ORAL HISTORY PROJECT OF THE MARIN COUNTY FREE LIBRARY Anne T. Kent California Room Original recording available at the Anne T. Kent California Room © All materials copyright Marin County Free Library. Transcript made available for research purposes only. All rights are reserved to the Marin County Free Library. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the: Anne T. Kent California Room Marin County Free Library 3501 Civic Center Dr. #427 San Rafael, California, 94903

INTERVIEW WITH JAMES D. ADAMS
by Carla Ehat & Genevieve Martinelli (GM)
March 16, 1982

INTERVIEWEE: James D. Adams (JA)
INTERVIEWERS: Carla Ehat (CE) and Genevieve Martinelli (GM)
ALSO PRESENT: Kay Adams (KA)
DATE OF INTERVIEW: March 16, 1982


CE: Tuesday, March 16, 1982. Continuing the Oral History project of the Moya Library for the new Anne Thompson Kent California Room, this is Carla Ehat, and joining me today is Mrs. Jordan Martinelli. We have the pleasure of being down along the Corte Madera Creek this morning at the residence of James D. Adams and he resides at 635 South Eliseo Drive in Greenbrae. It’s a beautiful morning. We’ve had rain and the clouds are in the sky, and we are looking over toward Mount Tam and this is a beautiful setting. James Adams has been a resident of Marin County since 1932: fifty years. He is a prominent lawyer and he has been involved in many community activities of Marin. I’ll just name a few. He’s been associated with the American Legion Post, The Ross Post; for many years he has been active and president of the Boys Scouts, Marin Council; he’s been a member and president of the Meadow Club. He was a chairman on the Committee of Fourteen to save the trains and ferries all before World War II. He was a vestryman and warden at the St. John’s Episcopal Church. He’s been a trustee of the Katherine Branson School, member of many worthwhile organizations including the Navy League, the Marin County Historical Society, the Marin Conservation League, etc. One of the pleasures I had in my initial friendship with Jim Adams was I was in the Heritage Committee with Gladys Smith and Mrs. Kent during the bi-centennial year. And at that time we used to meet monthly and Jim was working very hard in collecting early stories and reminiscences of Marin families to publish in a book, which he was successful in doing, called Old Marin With Love, and he was our bi-centennial editor. Well good morning Jim, it is a pleasure to meet with you today.

JA: Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here.

CE: Well I have written a little chronological history of your life that I think we’ll go over first. This will be of interest to your children and grandchildren and to hear it in your voice I think will be important. Then we will follow later on with your activities in Marin County and then your career in law. Now, you were born where?

JA: I was born in Lawrence, Kansas, April 6, 1894.

CE : Now I want you to tell us a little bit about your paternal line and your maternal line. You were the son of –

JA: My father was Ephraim Douglas Adams who was a professor of history and head of History Department at Stanford. Previously he had been a professor at Kansas University at Lawrence, Kansas. My mother was the daughter of William Welling Breakey who was a physician at Ann Arbor, Michigan and a member of the medical department at the university there. My mother’s name was May Stephens Breakey.

CE: Now the paternal line was from where?

JA: Paternal line was from 1628, identified as the first arrival in Massachusetts Bay Colony. We’ve not been able to locate our precedent ancestor in England, so we begin there and those were New England Adamses. We have all the generations down through the time when my ancestors moved to New Ipswich, New Hampshire, which they did in the 1700s, about 1748 I think. My great-grandfather was Isaac and his father, Ephraim Junior, was in the Revolutionary War, as was his father, Ephraim Senior. Both of them served in the Revolutionary War. My grandfather, Ephraim Adams, was a member of the Iowa Band, which came from Andover Theological Seminary to Iowa as a group of congregational ministers and were very influential in the establishment of that state as a free state in the United States.

CE: You have a great deal of genealogical research, I presume.

JA: Yes, my cousin and I have both tried to find our ancestors.

CE: Now, your maternal line, you said earlier, descended from Ann Arbor, Michigan?

JA: Yes. My grandfather was born in Bethel, New York. His father was an immigrant from Ireland, so they were French Huguenot origin, having come to Ireland when the Edict of Nantes was revoked.

CE: This grandfather, was he a physician?

JA: Yes. He was a -- He served, as I told you, in the Civil War as a physician and he was present at the Battle of Gettysburg, where he was wounded and carried the wound for the rest of his life.

CE: Well now, this is all on record. I’m sure that you have, if not published, written up for your children and grandchildren. But I’d like you to tell in your own words what brought your family to California.

JA: My father was offered an opportunity to teach here. He was a member of what was called The Kansas Push, which is the second group of professors that came to Stanford. The first group were known as the Cornell Push. You know, Doctor Jordan, the first president, was a Cornell graduate, so his original faculty was a -- largely from Cornell and secondly from Kansas, along with my father, Vernon Kellogg came on, Professor Caruth. There were several of them.

CE: Was your father a professor of American History? European History?

JA: He was European History when he came to Stanford, and then when he became head of the department he became Professor of American History.

CE: Where did the family live? You were a boy of about six?

JA: Eight.

CE: Eight years old.

JA: Yes.

CE: Did you live on campus?

JA: Yes. We lived on campus on Alvarado Row, right by the --

CE: What a beautiful place to grow up.

JA: Yes it was a nice place to grow up.

CE: And now, your mother died quite young, didn’t she?

JA: Mother died in 1916, yes. She’d been more or less an invalid for many years.

CE: All right. I understand there was a little -- During your early life while your mother was still alive, you talk about a trip that you took to Europe. Would you tell us about that? It fits in chronologically.

JA: Yes. That was 1908, January I think. My father went to London on a sabbatical to do research work and Mother went along and they took me. We lived in London on Russell Square, I think it was, one of those British residential hotel places where the rooms were cold and were fired with coal fires, and where you blew one whistle for a four-wheeler, two for a hansom, and three for a taxicab.

CE: Well now you were a fourteen year-old boy.

JA: Yes, I was fourteen, yes.

CE: Were you terribly exited over this whole adventure?

JA: Oh, I had a lot of fun. I spent most of my time walking the streets of London or traveling in the buses, just sightseeing. I have a collection of postcards that represented what I saw. I went to some theaters with my father and mother. I remember we went to see Charlie’s Aunt. Charlie’s Aunt, yes, among other things.

CE: Did you cross by a steamer that was --

JA: Yes we went over on the St. Paul and it was in a typical Atlantic storm in January and everybody was locked in their cabins for three days; very intriguing.

CE: All right, now getting back to Stanford, where did you go to school?

JA: Oh, I was going to tell you one other thing I remember about London that I forgot to mention. Most of the things I saw there was a parade where Edward VII was sitting in an open barouche with his German cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II and all the people of London were standing in the streets watching the parade go by.

CE: Fascinating. You’ve seen a great period of time because of your age. You’ve seen so much of the living figures of state, haven’t you?

JA: Yes, in an ancestral sense, my Uncle Will was a Major in Sherman’s army, you see, and the ancestry I lived with and knew were GAR people, Grand Army of the Republic, and that meant Civil War times. And they carried those feelings.

CE: With your love of history it’s surprising you didn’t follow that as a career. Had that thought ever occurred to you?

JA: No it hadn’t too much because I got into college and liked the law work. And my father thought I could teach and I thought I would rather practice first before I became a teacher and then I never got into teaching.

CE: Well you went to school, I presume, in Palo Alto?

JA: Went to grammar school on the campus and Palo Alto High School and then to Stanford and graduated there in 1915.

CE: I understand you were a Phi Beta Kappa?

JA: That’s right.

CE: How did you like fraternity life?

JA: I enjoyed it. I was a member of Delta Chi Fraternity. In those days the freshmen got “tubbed.” It was part of the routine.

CE: When you visit Stanford, as you have over the years since you graduated, you have seen terrible changes, some good some not so good. You have seen dramatic changes.

JA: I’ve seen dramatic changes, oh yes. Oh, enormously so.

CE: Does this always happen in life? You look back and things do change and you can’t do a thing about it. How do you feel about change?

JA: I would say I’m constantly surprised by what’s happening that I hadn’t dreamed of. It’s happened, things that you really hadn’t anticipated.

CE: Well when you think of all the universities went through that period, that decade of dissent, and --

JA: Well that’s characteristic of American democracy. And people came home from Word War II with a strong anti-war feeling; it was basic to that approach.

CE: I was thinking, driving over here, in the two hundred years that we have been a democracy, there have been about ten wars we have been involved in and that averages out to about one every twenty years.

JA: Yes. And relative to the rest of the world we have had less of it. I mean by that --

CE: What in your judgment was so special about Stanford?

JA: Oh I grew up there. I was a member of the institution to give you --

CE: That an advantage of course and an insight.

JA: Yes, I lived there. When I came back after World War I, as did a lot of other fellows, and came back to the university, what we discovered was that our home was inhabited by strangers. The junior members, the youth of the college boys at that time, impressed us very much because we had been through the war and were mature. A university is like that; it’s an ongoing institution for young people and so it’s different from most homes because its inhabitants change over the four years totally, except of course the professors.

CE: Very interesting. Now what else did you do when you were at Stanford? I understand you did get involved in some extracurricular activities.

JA: Yes I was in the Debating Society, president of Nastoria, and I was on the Stanford soccer team, which through my period of time had never been beaten by California; we always won. This was what we were there for.

CE: Did you ever think then that soccer would be as popular worldwide as it is today? Even on channel 9, an educational television program.

JA: Well I knew then that it was the universal European football game as it was, but we didn’t have it that way in this country. Of course, in my time at Stanford we played rugby, which changed shortly after I left back to the American game. I ran in the annual marathon. I was about the slowest quarter miler on the team. The marathon is an annual event when the four classes run against each other an I think we had to have enough runners of the quarter miles to make the marathon distance of twenty six miles, so that’s a lot of them you see.

CE: Well you left part of your heart down the peninsula then. Your formative years were spent there.

JA: Oh yes.

CE: Do you look upon it as home? In a degree?

JA: I belong there in that sense, yes, that’s right. Really, that’s true. At the same time, I have a feeling that Marin and San Francisco are places where I belong too.

CE: There’s a certain parallel here, I think, to, between love: you can love many things for different reasons and for different degrees and they don’t take one from the other.

JA: Yes, and for that matter some of your most affectionate relationships are entirely unrelated to place.

CE: That’s true. All right, after graduation did you get a job?

JA: Yes. After I graduated from the University I stayed out for a year. I worked on the Nacoma property north of –

CE: The gold dredging?

JA: That was the gold dredging operation. But I wasn’t working on the dredger. I was working on a surveying job which they were doing to pay off the State of California for their dredging privilege and they were surveying a large area just north of Sacramento, and I was progressively a rear rodman and a rear chainman.

CE: When you say a chainman, what does that mean to a layperson?

JA: A chain is one hundred or three hundred feet of tape, and if you are a good chainman you can throw it into a figure eight, and that’s how it’s carried.

CE: I never knew that.

JA: Yes. You wrap -- When you wind it up, you wind it up in loops of three feet and then there’s a fancy twist and you throw it and that throws it into a single coil about so big around.

CE: Had your education at Stanford prepared you for in any way for what you ultimately became, a lawyer? Had you thought about that?

JA: Oh yes, I took the pre-legal courses at Stanford because it had the widest available curriculum, or had the freest of choices. And so in that course, I had, in my junior and senior years, law classes. And I liked them, and I was pretty good at them, and enjoyed them very much. So it developed that way.

CE: Well then, after that trip didn’t you have a brief stint at teaching in Montecito, outside of Santa Barbara?

JA: Oh yes that’s right. The survey job ran out in October and I was offered this job teaching in a private school called The Gring School.

CE: Gring School?

JA: Gring School, G-R-I-N-G, which was a private school for boys, a residential school, and I went there as an assistant to the headmaster. There were two of us teaching at the school.

CE: You taught several subjects I presume?

JA: Yes, indeed I did. I had to teach chemistry and physics and keep two weeks ahead of the class because I didn’t know anything about --

CE: The Montecito section of Santa Barbara is lovely. Is the school still there?

JA: No, the school didn’t last very long, it came on some hard times. But we used to take the boys over the mountains into the Santa Inez Canyon, you know, camping. That was an attractive thing to do. I remember watching the sunrise from the top of the mountain and also sunset, both of them looking over west.

