Harold Simmons Tate papers

1903

10 December. Harold Simmons Tate was born in Abbeville, South Carolina, the eldest child of Guy Tillman Tate (1875-1961) and Nellie Simmons Tate (1885- 1939)

1921

Graduated from Abbeville High School

1921-1925

Attended Clemson College, Clemson, S. C., and graduated with a B. S. degree

1925

September. Accepted teaching position in the Department of Industrial Education, Clemson College

2 June. Commissioned Second Lieutenant, Infantry, U. S. Army Officers’ Reserve Corps

1926

Enrolled in Columbia University’s Teachers College, New York, N. Y., and began graduate studies

1928

4 February. Married Cleone Clayton (1904-1986), the daughter of Dr. Lawrence Garvin Clayton and Martha Irene Adelaide Smith Clayton of Central, S. C.

1929

Awarded Master of Arts degree in Industrial Education by Teachers College, Columbia University

1930

26 July. Promoted to Captain, U. S. Army Officers’ Reserve Corp

1936

Began study for Ed. D. degree at Pennsylvania State College

1941

18 March. Called to active duty with U. S. Army and assigned to 24th Infantry, an African-American regiment, at Fort Benning, Georgia

1942-1944

Served in the Pacific theatre as battalion executive officer, and later, as Provost Marshall, at Efate, in the New Hebrides Islands, and in same capacity on Noumea, New Caldonia

1945

Began work in Textile Division, Supreme Command Allies Pacific (SCAP), Tokyo

1947

19 February. Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, U. S. Army Officers‘ Reserve Corps, and separated from regular army. Continued as head of the Textile Division as a civilian

1948

25 May. Resigned as Head of Textile Division, SCAP, in order to take a similar job with the Chinese government in Shanghai

1949

September. Returned to the United States after Shanghai fell (May) to the Chinese communists

1950-1951

Fulbright Lecturer in Vocational Education, Manila, Philippines

1951

Completed dissertation and awarded Doctorate in Education, Pennsylvania State College

1951-1953

Chief of Textile Division, Mutual Security Agency, Athens, Greece

1968

1 December. Retired from U. S. Government service; moved to Columbia, S. C.

1953

Accepted position as Education Advisor, U. S. Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia

1982

12 April. Died in Columbia, S. C. Buried in Elmwood Cemetery

by Ron E. Bridwell

Harold Simmons Tate was, for most of his professional life, an educator who enjoyed a productive career as professor of Industrial Education at Clemson College from 1925 until 1941; but perhaps his most important work was done from 1945 until 1953 when he used his knowledge of textiles to advise the governments of several foreign countries--Japan, China, the Philippines, and Greece--on various questions and problems related to the textile industry.

First, he helped rebuild Japan’s post-war industrial economy as head of the Textile Division, on General Douglas MacArthur’s staff in Tokyo from 1945 until 1948. In May of 1948, he moved to Shanghai to serve as textile advisor to the Chinese Nationalist government, a position he held until the fall of Shanghai to the Communist forces eventually forced him to flee the country. He left China in September 1949, returned to the United States, and continued to act on behalf of the Nationalist Chinese as purchasing agent until August 1950. At that time, Harold was awarded a Fulbright grant to serve as a visiting lecturer in vocational education in the Philippines for a period of nine months. Headquartered in Manila, he traveled throughout the country visiting vocational education programs where he gave lectures and offered suggestions to improve both programs and facilities in schools. He also contributed several articles to Philippine educational publications.

When his Fulbright year ended in June 1951, he applied for and received an appointment as Textile Specialist in Greece with the Economic Cooperation Administration, an American agency that funneled aid to a country ravaged by its post-World War II struggle against Communist insurgents. Harold spent two years there helping revive a moribund textile industry. When his responsibilities ended in Greece, he returned to the United States and accepted a position at Fort Benning, Georgia, as educational advisor to the commandant of the U. S. Army Infantry School. That job combined his knowledge of educational theory with his extensive military experience and led to a productive fifteen years during which he wrote and revised The Infantry School’s curriculum, embraced new technology for training, including the use of television, and directed special studies of many components of the army’s training procedures. Upon his retirement in 1968, he and his wife Cleone relocated to Columbia where his son Simmons practiced law. Until his death in 1982, Harold Tate remained an active participant in local social, religious and educational organizations.

Harold Tate recounted his early life in “Life and Personality Sketch of H. S. Tate,” written in 1928. After a brief overview of his ancestry, summed up by the claim “I am Anglo-Saxon by descent,” Tate focused on his school experiences. In a “little country school house” near Calhoun Falls, South Carolina, where “all ten grades were in one room,” Tate began his education. The family moved a few miles to Abbeville when Tate was just starting third grade. Upon the suggestion of a cousin, young Harold gained admittance to the fifth grade by telling a “white lie,” but discovered that he could not do the work. As a result, he “flunked” and was required to repeat the grade. In high school, he “played three years football, one year baseball, and one year basketball.” When he was in the tenth grade, in 1919-1920, he “went to school from 9 AM to 2 PM, from 2 PM to 4 PM I practiced athletics, from 4 PM to 12 PM I worked in the railroad shops as ‘call boy.’” Working for the Seaboard Railroad earned him a monthly salary of $125, but the schedule “very nearly ruined my health as well as my chance for an education,” he remarked. In 1921 he graduated from Abbeville High School “without any particular honors,” but was interested in going to college where he had planned to study electrical engineering. He recalled that as a young boy “I delighted in making electrical apparatus and in trying to set the house on fire in other ways.”

