiji’s birth chart

Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” is a wild, epic journey into post independence India/Pakistan. The title refers to the 500 children born in the first hour of India’s independence. These children were endowed with special powers. The first born and main character has the psychic ability to communicate via telepathy with the others. We follow his Muslim family’s life through the big events of independent India. This novel is a history viewed through the imagination of a unique writing genius. If you haven’t cared for his other work including “Satanic Verses”, give this one a try.

Climbing peaks above 8000 Meters is a unique sport requiring a combination of luck and a natural ability to survive at these altitudes. Climbing skills are necessary but are secondary to these two characteristics. The recent explosion of interest in extreme sports as an ego enhancer is nowhere more misplaced than the attempts of amateurs with money to try to climb Everest and the other giants. This came home in a big way during the tragic climbing season in 1996 when several “guided” expeditions overstayed their summit efforts and were caught by a storm resulting in eight deaths including two of the expeditions leaders American Scott Fischer and New Zea lander Rob Hall. Accounts of this tragedy include Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer a writer who was a part of Fischer’s group. Another account of the tragedy is found in High Exposure by David F. Breashears.
Krakauer criticized two of Fischer’s guides for climbing without supplemental oxygen; Anatoli Boukreev and Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa. Boukreev was deeply hurt by the criticism and wrote his own book of the events The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston Dewalt. In reading these works, I became fascinated by Boukreev. Who was he and why was he such a remarkable climber. Boukreev was a Kazakh born near 8000 meter peaks which always attracted him. He trained hard and became a member of the Soviet climbing team just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Boukreev needed money and support to continue his climbing which ultimately led to his guiding expeditions. His extreme talent as a climber and his taciturn personality probably made him ill suited as a guide but he had little choice if he wanted to pursue his life’s passion. No one could climb with Boukreev. His specialty was speed climbing without oxygen. He still holds many climbing records including climbing two 8000 meter peaks in one day, and speed records for accents from base camp to summit for a number of peaks. On one legendary climb, he returned to his single tent camp on the descent only to find the tent occupied by another climber. Ever the gentleman, Boukreev, after drinking hot tea with the intruding climber, continued his descent to base camp. Between 1988 and 1997, Anatoli climbed eleven of the fourteen 8000 meter peaks without oxygen; four in a single ninety day period-establishing difficult technical routes as well as speed records. He died in an avalanche on Annapurna on Christmas day in 1997. His diaries were published in 2001 Above the Clouds: The Diaries of a High-Altitude Mountaineer by Anatoli Boukreev.
Also interesting and under appreciated are the many Sherpa mountain climbers starting with the legendary Tenzing Norgay Sherpa who first climbed Everest with Hillary. The ensuing widespread interest in mountain climbing has been a mixed blessing to the Sherpa who have been able to start schools and train generations of mountain climbers and guides. A special account of the Sherpa is found in Tenzing Norgay and the Sherpas of Everest by Tenzing, Tashi (Norgay’s grandson).