CE: This was a boarding school, I presume?

JA: Yes, a boarding school, yes.

CE: 1915 and 1916 was when you were there?

JA: Yes.

CE: The other school down that area in the Ojai, the Thatcher School, was running of course at that time.

JA: Yes and so was the one at Carpinteria. Yes, both of them were running.

CE: There was an episode, reading your notes, that you did some surveying work again for a movie concern.

JA: I didn’t do surveying for the movie concern, no. After the school began to get into financial difficulty I was dropped because the other, Peterson, was less expensive. So I stayed in Santa Barbara and picked up jobs, so I worked for a surveyor there and I also worked for a movie outfit as this, that and the other. I think I once had my evening clothes, I got paid five dollars a day for doing work dressed in evening clothes in some movie or other.

CE: This was one of your first experiences with the theater, then later on you manifested in the Ross Valley Players.

JA: Oh no, I was in plays both in high school and college.

CE: Who was this Hal Lockwood you mentioned?

JA: You don’t remember the name?

CE: No.

JA: Hal Lockwood was the young, handsome, leading man of those days. He wore horn rimmed glasses.

CE: He was ahead of his time. Now the year, the summer, you took a trip with your family: do you want to share that experience with us?

FA: Yes. My father bought a Ford, Model T, and we rigged it up for camping. We had boxes put on equal with running boards. Four of us, he and his three boys – I was the eldest of the three – went on a four months trip, first in the post ranges and then afterwards in the Sierras, camped out around Tahoe and Alpine Valley and then we were in Hope Valley and then went over that pass and camped at Silver Lake. And Silver Lake is where our car wouldn’t start.

CE: I know where Silver Lake is; that’s a beautiful park. Up highway 88 is it, out of Jackson?

JA: Yes that’s right, yes.

CE: Well what happened? Car trouble?

JA: It just wouldn’t start. There were some expert people there who checked it out and they couldn’t make it start. So finally what we did was we took the line that ran through the key box; we took off the insulation and we discovered that the silver wire had parted. By that time we had fixed everything else in the car, we put a big copper wire there, and she sounded like a Packard.

CE: Where did you camp at night? First of all, the roads must have been minimal. Describe the roads.

JA: I can tell you on that road there were times you would stop and everybody would get out but the driver and the rest of us would help shove the car over a boulder in the middle of the road. We went down into Emerald Bay, and we were stuck in the sand there and had to help shove it out.

CE: What was your mother’s reaction during all this?

JA: She was not there. It was shortly after she died.

CE: Did you go fishing?

JA: Yes.

CE: I understand that’s one of your great loves? Fly-fishing.

JA: Oh my yes. My father was an ardent fisherman. We used to go fishing as boys on the first day of the season always, we used to fish in the creeks near Stanford. So I learned fly-fishing at an early age.

CE: I understand later in your life as you traveled all over the world, this is something you enjoyed everywhere.

JA: That’s right, everywhere.

CE: From Kashmir, New Zealand to --

JA: They have a pool now up on the club you know and I’m going to try fishing that one.

CE: Speaking of water, was the lake at Stanford there when you were a senior?

JA: Yes, Lagunitas was there, just as it is today, in other words.

CE: Dry in summer --

JA: Yes, dry in summer, water in the winter.

CE: Where did you learn to fly fish, from your father?

JA: Yes, in the beginning in Estes Park in Colorado before we came to Stanford.

CE: Now that fall of that year, after this form of holiday, you went to school somewhere else. Tell us what happened.

JA: Yes. That fall I went to Harvard. I had a scholarship from the Harvard Club in San Francisco and went to Harvard Law School as a special student and studied under some of the then leading professors of law.

CE: Name some of them, would you?

JA: There was Felix Frankfurter, was one. And I became quite, I wouldn’t say intimately acquainted with Mr. Frankfurter, but I admired him, which a lot of the students didn’t so much as I did. There were two sides in the class: those who were for him and those who were against him.

CE: What were the qualities and abilities of his character that impressed you, Jim?

JA: I liked his -- He had a great sense of loyalty. That’s not quite the word. Admiration perhaps is a closer word, for John Marshall the first, our great, not first but great Chief Justice of early days. He taught us Marshall’s principles, constitutional principles, with an immense belief, firm conviction of their values. And he was an enthusiastic person and also pretty good argumentatively.

CE: Was he appointed to the Supreme Court during the Roosevelt’s administration?

JA: Yes, that’s right.

CE: It’s strange; it isn’t really, but it’s interesting how people touch ones life. When you’re young and they imbue something within you, you carry all your life.

JA: Professor Willistone was teaching. I took the course of contracts, which was one of the courses he gave, and he was a master of the Socratic method. Professor Willistone could make the dumbest person in class tell what the law was; it is an extraordinary gift.

CE: Is this an attribute Socrates was supposed to have had?

JA: Question and answer method. He just posed the questions and the students gave the answers. That was his method of teaching. I had Pound, and I had Bull Warren on Corporations and he was a well known character then. After all, they did have some superlative teachers and the thing I was greatly impressed with at the law school was the quality of the student body. I’d never been in a student body that was as gifted as that law school student body was. They were from all over the country and they were the best students from all over the country.

CE: An exiting atmosphere.

JA: Yes it was; it kept you moving. Used to skate on the Charles.

CE: Did you?

JA: Yes.

CE: Of course, you were then in a different climate: you had the four seasons. You had other things to do in your leisure time

JA: There wasn’t too much of that.

CE: What happened to take you from Harvard, April 6, 1917?

JA: Well April 6, 1917 was my birthday.

CE: That was your birthday. A huge celebration occurred, an event

JA: Yes, the day that we declared war on Germany. And so I stayed on and finished the course, which was in June.

CE: Finished the end of the school year?

JA: Yes, and then I applied to get into the American Air Service, which was then called the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps. Then after some period of time in which I was advised I had used the wrong form, I managed to get in.

CE: Well you enlisted, didn’t you?

JA: Yes, yes, this is an application.

CE: Then what did you do?

JA: Went to Ground School in Berkeley in about the first of October 1917. That was a two-month tour of duty there. Then from there to Call Field at Wichita Falls in Texas. We arrived there in December for flying training. See, at ground school you didn’t have any flying. We began our flying school and dual instruction in December, and of course our training ended up there in March, everybody having soloed. We were the first class to graduate from Call Field; it was an honor to be the first class.

CE: Why flying?

JA: I wanted to get my proper share in the wartime effort. I didn’t like the idea of using bayonets; it was unattractive to me. I thought flying was dangerous enough to be legitimate and much more attractive.

End, Tape 1, side A

CE: You met someone there who became a friend of yours all your life. Tell us about that.

JA: Jim Montgomery and I were in the ground school together. We arrived at Call Field together. He was a Stanford boy; he’d been coxswain with the freshmen crew down there, a little younger than I. We graduated from Call Field together at our RMA, Reserve Military Aviation, became second lieutenants in the Aviation section of the Signal Corps and came back on furlough to Berkeley, and Jim reviewed the ground school. And then I was with Jimmy afterwards in some other training areas and since then we’ve kept in touch with each other, visit with each other. We are both members of World War I Overseas Fliers Organization and we visited with him in Virginia.

CE: Is this the club that you attend every year?

JA: That’s the organization, yes.

CE: Well now you graduated as Reserve Military Aviator. March, was it?

JA: March, 1918.

CE: Commissioned as Second Lieutenant, Aviation Section Signal Corps. What is the mission of such group?

JA: Variously they depended on whether you were in pursuit or in observation.

CE: Were you in reconnaissance or pursuit?

JA: I wound up in an observation outfit in France. I was qualified for pursuit pilot, which was what we all wanted to be.

CE: I understand you learned a little acrobatics. Wasn’t that kind of unusual?

JA: No. Part of your training course where you got your commission was training acrobatics and there was one teacher at the Call Field who taught everybody acrobatics. That was Musick. He was a famous flier.

CE: Musick?

JA: Yes. He afterwards became pioneer explorer for Pan American.

CE: Oh, and laid out those --

JA: Yes, yes he lost his life in that operation.

CE: He laid out all those air routes over the Pacific.

JA: Yes, that’s right.

CE: Well now that you mention that, Jim, Mrs. Kent’s husband Tom, who went to Yale, got into flying also and went into acrobatics. I guess it was a question of survival. You would be shot and you had to –

JA: Well the Germans invented something like the Immelman Turn, which we all would practice and then people did the barrel roll and you had to learn how to come out of a spin. None of the instructors would put you into a spin because it was dangerous, but we’d get into spins. They’d tell us how to get out. Jim and I were in a plane once that got into a spin and so -- I was handling the controls and we got out of it nicely and he said, “Good work.” That was that. But a spin is quite something, you know. Your airplane is pretty much out of control and it’s whirling around and it’s heading for the ground.

CE: Generally, did you enjoy flying?

JA: Yes I enjoyed it immensely. I don’t think I ever liked anything quite so much as flying. I liked the first flight I took with the instructor and I was hugely enthused about the first time I soloed and that happens to everybody who solos. Solo is really something.

CE: Do you agree with Charles Lindbergh and Ann Morrow Lindbergh, and that wonderful Frenchman who have written of the travels --

JA: Saint-Exupéry.

CE: Exupéry, that there is a spiritual quality about flying?

JA: I think so. I think there is.

CE: That is as captivating as sailing, or even more so?

JA: I think perhaps even more so. If you get up above a blanket of clouds and there’s nothing in the world but you and the sky and the clouds, you know that’s an experience. And it’s a beautiful experience.

CE: Well there is this about the sea though: if you are in a sailboat alone and you’re on the bottom of the sea so to speak, you feel sort of a cosmic hold, awareness.

JA: Oh, I understand that. I spent five months aboard a cargo ship on the ocean.

CE: Well let’s get you going in your career. Did you have some stateside duties before they shipped you overseas?

JA: World War I?

CE: Yes.

JA: Well I went to various training places. I went to Fort Sill.

CE: Okay, that was all part of your training.

JA: Then we went for further instructions for pursuit planes at Fort Worth, Tarrant Field. Then we were ordered -- My orders came late; the rest of the crowd went out three weeks ahead of me and the reason was the adjutant had left my name off the list by mistake.

CE: The things that can happen in the military. Well, I understand you got orders overseas and you crossed the Atlantic and I couldn’t read the name of that vessel; it sounded fascinating to me.

JA: The Carmania.

CE: Was she British?

JA: She was a Cunarder.

CE: Oh, Cunard Line. Was it converted into a troop ship?

JA: Yes, it was being used as a troop ship. It was a passenger ship so it was readily available for a troop ship.

CE: Well it took a long time, according to your notes, to cross the Atlantic.

JA: About eighteen days I think.

CE: Storms? Convoy slow, or what?

JA: Yes. We were in convoy. We were way up in the north in convoy and fog and at convoy speed, which is the speed of the slowest boat. And we had some famous people aboard.

CE: I’ve been fascinated with that. Now you mentioned a Russian name here that I had difficulty with. Would you pronounce that?

JA: Botchkareva, Madame Botchkareva.

CE: What do you mean that she was the leader of the Russian Women’s Battalion?

JA: She was the Commander of the Russian Women’s Battalion of Death.

CE: I don’t know what that means.

JA: Well it was in World War I, there was a battalion of Russian soldiers, all women, and it was called the Battalion of Death and she was --

CE: To fight the Germans?

JA: Yes to fight the Germans, yes.

CE: Well, I have to explore more of that woman’s life; it sounds fascinating. Then you mentioned also an Irish politician aboard --

JA: T.P. O’Connor, yes. He was an attractive man. And I also saw the lawyer.

CE: Clarence Darrow.

JA: Yes, Clarence Darrow.

CE: Now this puzzles me. Why was a man who was then sixty-one years old, why was he aboard this vessel?

JA: Clarence Darrow?

CE: Yes.

JA: He was aboard as a spokesman for American labor to go to England to tell the British union people that the American union people were supporting the war.

CE: I see. That was his assignment.

JA: That was his function, yes.

CE: Well he was initially a corporation lawyer as I understood it and then became a trial lawyer representing -- A lot of cases -- Labor leaders -- Eugene Debs, for one.

JA: Oh yes, he did, and he represented the Times dynamiters in that famous litigation. And that wound up with an agreed sentence. I know there were a lot of people who supported Darrow who were disappointed that they felt he sold out because he made a deal.

CE: After the war?

JA: Yes. Kay says Clarence Darrow also wrote her grandmother’s will.

CE: Oh, thank you Kay. After the war when he defended Leopold and Loeb, those boys who were kind of thrill murderers and they came from good families, wasn’t he the first one to use -- get those two boys acquitted by virtue of insanity? Wasn’t that the beginning --

JA: They were not acquitted.

CE: They were not acquitted, but they were not executed?

JA: No, but they served life terms.

CE: But they were not executed because he introduced this new concept in criminal law.

JA: I’m not sure about that. He also of course was in this Scopes trial. It’s a famous trial, supported the professor who taught science.

CE: And that was William Jennings Bryan.

JA: Bryan on the Biblical side.

CE: See how you can get off on divergent things? It’s so fascinating, the exposure you’ve had in your life. Okay, the ship lands at Liverpool and you take --

JA: Took a train from Liverpool to Southampton.

CE: Which is what, the port of embarkation for Europe?

JA: Port of embarkation for France, yes. And I was with Paul Coles and we went downtown on a pass and when we came back our outfit had already sailed and -- So we went on orders and got aboard the Yale.

CE: The Yale! Not the same old one that used to run up and down the coast?

JA: Yes, yes, that’s right. She was on service as a convoy.

CE: Pressed into service for --

JA: Yes, crossing the channel. And we got into a cabin and locked the door and somebody came along and said, “I’m a colonel,” and we didn’t answer. So we landed at Le Havre and met some Britishers who offered us some scotch and soda at six in the morning.

CE: You took them?

JA: Yes but it was the first time I’d ever had a scotch and soda at six in the morning.

CE: Well, was that just a hospitality gesture?

JA: I think so.

CE: Welcome to France, you’ll need it. What was your assignment? What did your orders read? Where were you to go?

JA: We were ordered to France for assignment and so directed to Saint-Maixent, which is a little town in the province of Deux-Sèvres in central France. And we spent three days in Paris, Paul and I, and then arrived at Saint-Maixent.

CE: Is this when you were attached to the Ninety First?

JA: No, that’s before that. Excuse me, Saint-Maixent. We spent from, lets see, that would be in July. I was there about two months just cooling my heels in the barracks and doing a variety of barracks duties. A little schooling and a good deal of time to travel. We went down to Poitiers. Paul and I went to Poitiers and drove around in a Fiat and saw all the things that had happened there.

CE: What was the reception you received by the French people?

JA: The French people in that area were very cordial, yes. They were very --

CE: But you were far in World War I then from the front lines, were you not?

JA: Oh yes, indeed, yes. To answer your question in another way, on one occasion I visited a castle where Joan of Arc had been received by the King of France, and this was being shown by a young Frenchman who was well educated and could speak better English then I could French. And he was expounding about the historic friendship between France and the United States and referring to Lafayette and I said to him, “I should think you’d feel closer to the British. They’ve been fighting on your side, side by side, since the beginning.” And he said, “Oh no, that would not be possible. We’ll be fighting them in another hundred years.” He was historically grownup and to him the American tradition of friendship existed. It was very real. Now, I don’t think the general French population were as well educated as that, but they were friendly.

CE: Were you billeted somewhere, or did you have to --

JA: Oh, we were in a barracks called Canclaux Barracks. It was a school established by Napoleon.

CE: But did you live off the land, or did you have your own mess?

JA: Oh yes, we had our own mess, oh yes.

CE: Then what happened? You had orders to --

JA: We -- To go up to Issoudun. Yes, Issoudun was the place at which you were given a refresher test for flying. Issoudun was the place where some of the American fliers served in the mud for nine months without any airplanes. It was a famous place, but Issoudun was for that purpose. I had to fly an Avro.

CE: Then you got in the air again?

JA: Yes. Well, that’s where you were given flying tests. Then I was sent to Tours, but only temporarily, and then got orders to go up to the front for assignment and went up to Colombey-les-Belles by train and Colonel Zinn was running the shop and I told Colonel Zinn I’d like to go to the Ninety First because I had friends there; Paul Cole, who was my friend, was already there. So that’s how I got to --

CE: Isn’t there another name that pops up in your memoirs? Henry Bash, is it?

JA: Henry Bash was my observer, yes. I met him at Raven Corps, at the headquarters of the squadron. He was a newcomer; both he and I were both newcomers to the squadron.

CE: Well what was your assignment then? Were you to -- Were you given a certain sector to guard or observe?

JA: The squadron was a photographic squadron essentially, observation. They flew in groups of five and -- So at the time we arrived it was their turn to supply four planes, four pilots, and four observers to army command. Army command was a unit that the army headquarters used as they called on the various squadrons for this service at routine intervals. So, the old timers didn’t like army command work and it disrupted their plans anyway, so us newcomers thought we served squadron very well. We volunteered to do army command which is where I got into the service I performed. So, we got sent off to army command and landed at Suresnes, which is where army headquarters was. This is the American First Army and it ran from the Argonne on the west to a little bit east of Verdun, east.

CE: Who was the general in command of the First Army? Do you recall?

JA: Pershing.

CE: Pershing, of course, General Jack.

JA: My brother who was in that same operation had a General Johnson in command of the Ninety First Division, you know, the famous one from the northwest.

CE: Well now in doing this type of work, you’d have to fly kind of low, wouldn’t you? Did you carry photography --

JA: Well it depended what your assignment was.

CE: What was your job?

JA: That was to fly over the line with the First Army at an elevation of a hundred meters, and that’s for visual observation and come back and tell what we saw, tell what he saw. He was the observer and I was the pilot. He was senior officer; he could tell me where to go.

CE: Did he have maps?

JA: Yes. We both had maps.

CE: You both had maps. You didn’t carry a photographer, though, in this instance?

JA: No. I had two Lewis guns and a Vickers gun. The Vickers was the one that shot through the propeller, you know, and the two Lewis guns could be swung around.

CE: Well what happened on one of those sorties that dramatically changed your activities?

JA: What happened was that after we’d completed about two thirds of our job and got to a little town of Villingen and it looked like a little village with spiders tentacles going out all the way, all the various roads. I followed the round road a little bit north of the right road, and I guess I got about five miles north of the lines and there we were attacked by German Fokkers, a group of German pilots.

CE: So you were behind the lines?

JA: Yes.

CE: Just a little bit, but not --

JA: Yes, just a little bit.

CE: You referred to those as “Red-Nosed Fokkers.” What do you mean by that?

JA: Yes, well that squadron which was von Richthofen’s squadron, was the squadron that painted the nose of its Fokkers red. They were known as the “Red-Nosed Fokkers.” And I think that he died by that time. I believe so; I checked this out once, but it was still that squadron.

CE: Well what happened?

JA: The plane was struck --

CE: Were you struck?

JA: No. Henry was. He had a dozen bullet wounds. The plane was on fire; it was out of control before we got the show over.

CE: And all the acrobatic flying you had learned was to no avail at this point. It was too much damage, structural damage, to the plane.

JA: Well the plane was flyable except that the control was shot into.

CE: So that did it.

JA: Yes, we were more or less in a vertical bank and I wanted to bring it over and it didn’t answer to the control. So we were going to -- I looked at some trees we were headed for and thinking, “This is were we are going to hit,” and that’s the last thing I remember other than kicking the tail down which I did with the rudder control.

CE: Did you purposely hope for the trees as a cushion?

JA: No, I didn’t have any time to think of anything like that, just thought I was going to have --

CE: Did you think this was going to be it?

JA: Yes, looked like it. But it was all too busy and --

CE: That’s interesting because many people who have kind of close calls, they said, “You’re so busy and it’s so fast, you don’t have much time.”

JA: You don’t have time. I’m sure I did kick the tail down which was the reason why we didn’t come nose first. We came in on a wing and cart wheeled. Henry had climb out of his seat to keep out of the fire and he was thrown onto the marsh.

CE: Near the river.

JA: That’s right near the river. And I got out and --

CE: Was he conscious?

JA: Yes he was conscious and said, “Nice landing son.” Yes, that’s what he said.

CE: Well what happened next?

JA: Well he said, I said, “I think we’re in no man’s land.” I had hoped that’s where we were. And he said, “No, we’re in Germany,” which turned out to be right because the next thing that happened, some Austrian soldiers came up and they looked to be needing some direction. They were just soldiers and so I could speak a little German and I told them to help fix up a pallet or something to carry Henry which they did. I mean, they got blankets out and a pole, a long pole, and put him in a blanket and we walked off to a field hospital with Henry. And that’s where I met the German orderly who had been a waiter in Hofbrau in San Francisco.

CE: Did the thought occur to you then, Jim, that you would then be taken as a prisoner of war?

JA: Oh I knew it.

CE: There was no doubt in your mind?

JA: We were in German hands.

CE: You were placed in an underground field hospital?

JA: Yes, that’s where we left Henry, was the field hospital.

CE: Was the prison far from this area?

JA: The first prison camp wasn’t so far away. It was at Sedan, the famous place where the battle was fought in the French Revolution, you know. And that wasn’t very far away. That was a temporary place. And then from there we were moved to Karlsruhe for personal interrogation some days later and then wound up in South Baden in what had been a Russian officers’ prison camp.

CE: For this period of time, and I don’t quite remember the month we’re talking about, but when you were shot down until the armistice November 11th, you were then a prisoner of war?

JA: Yes from October 21 to November 11, which was not very long.

CE: I understand that you kept a diary?

JA: Yes, that’s true.

CE: Wrote down your experiences. Also you recorded some experiences of other fellow prisoners.

JA: Yes I have a number of those.

CE: Some sea captain you knew from San Francisco?

JA: I have several of sea captain stories they wrote out for me that were captured by the raider Wolf in the Pacific and their ships were sunk and they were put aboard the Wolf and delivered into Germany. And then I have Blanchard Battle’s tale, which I guess I told you about. He and a fellow prisoner were being sent to an East Prussia prison camp because they tried to escape and they’d been recaptured and they’d been sent off with guards headed from East Prussia, and on their way the German revolution took place and they were in -- I’m not sure just where it was. It was somewhere in West Germany when their guards came to them and said, “There’s a revolution, and you’re all free.” So they went out with their guards to the railroad station, and they saw the German marines on the arrival of troop trains, taking the soldiers off the train, telling them they were disarmed, that there was a revolution, there was no more war. And these fellows told Battle and his friends that they were free, that they could start walking home. Well they thought the safest thing to do was to go back to the prison camp they’d come from along with their guards and their guards surely wanted this because they didn’t want to be left with the responsibility of losing their prisoners. So they became guards to their prisoners and brought them back to prison camp.

CE: Tell me, did you ultimately relocate your friend Henry Bash?

JA: Yes, Henry Bash now lives in --

CE: I mean after that period. You were separated, weren’t you? He was in a hospital and you were in --

JA: Oh yes, I located Henry through -- Because I knew where his home place was in Huntington, Indiana and so I wrote there and we re-established communications in that way. His life had been saved by a little French girl who had gone and sought out the American people when the Germans had abandoned the hospital and brought the American medical people there.

CE: But you didn’t relocate Henry in Europe?

JA: Not in Europe.

CE: I see, that was years later. I’d love to see your diary sometimes. After, the armistice then and your liberation, you were shipped home on a troop ship, I presume?

JA: Yes, we came back from Brest in January.

CE: Then were you able to resume your studies at Harvard, or did you take a leave?

JA: No, in January I went back to Stanford Law School.

CE: Oh, you went to Stanford.

JA: Yes and finished my law school work at Stanford. That would be 1919.

CE: Then you didn’t have to go back to Harvard?

JA: No, I didn’t go back to Harvard. I’d been there just one year as a special student.

CE: I see. Well then when you completed your studies at Stanford Law School, you were admitted to the bar then?

JA: Yes, 1920.

CE: In the State of California.

JA: Yes.

CE: Now you went to work with a company that I understand you have been associated with, the law firm that has changed its name and its nomenclature. Originally what was it called?

JA: It was McCutchen, Olney and Williard when I first went there. It started out by being McCutchen, Page, Eels and Orrick, I think was the original firm name. Anyway, it was Mr. McCutchen’s firm.

DE: Is this the same McCutchen Doris Schmiedell’s family are associated with?

JA: Yes. Doris was Mrs. McCutchen. No, her grandmother was Mrs. McCutchen; her mother was Mrs. Schmiedell.

CE: Yes.

JA: And they were not Mr. McCutchen’s children; they were his stepchildren.

CE: And the firm now is known --

JA: It’s known as McCutchen, Doyle, Brown and Emersen.

CE: In San Francisco?

JA: Yes.

CE: We’ll talk more about your law career later but we’ll continue with your chronology of your life. You were living in San Francisco practicing law with this company. Is that correct?

JA: That’s right, call it a firm.

CE: Firm, excuse me. And you met Kay --

JA: Met Kay in 1923.

CE: And what was her name?

JA: Katharine Mordock.

CE: Mordock. Was she a California girl?

JA: No, she was from Winnetka, Illinois.

CE: Winnetka, I see. I understand your good neighbor and friend Sonny Hobart is a good friend and associate of Kay’s. Is that right, Kay?

KA: We went to college together, she was a senior when I was a freshman at Bryn Mawr. I didn’t know her until later. I met her then but I didn’t know her.

CE: Now to digress just a moment, Kay, before you go away, what brought your family to California?

KA: I came.

CE: You came! After your school? After your college?

KA: I came with my grandmother. I came on a trip with my grandmother who was coming out to see her brother and she hadn’t seen him in twenty years and his name is Robert P. Ober. And his daughter had married the second wife of Jim’s father. So Florence Ober Adams said to Jim, “I understand that he had to entertain this nineteen year girl that was coming here.”

CE: And he did.

KA: And he did. I was supposed to meet his friends, too, but I never met a one of them until after we were married.

CE: That’s charming. And you were married June 24th?

KA: June 28th of ‘24.

CE: June 28, 1924. Were you married in San Francisco?

KA: Winnetka.

CE: You went home to Winnetka. All right. Then after your marriage you’re still with the law firm and you, presume, lived in San Francisco, you and your wife?

JA: Yes.

CE: Where did you live then? Apartment?

JA: Well we lived -- yes. We lived on Vallejo Street; that’s where we had our first baby, and then we went out to Camino Del Mar.

End, Tape 1, Side B

CE: Jim, after Vallejo Street, where did you live?

JA: Next we went to Camino Del Mar in Sea Cliff. I should have said before we went to Vallejo Street we were living on Jackson and Lyon, at 3080 Jackson. Then from Camino Del Mar we went down to Washington and Lyon and lived in the parish house of the Swedenborgian Church there, which had a pleasant garden, yes.

CE: You did? Oh yes, I know that property; it’s beautiful. Now, were most of your children born in San Francisco? Kay, maybe you’d like to interject?

JA: Four of them were born in San Francisco.

CE: Could I have the names of your children and the order of their birth?

JA: Douglass Mordock Adams.

CE: When was he born?

JA: He was born January 26, 1927.

CE: All right, number two?

JA: Katharine Adams, and she was born January 19, 1929.

CE: And in San Francisco also?

JA: Yes.

CE: And the third?

JA: Robert Ober, O-b-e-r Adams and he was born June 17, 1931. And the fourth one was Helen Bayley, B-a-y-l-e-y, and she was born June 26, 1934 in San Francisco. That’s the time when, after she was born, her grandmother, Kay’s mother, and I went to the Mark and had martinis.

CE: Finally –

JA: And the fifth child was Rebecca.

CE: And where was Rebecca born?

JA: She was born in Ross Hospital, and that was November 1, 1939.

CE: Thank you. And also you have several grandchildren.

JA: Yes we have nineteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren and two step-grandchildren.

CE: Those are written down in the family record, I am certain. Are any of these children still near you in California?

JA: Yes, yes. Becky is living in Berkeley; Helen is in Fairfax; Doug is in Saratoga; Bob is in San Francisco; Katy is in Las Vegas, Nevada.

CE: That’s great. Well, in 1932 – Am I correct in this, the year you moved to Marin with your family?

JA: Yes.

CE: And you built a home where?

JA: We didn’t build at first. We rented a place on Grand Avenue: The Martin House.

CE: Dominican area. Mrs. Martinelli knows that. I –

JA: Yes.

CE: And then you bought a home?

JA: Then we built a home, built a home at 7 Hotaling Court in Del Mesa.

CE: Who was your architect?

JA: Al Evers. Albert J. Evers.

CE: And you lived there –

JA: From 1934 to 1960.

CE: And then you relocated to –

JA: We lived temporarily in the Hotel El Drisco in San Francisco and –

CE: Oh, I remember that place on Pacific Avenue. It was always full of visiting military.

JA: Well it also had one of California famous woman authors.

CE: Who?

JA: Kathleen Norris was living there.

CE: You know, we interviewed Helen Dreyfus who’s the head of the Mill Valley Historical Society and I think she was the niece of Kathleen Norris, if I remember. And Mrs. Kent wanted her to tell us about her extraordinary aunt and we have that story. She was a writer, I understand, who could be writing away with children and grandchildren arriving, all this confusion, and be interrupted, “You, do this,” and then she’d just pick up and continue writing.

JA: Well then from Drisco we built a place out on 125 Bayview Drive in East San Rafael. Our architect was our then son-in-law, Gary Tucker, who was Helen’s husband.

CE: And then you moved to your present address? When was that?

JA: 1978.

CE: Now you have become a commuter, I presume

JA: Yes.

CE: And what was your way of commuting?

JA: By rail and ferry.

CE: Loved it, I bet.

JA: Oh yes. The ferry boat was a town hall meeting for the commuters and the trip took about an hour and a quarter from home to office. It was enjoyable.

CE: Did you walk down to the train from Del Mesa?

JA: Yes, I did initially, or maybe Kay drove me down and then Danny Ober gave us a car and I used to drive it to the station.

CE: Just parked it there?

JA: Parked it there, yes.

CE: Do you think that there has been much improvement in reducing the time of commuting in the last fifty years, forty years since the train?

JA: Well the time of commuting is less then it was by rail and ferry.

CE: Not by much, though, is it Jim?

JA: I don’t think it takes you enough. I can drive to San Francisco in thirty minutes

CE: From here?

JA: From here, yes. Now that was an hour and a quarter. That’s a difference. And if you commute in your own car, that’s about the time, or forty minutes in commute traffic. But the quality of commuting was destroyed when the rails and ferries went out. You know –

CE: I know. I commuted for fifteen years from Ross to Treasure Island in my Navy job and the only thing that saved me was I left so early in the morning because our office opened at seven. People who commuted during the high peak hours were in terrible shape. The strain of it is unbelievable. The train and the ferry was a pleasurable experience, wasn’t it?

JA: Oh it was, a very pleasant experience. You met your friends. There were a bunch of chess games, and a bunch of pinochle games and a bunch of people talking politics.

CE: A lot of important issues were decided.

JA: A lot of important issues were discussed and decided, yes.

CE: All right, time is going by and we are getting close to World War II. December 7, 1941. Where were you that Sunday?

JA: I was on the 18th green of the Meadow Club with Farmer Schmiedell.

CE: Farmer Schmiedell?

JA: Yes.

CE: Why did you put that handle on him?

JA: Well he was known by his friends as Farmer Schmiedell.

CE: Are we talking about the senior, E.G.?

JA: Yes. Anyway, he’d just sunk a putt for a five and I‘d just sunk a put for a four and then Dibblee came down and said the Japanese had blown up our fleet at Pearl Harbor. This is how we learned about it.

CE: What was your immediate reaction?

JA: Didn’t quite believe it could be as bad as that.

CE: Did all sort of thoughts race through your mind as to how you were going to be part of that?

JA: No, not right away. It took time. That took time. The thing that happened right after that was, since I was then Commander of the Legion Post, was that we had the local civil defense operation to get started. We called a meeting in Ross and gave everybody all the know-how we had about blackouts and sand and buckets, shovels –

CE: What was the general public reaction to that? Were they cooperative?

JA: Oh yes, they were. This meeting was called by telephone; it was very important that everybody came and they wanted to know, “What can we do?” or “What should we do?” So, we had whatever dope there was and handed it out.

CE: Was the mission of the American Legion, as far as your responsibility was concerned? Directed into this area of civil defense, or did that just evolve?

JA: Oh it was natural; it would be a natural thing. Previously that post had, I think I told you, been the originator of the American Legion’s opposition to Roosevelt court-packing plan and that had happened – No, that was later. No, it wasn’t later.

CE: Sure, it was earlier because –

JA: It was earlier. The Ross Post adopted the resolution opposing the court-packing plan. And then I was told that John Francis Nyland had said that you couldn’t get the Legion to oppose the court-packing plan as a general operation. So I talked to my friend Dit Hayes about this and Dit said that we could. So Dit and I started this organization and got some money for it and sent Archie Claussen around the state, who had been a past commander of the State Legion. Archie used to visit these various Legion Posts and then write me that he’d straightened them out on the issue. Well anyway, this worked. And the State Legion passed a resolution proposing the court-packing plan. Then we sent Archie to national, and he made it work there too. And, you know, we hit the headlines with this, this story.

CE: May I ask, is this American Legion Ross Post still in existence?

JA: Yes, I think so. I’m pretty sure it must be.

CE: Well let’s get back to your chronology, if I may, Jim. When you made the decision you wanted to make a contribution in some way, what did you do?

JA: I got hold of George Kenny, who had been in the Ninety First Aero Squadron and who was a prominent Army Air Corps General, and said I’d like to do some work and George said he’d sent me to Dayton, Ohio to do law work and I said, “My partner is already there and it’s being well done.” So then an opportunity came to apply for Navy Intelligence, so I signed up for this, and this was caught by Clemmer Johnson who was working in the JAG’s office in Washington. The General was a fraternity brother of mine.

CE: JAG means Judge Advocate General.

JA: Yes.

CE: Now, to a layperson, could you just explain what that means?

JA: He is the chief legal officer of the Navy, and he has an office in Washington.

CE: And Jag officers are scattered throughout the system. Every Naval Station has a JAG, or JAG representative

JA: Clemmer had been in destroyer service in World War I and had stayed in the Navy, so he was in the JAG office at the time as a commander and he drew the JAG’s attention to my name and that’s how I got under the tent.

CE: You switched services. You went from the Army to the Navy.

JA: Yes. So I spent some time in the JAG’s office and told them, I mean, I told my boss I wanted to get into aviation; thought I would be more useful there. And we had a deal that he would recommend me for that transfer provided he was promoted on the next board. And so I believe I said prayers for his promotion. Everybody around the office wanted him promoted, which he managed; he went from commander to captain, you see, nice fellow.

CE: And then you were transferred to Naval Aviation. You were made – What was your first assignment then?

JA: I was assigned to ACORN Training Duty at Port Hueneme in California, and shortly thereafter assigned as executive officer of ACORN Thirty Four.

CE: Would you explain what this acronym means in Naval terminology?

JA: An ACORN is an Advanced Naval Air Base and it consists of all the services that should be supplied at a base: medical, food supply. There’s attached to it and it’s supported by cashew. That’s a aviation mix organization to keep planes in good order and condition and is located on it a squadron and the squadron of fliers. We had a meteorologist. We had a chaplain, medical officers, oh, all kinds of varieties of services.

CE: Well when these ACORNs were established and sent out, did you ride your own vessel or did you just go – Were you transported?

JA: We were on a troop ship and we went out.

CE: Well, what would be the complement of an ACORN Unit?

JA: The complement of an ACORN Unit would be about three hundred and fifty people. That’s enlisted men and commissioned personnel both.

CE: Now as XO, Executive Officer of the ACORN Thirty Four, you went to Pearl? First, I presume, picked up part of your compliment?

JA: We stopped off at Pearl. No, we were all trained at Port Hueneme.

CE: When you left Port Hueneme –

JA: We were complete and intact.

CE: Tell us where Port Hueneme is.

JA: That’s near Oxnard; it’s an artificial harbor.

CE: You were at Pearl and where else did you go?

JA: Then we stopped next and hung on a hook at Eniwetok and then after Eniwetok we were in Ulithi where much of the Pacific Fleet was located at the time. It was a great area of battleships, destroyers, and cruisers and we had carriers and so on.

CE: Well tell me, Jim, when an ACORN Unit goes out, then they establish the base and then more or less after they have been established they moved on to another assignment?

JA: No, no. It’s designed to set up and operate a base.

CE: Oh I see, and then it remains there?

JA: It stays there until it’s moved on to some more forward base, which could well be, actually, the ACORN I finally wound up with, while we were in process of maybe being assigned to move closer to Japan, just before VJ Day.

CE: You had, during that 1945, been at Leyte and then Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines.

JA: Well that was -- Yes, after Ulithi we were in Kossol Passage and then landed in the Philippines at Leyte. And we were there for a while and then went again by ship around through the Mindoro Sea to the west coast of Lingayen Gulf and that’s where we came ashore really as a unit.

CE: Is that when you were transferred to Commanding Officer and had your own ACORN?

JA: No, later on, later on. At that time, when we came ashore, it was in March, and we came ashore and had to unload and transport all our gear and get down to Clark Field where we were assigned. And this was an ongoing operation that was in for about three months.

CE: By the way, did you keep a diary during your World War II experiences?

JA: It wasn’t allowed, but I have a map with some entries on it for every day, so it’s not in bad shape. It serves to help your recollection.

CE: Well when you were transferred and made commanding officer of ACORN 19, was that sort of getting close to VJ day?

JA: That was in July, and –

CE: VJ day was when?

JA: August. Wasn’t it in August? Wait a minute, it was in June I went down to Mindoro, and as I think I told you, that was – 34 and 19 were two of the three ACORNs that were established in the Philippines advanced area.

CE: When VJ Day occurred, you got orders and I guess your whole – Everybody started filtering back to the States.

JA: When VJ Day occurred, my executive officer and I sat down together and said, “We’re going to get orders. They are going to be written in Washington. They’re going to be impossible to fulfill. Let’s get some orders ourselves.” So he wrote, we wrote our own orders, and I took them to Manila. Went up to Manila and saw Admiral Wagner’s Chief of Staff and said, “Captain, the Navy won’t want this place. They’ll want it decommissioned. They will want to get going, and here’s the order. See if you can – They ‘re workable.” So he went in, and the admiral signed them.

CE: He was aware you had created them?

JA: Oh yes, oh sure. He thought this was intelligent, as I‘m sure it was.

CE: You probably saved eight months of your life.

JA: What we did was most interesting. With those orders that we had we subsequently received orders from Washington, which were, as I say, written with no real knowledge of what the problems were, and couldn’t possibly have been fulfilled. And on receiving such orders I would immediately write back and say, “Reference A, that’s your orders, and Reference B, that’s a copy of your precedent orders. The directives designed to be accomplished through your orders have already been accomplished through reference B.” And that, you know, was a shut down. That closed the discussion.

CE: They must have blessed you with your law experience and your ability to come up with such a simple and expeditious way.

JA: Well the exec, was – It was imaginative. He’s the fellow that dreamed up the idea of getting our own orders.

CE: And you probably wrote the papers.

JA: I wrote the papers. That’s for sure.

CE: Well, you sailed back to California on a jeep carrier.

JA: Yes.

CE: What was the name of that?

JA: Steamer Bay.

CE: Steamer Bay. What do you mean by a jeep carrier?

JA: A jeep carrier was a small aircraft carrier. They are built in great numbers, and they carry a number of airplanes for use in the war zone. On that occasion when the Japanese turned in on the American fleet east of Mindoro Straits, there were a bunch of little jeep carriers there, American jeep carriers. And here came these Jap battleships. And they were firing armor piercing shells which made the jeep carriers look like cheese boxes because the shells would go right trough them and it didn’t sink them, and it didn’t –

CE: Aerate them.

JA: Yes, aerate them, that’s right.

CE: Well the name “jeep” connoted a little four-wheel thing that the army uses all over the world.

JA: Yes, this is a nickname for that type of carrier they have.

CE: Well, where was Kay during all of this period when you were out in the Pacific?

JA: When we were out in the Pacific she was out in Winnetka.

CE: She went home to Winnetka. I see.

JA: Our home was rented.

CE: Waited out the war there.

JA: Well she was – When I was in Washington we were together.

CE: Yes, but when you were in the ACORN –

JA: She came down and visited at Ventura.

CE: Was she a good letter writer? Did she keep up?

JA: We have an enormous supply of letters. You know, one of the things about our troop ship was it didn’t receive any mail. We were actually about four months without any mail from anybody. We wrote letters but we didn’t receive any. Naval Post Office system didn’t catch up with us until we landed in the Philippines.

CR: The good fleet post office.

JA: Yes that’s right.

CE: But then you would get a slew of them, wouldn’t you?

JA: Oh we’d get a canvas bag full, well, jute bag.

CE: Kay, come over and share this story with us.

KA: During that time I would be getting letters, and after a while Jim’s letters would say, “We seem to be forgotten people. We wonder if they have just forgotten us in the Navy,” and, “See what you can do, you know, to get some mail or see what’s happening.” So I called our friend Admiral Huffy on the telephone and asked him to look into it and he looked into it and he called me back and he said, “I can’t tell you where they are, but they will be – Watch the papers in the next couple of days and you will know were they are and they will get their mail, when they get there.” And that was Leyte.

JA: That was Leyte yes. Tacloban, sure.

CE: Well, had you accumulated some leave that you could kind of have a cushion before entering your law firm, or –

JA: No, there wasn’t any accumulated leave. I came back to San Francisco and received an honorable discharge in the routine fashion and I’m now a member of the United States Naval Reserve Retired, which developed later. But, anyway, then I went back to Winnetka and Kay wasn’t well, and we spent a couple of month there. She was in the hospital.

CE: And then gradually you returned home?

JA: Then I came back to the office in about April, I think it was.

CE: Spring of ‘46.

JA: Spring of ’46, anyway.

CE: And eventually back to your home, which you had sublet.

JA: Yes. There was some – The normal routine war problem of rental occupants having a privilege of remaining there even though it was your house.

CE: Oh yes, that’s true. Would you comment, Jim, on the difference, the impressions of these two war experiences? For example, in France you were in a somewhat limited area once you got there. Now in the Pacific you’re all over the place.

JA: The war, you mean, was all over?

CE: I mean, you were traveling all over the Pacific.

JA: Well, I think in a broader sense, in World War II I felt that I had accomplished something. In World War I, I’d gone to the front and had gotten shot down in the first enterprise out. I was just a casualty after all these great training experiences. And this happens. It’s one way of talking about where people are casualties. Every fellow in a prison camp is a casualty. In World War II there was an awful lot of companionship in the enterprises I was engaged in. That still lasts in the things that we accomplished together were quite – Many of them were exciting and adventurous and notable. And like the time that our supply train on the side track that ran down and bumped into some cars containing bombs and I went down, chased after them, and I apologized to the railroad men for our cars. They had gotten pushed off their blocks because we’d had a fire running through the grass. And these engineers said, “Oh that’s nothing in a railroad man’s life.” And they said, “Those cars will go down over the hill and start up the hill to Manila and they’ll stop,” which was what happened.

CE: You know, I often thought reading some of the biographies of the Naval commanders in the areas of responsibilities, from Admiral Nimitz, Admiral Spruance, Halsey et al. It’s quite an extraordinary thing that those men were in their area of responsibility at one time, over such a vast part of the world globe. Did you have any contact with any of their staff at all?

JA: No, I didn’t have any contact with any of the Admiral’s staff. But, Dr. Zimmerman who was with our outfit met Admiral Nimitz on the island of Oahu. The Admiral said to the good doctor, “You might get shot next time you’re out if you don’t notice who you’re passing,” because he hadn’t seen Admiral Nimitz and hadn’t given him the proper salute and the Admiral was having fun with him.

CE: That doesn’t quite sound like Nimitz. It sounds more like Admiral King who I heard personally one time in Com-Twelve headquarters elevator, lace a young lieutenant up and down who was in khaki and he should have been in the uniform of the day. And he said, ”Why aren’t you in uniform?” And the frightened JG said, “My ship has just been bombed from under me, sir. I’m returning for further orders.” And he said, “Carry on.”

JA: Well Admiral Nimitz was friendly about this.

CE: I was always amazed whenever he would come frequently to the club at Treasure Island for luncheons. When he entered that room, maybe once or twice a week with his wife, every naval officer stood up. You know, protocol didn’t demand it but they had a sincere love.

JA: He was a great one. And he was a genius of the war and in those great battles, naval battles. His tactics and strategy were there. Our friend in the Navy was Admiral Hussy and he was in charge of ordinance. That was his business.

CE: During your month out there had you ever heard of the organization that was trying to break the Japanese code that existed in the basement?

JA: No we didn’t hear –

CE: That all came out later.

JA: That all came out later, yes.

CE: So we’re back again into the law firm. You’re back in Marin County and life continues until you retire. What year did you retire?

JA: Fifteen years ago. I was 73 at the time. That would be 1968. I retired from active practice but I continued to practice law.

CE: You still –

JA: Oh yes, I do some law work. Not very much.

CE: That concludes this part of our chronology.

End, Tape 3, Side A

CE: Jim, before we pass on to the other large subject of the many activities that you’ve been involved in your life, are there any other military experiences you care to share with us before we move on to that phase of your life?

JA: Yes, if I may, one or two of them. One of them is the rescue operation, which we conducted. I say we conducted, when I was stationed with ACORN 19 on the island of Mindoro. A Navy plane had been lost in the mountains. We sent in a search party headed by a Lieutenant Heimers who had been with the 96th Division and the General told me was a very good man. And Heimers made a magnificent trip through torrential rains, across swollen rivers, up crevices, up into the high area where there was ice on the ground, with natives who dwelled, lived, up in this high country and found the airplane and found the bodies. He reported back that he could identify four of the bodies but not the fifth one. The fact was, as it turned out later, that the complement of five supposed to be on board the plane one of them had decided not to go and a friend of his had taken his place. This is how good Heimers was. I have the log of that trip which Heimers sent me. I wrote it up and sent it to Naval Headquarters and the Admiral sent down a special commendation to the General to put it into Heimers’ records. And this is one of those things that – I was aboard a TBM flying over this area trying to drop supplies down to the party, and the supplies would miss the party by an hair’s breath and go down two thousand feet below where they were. It was wild country, very interesting trip. I went to Mindoro, capital at the time. That was where I was when this enterprise was going on. So that’s one I wanted to mention. The other one was that I had hanging on my wall a citation which was issued to me for work I did as Executive Officer at ACORN Unit 34, which is very nice to have. And I have a medal, ribbon and so on.

CE: We’ll look at those later in your study, if I may?

JA: Yes.

CE: I have a camera with a macro lens; maybe you’ll permit me to take a shot of that. I suppose since this most fascinating experience of yours in World War II you have kept up and read the history over the years of those personal experiences.

JA: I have some number of books of the sort; I’ve never read Morison’s history, which I want to do sometime.

CE: Samuel Eliot Morison. He is considered one of the great historians of America and war.

JA: Yes, he’s also the man who seriously backed the question as to the authenticity of the plate, you know.

CE: Yes, the great plate of brass that is, was found in the 1930s by a student of Professor Bolton from the University of California. There are three divergent schools of thought as to where did Drake actually careen the Golden Hind. And as I understand it, Samuel Eliot Morison came out one time and Admiral Nimitz was the Head of the Drake’s Navigator’s Guild and – But that’s another story in itself. I think it is one of the most fascinating historical mysteries and I doubt they‘ll ever solve it. We are going to cover a second category in Jim Adams’s life, the many community efforts he was involved in and his many activities. And I hope we have this in some chronological order, Jim. You were involved with the Boy Scouts in the Marin Council for years and president one time. How did you get involved in this organization, and when?

JA: Stanleigh Arnold came and asked me if I would take on the job as president of the Scout Council; that’s how I got into it and that was in 1936.

CE: Shortly after you moved to Marin?

JA: Yes. And he was interested in the Scouts and it was the Depression and the Scouts were in difficulty, so I became President in ‘36 and was President for six years.

CE: Was your husband, Mrs. Martinelli, also involved deeply in the group?

JA: Jordan was president of this council later.

CE: And the woman we interviewed the other day, Grace Wellman, her husband?

GM: Yes.

CE: Ted was there later, too. Yes, Ted was also President.

CE: What were your responsibilities, Jim?

JA: It was two things. The first place, we had some grand people then. Cap Robinson from Mill Valley was one of them.

CE: Where would you meet?

JA: We would meet in the then Scout Hall, which was a small office in Marin. No, we met in the Bank of Marin.

CE: In San Rafael?

JA: In San Rafael. Will Murray was treasurer of the Boy Scouts Council, and that’s where we would meet. We had monthly meetings, which consisted of reports from the various operations that were going on. There was the camping operation, there was the development operation, and then of course there was the finances. At the time we needed six thousand dollars a year to run the Scout Council. We had about five hundred scouts.

CE: That many?

JA: Yes. It cost about ten dollars a scout.

CE: A year?

JA: Yes. It costs more now.

CE: It would cost ten times that wouldn’t it?

JA: Well it cost more now, but anyway, we needed six thousand and the preceding year we had gotten in three. So we were in to the bank for half a year’s operations. I remember signing a note and I told Will Murray I’d like him to sign it too and he said he couldn’t because he was the President of the bank who was lending the money.

CE: Count me out of that.

JA: He said, “Get Stanley Arnold to sign it.” I said I wouldn’t ask him. Anyway, this worked. We borrowed a campaign manager from Charlie Lennihan who was then over at the Wells Fargo Bank. Remember, this was a depression; everybody was broke. So, in the course of time we got in balance. One of the things I got done was got Ken Bechtel into the scouting movement, at the suggestion of one of my friends, and he became the next president after I was president, and he afterwards became National President of the Boy Scouts of America . So it was an ongoing thing, you went out and visited the various camps. You went to the summer camp which was then on Austin Creek and you –

CE: Austin Creek near Cazadero?

JA: Yes.

CE: End of the railroad.

JA: Yes, up that way. And you went to the Eagle Scout ceremonies and you went to the annual meetings. Lots of nice people were in this.

CE: What would be the percentage of scouts that could earn the Eagle Badge? Ten percent, maybe?

JA: I don’t think that many. I think we were allowed then – No, no, I was thinking of Silver Beaver. We were allowed one Silver Beaver a year then. Eagle Scout, of course, as many as you could produce, but if we made ten Eagle Scouts we were doing pretty well. And it’s still a small fraction of them that gets to be Eagles.

CE: Have you followed the careers of some of these young boys who have been Boy Scouts in those days?

JA: I will say that two Eagle Scouts that I knew were two of the first volunteers for service in World War II. I remember that distinctly, yes. But as to following careers, no.

CE: What is the response today? Do you have a feeling on what’s goes on in scouting today? Are they still pursuing the same standards that prevail in your time?

JA: Oh I think so. I think that to a degree there are some people in scouting who are too conservative.

CE: Too conservative?

JA: Yes, whose views about how scouting ought to be are that it ought to be the way it used to be.

CE: And that’s not possible, is it?

JA: Things have to improve. What has gone on in the past can always be improved.

CE: That’s a wonderful observation from a man of your years.

JA: Well, I’ve been very much in favor of this approach all my life. I remember at an annual meeting that I got up and said to the group there, “You know, everybody here is down on their luck. Here we are in the midst of a depression and we look over and we see what’s going on in Germany and we’re alarmed and concerned.” And, says I, “You’re talking about the future and it’s right here in front of you. Take a look at it. These are the future, these boys that are here in the scouting uniform. Are they scared of it? Well of course they are not.” You need more of that policy in this time, or any time for that matter. I don’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned about conditions that we addressed, but with some confidence that we can manage it.

CE: That’s a very pragmatic approach, Jim, isn’t it?

JA: It’s worthwhile.

CE: Shall we move on, then, to another area of you involvement, the American Legion, which you mentioned earlier and you had ultimately been in command of the Ross Post? Where did you meet though, in your home?

JA: No, we met in the Fire House in Ross.

CE: Fire House in Ross. They gave you the space and – How many were in that group?

JA: I have a little printed booklet of the members. I think there are about thirty or forty of us in the Ross Post of the American Legion. Ted Schmiedell was a member and Nash Borba, and General Pillsbury and Russ Mackey amongst others.

CE: Well most of the members. Well they had to be members who had served in World War I.

JA: Yes.

CE: Initially before World War II what would you say the mission of the American Legion was?

JA: I thought the Ross Post of the American Legion was a pleasant group, and we were interested in gathering each other’s histories, as we did. We had that as an occupation.

CE: Was this written down, some of it?

JA: I think so, but I don’t know who has the records. I don’t have it.

CE: It’s very, well, you know, the reaction after any war or conquest, there is a sudden swing of the pendulum. The war is over, let’s forget it, we don’t need it. Everything is let down. And it’s part of the mission of the American Legion to keep sort of in readiness, or to show the value of preparedness?

JA: American Legion today, I don’t know how I would describe it, because I’m not familiar with it. I know the veterans from World War II formed the AMVets.

GE: Oh, they did?

JA: Yes, they did not think the Legion could be a spokesman effectively for their concerns.

CE: Is it true today that you have two organizations looking out for veterans: the American Legion and the AMVets?

JA: Yes.

CE: Would you comment on the plight of the post-Vietnam War veterans for a moment?

JA: I can describe that by saying that we met an army colonel in his forties who was on his way to Vietnam. He’d been called up out of the reserve to go and to do some more flying. I had a nice talk with him and I said, “I just feel so sorry for you because you are going out there and the American public is not backing you, and it’s an unwelcome enterprise in which you have been called.” And he quite agreed with it.

CE: Do you see a change though in the ten years after our leaving the area? Don’t you see a change in the recognition of the Vietnam veterans finally surfacing and some support being shown to their plight?

JA: Well I was amongst those who felt sympathy for it from the beginning, so I’m not sure about how many cohorts I had, but I had a good many all the way through. It was significant of that enterprise that the American public did not back it and for probably good reasons. In other words, I think it was fundamentally a mistake and I – It’s simply my judgment. I – Be frank about this.

CE: Because the country makes a mistake, that’s no reason to put the stigma upon the men that participated in that mistake. And I do think that there is, finally, ten years later, some general education, at least to the public of what has not been done for the Vietnam soldiers.

JA: We knew – We had a young friend that – One of the Briggs boys, he was in Vietnam. He told us about how he was sent out into the country in charge of a local area. Quite a nice youngster. He said they had to be afraid of you. Yes, they had to be afraid of you. That’s what you were there for, was to establish a dominion.

CE: Well you mentioned earlier this Ross Post of the American Legion. After the war was declared at Pearl Harbor, you really got –

JA: We were instrumental in helping them in civil defense. That’s right.

CE: Let’s move on to another area of your involvement that was also early. You became Chairman of the Committee of Fourteen to Save the Trains and Ferries. What was this all about?

JA: That was when the Northwestern Pacific applied to the Railroad Commission, as it was then called, for permission to quit the service that it was providing. Then that was, of course, a link in the – In fact, it was the rail and ferry service. They were running it. They ran both the rail part and the ferry part.

CE: Was the timing of this at the time when the Golden Gate Bridge was a building –

JA: No, it was after the bridge was built, and the NWP lost patronage in large numbers. And so they had a strong case, and –

CE: Revenues were down, passengers were way down. Was trucking taking over the freight in all that?

JA: No, no, that had nothing to do with it. They wanted to continue their rail line operation from San Rafael to Eureka. That was a lumber business and that was their main business. But they wanted to give up the commute service on which, they said, were losing money. So, the Greyhound people were willing – that had been arranged – to come in and provide transportation as substitute. This actually happened. I was talking one day with Crawford Green about this and I said, “The Marin County Board Of Supervisors does not represent the commuters in any way. Here they are representing the commercial interests and they’re making a deal with the Greyhound people and we ought to put a fight about this,” says I. So Crawford said, “Why don’t you do it?” This is how it got started.

CE: There were fourteen of you?

JA: I organized this group. It included Jake Albert and Matt Hazeltine and Crawford Greene, and Charlie Caruthers and Roger Kent, and altogether there were twelve of us and we put our heads together and we wrote a letter to the Board Of Supervisors saying that we sympathize with their problem having to do with the commute problem, and we’d like to lend our aid towards seeking to solve this thing and we came in on that basis.

CE: Very diplomatic.

JA: Well then when we appeared before the Railroad Commission and we employed for nothing, I mean the spec, an engineer to make a study and a paper for the Railroad Commission and opposed the application with the support of our engineer who figured out if the number of ferries per day were reduced, so that we’d operate two ferries instead of three as the railroad would, that they would save a whole lot of money that way. We formulated some figures indicating that if we still could hold the traffic that the three ferries were carrying, why, then it would pay. At least it would pay on a cash basis. And we signed up – Oh there was a young printer in Sausalito who made up forms for us and we signed up four thousand commuters, to sign up in support of this position. They supported the idea that we would raise the rates eight to ten dollars a month and we would reduce the ferry service from three ferries to two. We went to the Railroad Commission and put that in front of the Commission, and so the Commission made an order, and said they would try it out, which they did. But the trouble with that was that too many of our commuters deserted us. When that new operation was put in and the rates were raised and the bus fare was twelve dollars, why, a lot of people decided they would ride the buses which were more convenient than to have to get aboard a ferry at six in the morning to get to the office at eight o’clock, because of the frequency of service or something like that. So, it didn’t work. And then we also had a vote taken of our committee on a proposition to create a public utility district here in the county, undertake to run a commute service, commit it to service as a public utility thing. Well, our vote came out even, seven to seven. So we couldn’t take a position on that and that failed. But we did nominate directors to the proposed public utility district to support. We named those we would support and all of them got elected, but we lost the election.

CE: As a matter of information, did the railroad keep those right-of-ways?

JA: I don’t know what the railroad did with the rights of way but I – They had varying titles, you see. Some of them were dependent on maintenance and service. And some were not, and I think that’s the position.

CE: Mrs. Kent, one of her dreams always was to reactivate those trains and get those ferries that were so efficient. You know, didn’t a lot of those ferries were sold up, and wound up in Puget Sound and then they’re still pushing around, aren’t they?

JA: Yes.

CE: And here we succumb to these gasoline turbine jobs that were so expensive to purchase and expensive to run. Do you think it at all possible, down the road, to see with the growth of Marin and Sonoma County a reactivation of the rail system, Jim?

JA: I don’t know how to answer that. I just don’t think I have the information.

CE: All right, now let’s move on to another involvement. You told us earlier how you heard about Pearl Harbor playing golf. Has golf been part of your life always?

JA: Relatively, a poor part; I don’t play a very good game. I have a lot of fun but I don’t play a good game.

CE: But you have been a member of the club for some years?

JA: Since ‘36. Before that the club was so broke that they weren’t taking in new members.

CE: I remember interviewing Tom Minto at one time that he told us about the acquisition and the creation of that club as it sits on Marin Municipal Water District property, does it not?

JA: Yes.

CE: And that’s been sort of a little bone of contention with the non-golfers of this community, hasn’t it?

JA: Well there was – I handled that law suit for the club.

CE: Oh, there was a law suit?

JA: Oh yes, there was a suit brought. Wally Meyers instituted the suit and the suit challenged the club’s privilege of occupying public land. It hung around for quite a while and finally got dismissed.

CE: What’s the status of the club today in its tenure? Is it safe?

JA: The club bought the land.

CE: Oh, they did?

JA: Yes, they bought the land from the –

CE: From the Marin Municipal Water District.

JA: The way they did it was they bought a large area of watershed land and traded that purchase they made to the District in exchange for the fee ownership of the club land. Now the club lands are still a watershed for the district.

CE: Oh it still is.

JA: But the club owns it in fee, so that looks to be pretty safe against public acquisition.

CE: What did the club – Just matter of curiosity, how did the club maintain the greens during those drought period throughout the last fifty years? There have been several, I hear.

JA: In the drought – Well, let’s say during the Depression we maintained the greens thoroughly. That’s one thing we did. They were very good greens and that’s where we spent our money.

CE: You actually keep the green.

JA: Kept the greens in good order. Now the whole course is in lovely shape and of course it’s been provided with perhaps as adequate as possible a drainage system and it has enormous bills, as everybody knows. We used to pay the –

CE: It’s a handsome building.

JA: The whole clubhouse?

CE: Yes. Who’s the architect? I think Mr. Schmiedell was personally responsible for seeing to it that it was built exactly as planned. He put in his time up there. He is a very careful and thorough person.

CE: Well his wife, I understand, and Seward McNear created the Lagunitas Club and it could have possibly been the same architect.

JA: It could be.

CE: Let’s move on to the Katherine Branson School. You were a trustee on their board for some years

JA: I was trustee on the board.

CE: Before it became a co-ordinate school, was it?

JA: Yes, it was KBS at the time. And we had – All our girls went there.

CE: Your girls go there?

JA: Yes, yes, all of them. I remember one year in KBS when, this was in the Depression time, and we were up against a relatively small enrollment and the question was, “Are you going to reduce the quality of your instruction?” “Or else, what?” And instead, we wouldn’t reduce the quality of instruction. We went to the bank, borrowed against the land, and carried that year on borrowed money. The next year it came in full flourish again and it just proved our policy was right. And that year a relatively small number of girls had a most magnificent year because everything was supplied for them that would have been supplied for more girls. Katherine Branson was a charming person, lovely.

CE: Yes. She and Mrs. Kent were very good friends and we always regretted we were unable to get her to share her reminiscences with us about the school, but we did get Helen Hind Fortune. Do you know that woman who – She lives in Carmel Valley and she came up. She was in the first graduating class. And she told stories that were just fascinating

JA: Well George Hind was one of the first board members, first president, I guess of the Board of Directors.

CE: Well it has an extraordinary reputation and I guess along with the Hamlin School in San Francisco is one of the oldest private girls school on the Pacific Coast. Is that not true?

JA: Oh I think so, and its reputation amongst the universities is very high.

CE: You think the changing of the school, or would you know, into a coordinate school has been a good thing? Or would you care to comment on that?

JA: Leave me out of it.

CE: All right.

JA: I say that – I mean, I don’t have a basis for discussion.

CE: Well, you know, a few years ago Leonard Richardson, the last headmaster, fought through the Ross Town Council, quite a struggle there to make improvements on the school to accommodate the coordinate school, and many of the townspeople were resisting the fact that the school had grown so much and that it was not the original intent of Katherine Branson to have 310 students in that small acreage.

I want to have you tell us, if you would, a little about your association with St. John’s Church in Ross, and also as a board member of the Episcopal Charities Appeal in the diocese of California and also your involvement with the prison ministry of the Episcopal Diocese. Could you sort of join this together in some way, Jim?

JA: I think so, in an orderly way. This began because we went to – When we settled into Del Mesa, we went to church at St. John’s because it was the community church. We were not Episcopalians.

CE: You were not?

JA: No, neither of us. So one day, John Lefler, who was the Rector, came and asked me if I’d go in the vestry. And I said, “John, I don’t think I’m that good a Christian.” And he said why “Why not?” And I said “Because I think that a good Confucian has an equal shot with me.” And he said, “So do I.” So I said, “All right.”

CE: As long as he understood.

JA: As long as you could be an Episcopalian and hold those views, that’s all right. So that’s how I got on the –

CE: What does being a vestryman mean?

JA: Lots of meetings. Lots of routine things going on at the church. There’s the finances.

CE: The physical responsibility of the church and the running of it –

JA: Well the junior warden is responsible for the physical condition of the church, but the vestry has to do with finances and programs and the every member canvass and all sorts of other business things.

CE: So it’s through this local church in Ross that you became involved in the whole Episcopal scene, through this little start.

JA: Oh yes, surely.

CE: And you mentioned earlier you finally became president and Marin County Deanery of the Episcopal Church and – How did you get involved in this prison ministry?

JA: Well, that’s my son Robert. He’s an Episcopal priest.

CE: Oh, he is!

JA: Yes. And Rob, for some years in Concord, ran a place that he calls Familine House or The Family for ex-prison inmates. This is a place they can come to and serves to help keep them from returning to prison. And this is a great labor and we became quite familiar with this, so that’s the part of the Episcopal Church; it’s prison ministry, and that’s where I got interested in it.

CE: Is it an outreach program in a sense, or –

JA: Oh yes, very much so. It’s outreach, it’s ecumenical, and the law enforcement people look on it very well because it keeps the fellows from coming back.

CE: Generally speaking.

JA: Well its record is very good.

End, Tape 2, Side B

JA: Relating to the prison ministry work, some years ago I volunteered for “into” work and these people who visit inmates at San Quentin who don’t have families to visit them. You go down at least once a month and have a visit with one of the inmates and they are selected for you. You have to have a little training and then the operators of this agency pick the men. So I – My friend in San Quentin was Bobby Blanton and Bobby Blanton and I saw each other regularly, at least once a month for a matter of three or four years down there. Kay knows Bobby Blanton quite well too. She used to go down on the occasions when we had family visit.

CE: Who was the warden at the time you were actively involved there?

JA: There were various wardens. One of them was Mr. Procunier and he was the man under whom we finally got Bobby out.

CE: You got Bobby out!

JA: Yes that’s one of the things I’m very pleased about.

CE: So you have a success experience.

JA: I had a very successful experience. He went to Marin JC. He got elected manager of the basketball team and a member of the Student Council and he worked for the handicapped. Quite an enterprising man who was 49 years old and had the enthusiasm of a high school junior. Yes, well that gives you an insight into things that you wouldn’t have unless you did it. I think that prison is an abominable place.

CE: There was talk when Ronald Regan was Governor of California of phasing out San Quentin, about 1974. What ever happened to that?

JA: The money factor has always been the thing that has come up. There was very considerable talk about a principal of localizing the area institutions, having smaller institutions spread around, so you kept your people home instead of sending them away. Now that hasn’t worked out because it costs too much. That solves the problem. Of course that’s really the reason why that’s been blocked. San Quentin is an atrocious place.

CE: I’ve read several books on the history of it including George Lamont’s and Dr. Stanley, Men at their Worst, Men at their Best, and it seems an awful thing for ten thousand dollars back in the 1850s to sell twenty acres to the State of California just because the man needed money and to put that thing which sits sort of a canker sore at the mouth of this beautiful valley, but that’s history. The population is terribly crowded, over three thousand men there.

JA: Yes. Well you know, two to a cage is something you don’t do with animals.

CE: I have a young neighbor who just recently got a job there. She’s a Stanford graduate and she’s working on an educational program. Each cell has a television set now and that’s the one means you can educate them. So they’re having closed-circuit lessons and the course is given into that medium.

CE: You’re also involved with the Episcopal Charities Appeal in this diocese. What does that involve?

JA: The Episcopal Charities Appeal is a diocesan enterprise, which carries on an annual drive to raise money for the support of now nine different charities that are related to the Episcopal Church.

CE: Where do your monies come from, your membership, your church membership?

JA: Charities Appeal is a diocesan-wide appeal through all the parishes and is accompanied by bus trips to see the charities and by meetings, organization meetings, to develop how you manage the enterprise. And it’s been – last year, for the first year, exceeded its goal. It’s really developed enormously. Last year we aimed for a hundred and twenty thousand, and we got a hundred and forty-five and this year we’re aiming for hundred and sixty-five and hope to get more. All of these charities like Canon Kipp and Clausen House or St. Luke’s Clinic – that’s one of the charities that it supports – all of them are in need of money, some of them desperately so. The Seaman’s Enterprise is another attractive one run by a Captain Joy, who is a Londoner.

CE: Well I am certain that you were welcome for your legal experience and your legal knowledge and also being familiar with the chain of command in military services helps for understanding this larger picture.

JA: Yes. Well, the Board of the Episcopal Charities Appeal is consisted of most interesting and talented people. Quite a number of them are priests; quite a number of them are lay people; some of them represent different agencies and some of them like myself are diocesan wide personnel. So there you are.

CE: Now, somewhat aligned, just because we’re talking about the prison ministry, I notice that you’ve been involved in Juvenile Justice Commission in Marin and also served, rather recently, as a juvenile court referee. And it is my understanding your wife Kay is deeply involved in this effort. Could you explain briefly what this involves for you?

JA: Yes, I could say this has been going on for twenty-odd years. The Juvenile Justice-Delinquency Prevention Commission has two basic functions. Number one function: it is responsible for inquiring into the administration of justice to juveniles. We check into, we visit, we learn what’s going on and we make recommendations and we are authorized to issue summons and get evidence and we’ve done that occasionally. That’s that function. The other function, the Delinquency Prevention Function: it’s stated that our function is to coordinate all public and private agencies dealing with the area of juvenile delinquency. Now that one is as long as your arm. On that one recently there have been developments that promise some degree of competent understanding. The agencies themselves have organized a consortium. There’s thirty-five agencies of dealing with children at risk in Marin County and I have attended those meetings. They are quite interesting. So you really get some of the picture of what the problems are. Then we have been asked by the Board of Supervisors, more recently, to look into the drug problems of youth in Marin and we’ve made an investigation there, an elaborate investigation. We’ve talked with over a hundred people, all volunteer legwork, and wrote up a report which has been very widely publicized and well received because it came up with information that we thought was valid and with ideas that came from all sides without a bias. You know, it’s an unbiased report. It’s really remarkable that we could come up with it unanimously because we didn’t have the same set of ideas when we started, but it goes to show you. So this is an agency – I recently went out to see Judge Broderick just the other day on a matter. We're in contact with the judges. We're in contact with the Board of Supervisors, and we're in contact with the Probation Department and with the various agencies. And this is hard work.

CE: What part of this effort does you wife play a prominent role in?

JA: She's a member and has been president of the Juvenile Court Auxiliary. That's a different organization entirely. That's a service organization. Ours is a statutory one. The law created us. We have powers, only we don't make decisions, we make recommendations. Some years ago we conducted a survey on curfew. We took a year about it, reported to the Board of Supervisors and as a result got a new ordinance. So, those things happen.

CE: I understand that you have been involved, some years ago as a Republican –

JA: I might say, I should say, and forgot to say I was referee for about three years, and listened to about five thousand cases. And that was when we had that 601 as they were called; we don't have them anymore.

CE: What was the 601s?

JA: The 601s were the majority of our cases. Those were the youngsters who were truants or runaway or who did not get along with their families but who had not done anything that could be denominated as criminal. Now they no longer come to the Juvenile Court. They – One of the problems that exist today is what kind of discipline is provided for them. It's not easy to answer that one. As a referee, however, I also heard cases of arson and homicide, serious cases, and I got a considerable understanding of what a responsibility a judge has, as he has to decide. And in this field, it's never sure that the program that you ordered is going to work or not; you don't know.

CE: Are these programs funded by the County in most instances?

JA: Yes. There's some degree of family support, is obliged, is an obligation to those families who can pay for their kids. They're required to contribute, but not to a very great extent. No, the public – It's at public expense, for instance, that we would order the child sent to Sunny Hills, which is one case that I had. The District Attorney wanted him to send him up to the Youth Authority and I was opposed to that and we got him into Sunny Hills. Now, that costs money, costs a good deal of money. But still, it's like getting anything else that's worth doing, and really this youngster is a very good example. He was on his way to a criminal career and somebody else turned him around, and that's a wonderful thing, and priceless really.

CE: I was thinking the other day, Jim, of all the wonderful things that have been done by volunteers in this county, things that have been created. Comes to my mind some of what you were speaking of and even the cultural things like the Marin Music Chest and the Marin Art and Garden Center. And I have been surprised to observe that there are few and fewer women, particularly, who have the time or the inclination to do volunteer work. It's getting harder and harder to get people to give up their time. They're either young couples, both working, married couples – And I wonder how this is going to result. Now, coincident to that, you have the bequest of Mrs. Buck and the establishment, rather the funneling of her largess through the San Francisco Foundation, but it seems to me that I've observed an attitude of people sitting still with their hands out or holding still with their hands out making appeals to the great foundation. And I realize how the monies for County government has eroded since Proposition 13. True? But there is something lacking in the – right now, that everybody turns to the Buck Foundation for a request for financial answer to problems.

JA: To begin with, what you observed in the way of unavailability of volunteers in the numbers, Kay can echo that. She's been trying to find new people coming into Juvenile Court Auxiliary

CE: Grace Wellman was mentioning that to her husband.

JA: This is characteristic of the life we live in. On the other hand, I think any suggestion that the Buck Foundation is being appealed to, as a money substitute for volunteer work, is a misconception. I've no doubt that the funds available through the Buck Foundation can be used to great advantage in Marin County and that probably there's more need then the Buck Foundation can supply. Put it that way. Some of the enterprises I'm familiar with the Buck Foundation has funded are very worthwhile things. I've no doubt about that. And this group in the consortium who are professionals – To illustrate another thing about modern life and that is they know more and they can do better work than the amateur.

CE: That's true.

JA: Yes. And there are a lot of them. There are more such things now then there used to be. The query is to some extent, to what extent are some of them crossing the same line and duplicating the same work, but they've gotten together to try to work that out.

CE: Thank you. Shall we move on to – I'd like you to touch again on that statement you made earlier that you have been involved earlier in your life. You're a member of the Republican Party and you did assist and do some political work for the Water District earlier on. Did you not?

JA: Yes.

CE: Was that sort of a –

JA: That was a Meadow Club affair.

CE: Support Tom Kent and Leo Stanley?

JA: Yes, that's right. Doc Cook and I were sort of managers of the enterprise.

CE: And of course they did succeed, didn't they?

JA: They, we succeeded, indeed we did. That was the time when the Club was at risk.

CE: Let's talk about some of your other memberships. Now, I see you've been a member of the Pacific Union Club.

JA: Yes.

CE: For some years?

JA: I'll be a fifty-year member by this August.

CE: That takes you to San Francisco and keeps you in touch with that role?

JA: I'm not a frequent visitor there although I do enjoy the news of the Club.

CE: You're also a member of the World War I Overseas Fliers.

JA: Yes.

CE: You didn't mention that much; you briefly touched on it. You meet, reunion every year?

JA: We have been going to the fliers’ reunion for several years, now last past.

CE: Where did you go last year?

JA: Last year we went to Dayton, Ohio. No, beg your pardon. The year before we went. Last year we went to Colorado Springs to the Air Force Academy.

CE: Is this a fellowship arrangement?

JA: It's very much, very closely related to the military. It's, yes, in a sense that we receive VIP treatment and we represent morale in the sense of the old-timers being around. We went to Dayton. We went to Cape Canaveral. The first time we went, we went overseas to meetings in London and Amsterdam

CE: Wonderful. I notice and I see here you're a member of the Marin Council of the Navy League?

JA: Yes, I've been a member of the Navy League a long time. Not very active.

CE: Not very active. Will you be going to their meetings on Wednesday evening?

JA: I – No, I can't make it on Wednesday.

CE: Have you been a member of the Marin County Historical Society?

JA: Yes, I was a director for a while, yes.

CE: I understand through Elsie Mazzini, their current president, they hope to finally sometime get a building to put their collection in and they are working towards that goal. As a historian, I've been pleased to see the results of your efforts during the bicentennial year. And tell us briefly, as editor of that Heritage Committee, you created what?

JA: That was a very enjoyable, a lot of work because I became acquainted with and visited so many Marin County Historians, including Jack Mason, amongst others, and he was very helpful. So I was running around like the, the fellow that carries the barrel of bricks up, you know, visiting with those people. And they would offer to write articles which was what we were after and I went and saw Jack Craemer and arranged to have them printed. So we got them printed in the IJ, as you know. Then we – Somebody had the idea to have a book on this.

CE: How many did you print, I forget Jim, of this book? Do you remember?

JA: We printed, I think a thousand. No, wait a minute. I think we printed nine hundred paperbacks and about six hundred hard covers.

CE: You could have done twice that.

JA: We could have done more, yes

CE: Any possibility of reprinting that and –

JA: I don't know. I can't answer that. I've been told by the Commission that anybody who would develop a plan for that would have their support. They'd allow it.

CE: There's some wonderful vignettes in that book, just wonderful. You have always been interested in conservation. That's why, as I said earlier, to me you are a renaissance man. You are talented and interested in so many diverse fields. The Marin Conservation League, an early group that –

JA: Oh, I think, like most of our contemporaries, we were early on in the Conservation League, yes.

CE: Caroline Livermore.

JA: Yes indeed.

CE: Give me an impression of her. I unfortunately never met her.

JA: Caroline Livermore was a charming and dominant personality. Very, very, really thoughtful and capable person of very firm views and very charming style. When I was on the vestry – I remember this – we decided to reduce the sexton’s pay because St. John's was so broke and Caroline would have none of it. So I was told by the other vestrymen that I would have to be the spokesman to Caroline. And I was instructed to call her up and say that the vestry would put up X dollars if she would put up Y dollars.

CE: She do it?

JA: Oh yes, sure.

CE: We had the pleasure of interviewing one of her sons, George, and Mrs. Kent wanted some member of her family to share the reminiscences of –

JA: You possibly could get Ike. Of course, he's a great target.

CE: Who knows him? Do you?

GM: I do.

CE: All right, let's think about that.

JA: See, he, he ran Reagan's water business in Sacramento and he's a very important person in his own right.

CE: In one of the vignettes George spoke of, he said, “As a boy, I was always placed at a card table at the entrance of our home and had to collect a dollar from every woman what ever came. And one woman said to me one day, ‘Can't I ever come in your home without putting a dollar on the card table?’” Marin Art and Garden Center, been a member of that with your wife?

JA: Yes.

CE: For many years.

KA: Yes.

CE: Any particular guild interests you?

JA: No.

CE: No, just generally support?

JA: Yes.

KA: Oh, well the Moya Library.

CE: Oh, the Moya Library, of course. That brings me to the Ross Valley Players. Now you mentioned earlier that you had some experience as an actor.

JA: Yes.

CE: During high school and college days.

JA: Yes, that's right.

CE: And your wife volunteered that you had been in a couple of shows that were – The Late George Apley.

JA: I did the Late George Apley. I did Kellogg the Bird Man and that was Bill Gwynn's composition and he, he said that he was going to write something that had no off-color humor in it and see if it would work. And it worked like a charm; it was really very good. And I was in Flora Dora Sextet Show. You know, this was all men.

CE: And you were Can-Can?

JA: Yes, did the Can-Can.

CE: Kay, does he have good legs?

KA: Oh yes, they all did; they were marvelous. They were trained by Gladys Hodgson.

CE: Let's see, other activities: Stanford Associates, what does that mean?

JA: Stanford Associates is an organization that supports the University by raising money.

CE: You can't get away from it.

JA: No, that's right. I was one of the original members of it when it was organized way back when, and I've been a member ever since.

CE: The cost of a private university education today is staggering.

JA: It's about nine-thousand, I think, tuition.

CE: That's what I understand. But of course that's just a reflection of what the dollar isn't worth. How do families do it today?

JA: I don't understand myself. Of course, Stanford has lots of scholarships because they have such high requirements for admission and they like to have scholarship students.

CE: Now Jim, before we digress to our final category, which is your law career, I notice that you and your wife have done a lot of traveling interspersed through all these other activities. What, you just get a little tired of the pressure of all this good volunteer work? You've had some wonderful trips to Greece and the Near East and Egypt. That was in 1960.

JA: That's right, yes.

CE: You went around the world.

JA: Yes, that was ‘62.

CE: With your fishing gear?

JA: Yup.

CE: 1970, you went to the South Seas, Bora Bora, Tahiti, New Zealand etc.

KA: Australia.

CE: Australia. And as recently as 1974 you went back to England and parts of Europe. Did you keep any diaries of these trips?

JA: Yes indeed, I did. I have for the trip to Greece, the Near East, Egypt and Nubia. I have a three-volume work I'll show you I've put together.

CE: Wonderful.

JA: And for the around-the-world tour, another three volumes. This is all handwritten and illustrated and it took a good deal of time to put together, but I have those records.

CE: You mean you took pictures as well?

JA: Kay took the pictures.

CE: Oh, Kay's the photographer.

JA: So, for the Australia trip I have a diary which I quit writing when I fell on my face in the hospital, so to speak. That's the end of the diary. I didn't keep a diary when I was in the hospital. I don't remember it that well.

CE: When you were in the hospital here, you mean, after you returned?

JA: No, in Australia.

CE: Oh, Australia.

KA: For two months!

CE: Oh dear!

JA: So, for then I've also – Diary writings of a trip in ’74. I've a lot of diaries.

CE: Well you know. I'd like to make an observation. One reason oral history is being done today via this tape recorder is that fewer and fewer people are writing letters, Jim. Fewer and fewer people are keeping diaries and journals, and their experiences are going to be lost. You're an exception to the general rule, even though you're a man of letters. People have become lazy and they don't do this, which is the prime source for scholars to draw upon.

JA: Oh, yes.

CE: Now all we are doing is collecting testimony that will be in the transcript format that someday, hopefully, some scholar down the road will read and make a determination of the history of that era.

JA: Well I published my grandparents' writings, Grandpa Adams and Grandma Adams, and the letters. Those are letters, and those letters are so vivid things! They're extraordinarily descriptive; they're just fresh, you know. They are not subsequent recollections.

CE: No because they are annotated at the time.

JA: They're written then.

CE: I discovered a diary of my mother recently that she wrote in ‘19, say, ‘20, which is only, what, sixty years ago? And it was extraordinary to me because I had never seen, known my mother when she had those dreams and thoughts and creativity, and it was exciting. I just think what it must mean, to anybody who does research, to read something that's occurring at the time.

JA: It brings relatives to life that I have never had anything, knowledge of, except to hang on a genealogical tree and they become living persons.

CE: Well I presume that your children and grandchildren will have entry to this material, or are you presuming to deposit them in the archives?

JA: We haven't decided – We have. I have some correspondence on with Stanford where I've sent my father's material and they are interested in acquiring what we would like to give them if we are willing to do that. And of course we have our World War II correspondence and also we have the correspondence written when we were engaged.

CE: Oh, that's good, that's good!

JA: That's more intelligent than we thought it would –

CE: Are you reading it?

JA: Oh yes, we've been reading it, yes.

CE: Well I do think –

KA: And you've given your grandfather's papers?

CE: Your grandfather's papers also?

JA: Oh yes, I have my grandfather's papers. I gave those to the Iowa Historical Society.

CE: Very good. Well I do feel that a university, in my judgment, is that a university might be a best depository for some things. Even in our county, we have the California Room, named for Mrs. Kent, but who knows how long these rooms are going to be around where a university is more apt to be there fifty years from now and a hundred years from now.

JA: My cousin, Jim Graves, with whom I'm in correspondence about the Breakey records, he has a down on sending things to the universities. He says, and this is what he says. He says, “You go and ask to see the letters that your grandfather wrote and so it will take some time before they find them. Then, if they haven't shoved them away someplace because somebody said they're not worth keeping, why, then they will bring them to you but they will put you in a room and you can't have a pen or pencil there because you cannot look at this original material with a pen or a pencil in hand for fear you will mar them.”

CE: Well there has been destruction at the Bancroft Library.

JA: Well this is the most lovely letter because my father was –

CE: Do you agree with this, Jim?

JA: No, I think –

CE: I don't either.

JA: I think the university is –

CE: Is the proper place.

JA: Is the proper place, sure.

CE: And they also have the staffing to professionally offer the librarian expertise and curator know-how.

JA: I took Mr. Chang to –

End, Tape 3, Side A

CE: Continue with your story, Jim.

JA: Mr. Fu-Yung Chang, who had his ninetieth birthday a year ago, and I was present on that.

CE: Where does this gentlemen live?

JA: He lives in San Francisco. He is now an American citizen. He was an important member of the Kuomintang Government in China and while there, no, subsequently wrote a memoir of his experiences in government work. He had correspondence with Mr. T.V. Soong, who was a high member of that –

CE: Soong Family?

JA: Yes, what they call the Kuomintang Group. So I said to him I thought Stanford would like to have his memoirs reposed there, and he liked the idea. So we went down to Stanford, and they, of course were delighted and we met with the professor of Oriental Languages who spoke Mandarin with my friend, Mr. Chang, while his wife and I discussed things like juvenile delinquency. So we went over to the Hoover Library, the Hoover Institution, where some of T.V. Soong's papers were in existence and Mr. Chang and I were over there and they were showing us the Soong correspondence and Mr. Chang pointed his finger at one letter and said, ”That's my letter. I wrote it.” Yes, so you see, this is an illustration of what an institution can do that has proper methods.

CE: And the alumni will make endowments to a school that can be directed in these preservation areas.

JA: Well, we all went out and helped Stanford raise three hundred million here a few years ago. Three hundred million dollars is a lot of money.

CE: Jim, I want to thank you for sharing so much of your reminiscences. I think we'll call a halt to this and continue the third category of your fascinating life, your career as a lawyer, at some future date very shortly. Thank you so much. It has been a pleasure talking with you today.

JA: You're welcome.