In the summer of 1921, he won a competitive scholarship to Clemson College and entered the freshman class in 1921; however, the terms of his scholarship required that he pursue a degree in either agriculture or textiles. He chose textiles and soon discovered that “Textile Industrial Education seemed to offer a better opportunity for a young man however, so to this course I changed.” Even with a scholarship, Harold struggled to earn money to pay for his schooling. During summer vacations, he worked at different jobs: in 1922, he was an assistant mechanic at Covar’s Garage in Abbeville; in 1923 and 1925 he worked at Saxon Mills in Spartanburg where he made eleven dollars per week and, after paying $4.50 for board and 50 cents for rent, pocketed $6.00 every pay day. He also found it necessary to borrow money to complete his education and secured a student loan from the Harmon Foundation of New York City, a debt he was able to pay off in June 1927.

While a Clemson student, Harold pursued the general education requirements—English, history, and mathematics—and the specialized courses required for his degree: thirty-seven hours in textile manufacturing and textile engineering. He also signed up for teacher training courses, including eleven hours in Industrial Education and three hours in Educational Psychology. Although Harold offered little information about his academic life at Clemson in his “Life and Personality Sketch,” he did mention one incident when discussing his “high sense of honor.” “When a Junior in college I was offered the Organic Chemistry question (a very difficult examination) for $1.00,” he recalled, but “I refused to take the questions even though most of the other boys took them.” Harold’s academic record while at Clemson was solid with most “Excellent” grades coming in courses—Fabric Construction, Roving Frames, and Cotton Grading, for example--related to his major. In his organic chemistry class, he earned a “Satisfactory” grade. As a Clemson student, Harold was required to take courses in military science each semester and to participate in both drill and classroom work. During his freshman year, he progressed from “passed” to “satisfactory” to “excellent” in that course and for the rest of his college career achieved “satisfactory” grades. During the summer of 1924, he completed the advanced infantry course at the R. O. T. C. training camp, Camp McClellan, Alabama. Upon graduation from Clemson in June 1925, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve Officers’ Corp.

Harold participated in a variety of activities while a student. He joined the Calhoun Literary Society, served as sergeant-at-arms in 1923 and corresponding secretary in 1924. He was also a member of the Jail-Birds Club during his freshman year and participated in the Bible class as well. As a textile major, he was part of the Textile Club and, as a resident of Abbeville County, qualified for the Abbeville Country Club. Although Clemson offered few opportunities for socializing, Harold attended dances, parties and banquets when he had the chance. The first two days of January 1924, while at home for the holidays, Harold went to dances each evening. He recorded in his Clemson scrapbook that he “had a knockout time with ‘Tepischorean’ art.” He also escorted a young lady whom he described as the “sweetest girl in the world” to the Junior-Senior banquet in the college mess hall on 2 May 1924. And he obviously earned his reputation as a ladies’ man. On one occasion in the fall of 1924, the college paper, The Tiger, ran a humorous notice titled “It’s Hell, Tate.” “Tate (opening a letter and finding it signed ‘Margaret’) [:] “How in the world do I know who this is from. I write to five girls named Margaret.” A few days later, Harold received a letter from Spartanburg dated 7 November 1924 with the clipped article from The Tiger pinned to the paper with only the signature “Margaret.” Perhaps it was his focus on his social life that prompted the facetious statement included in his senior sketch in Taps, the school’s annual, that “Harold was an earnest student, and although obstacles were thrown in his pathway by the faculty in the forms of examinations, by his perseverance and determination he has reached the goal for which he strove.”

Harold also played football while a student at Clemson. A 1953 newspaper article recounted the exploits of Clemson’s 1923 team which had claimed the unofficial state championship with wins over all in-state opponents and an overall record of six wins, two losses, and one tie. In a photograph of the team members present for the 30th anniversary of the season published in The Greenville News, Harold is shown standing in the backfield next to his life-long friend Bratton Williams. “For four years Harold helped to mold a football team, serving unsung and unpraised on the scrubs, giving all his fight and courage that his Alma Mater might be well represented,” the editor of Taps explained in the brief biography printed with Harold’s senior picture in 1925.

“In 1925 I was graduated from the Clemson Agricultural College and was given a job as Assistant Professor of Industrial Education with my Alma Mater,” Harold wrote in his “Life and Personality Sketch.” During his first year as a teacher, Harold worked part-time and taught courses in textiles and teacher training at nearby Central High School and at Clemson College. At the end of the 1925-26 session, Harold was given a full-time position at Clemson along with a $500 increase in his salary. Harold also met the person who would become his wife during his first year as a professor.

Cleone Clayton was from Central, a small town four miles east of Clemson, the daughter of Dr. Lawrence Garvin Clayton, a prominent physician, and his wife Martha Irene Adelaide Smith Clayton. After dating for two years, Harold and Cleone were quietly married 4 February 1928 in Anderson, South Carolina. Cleone had completed the academic course of study, equivalent to a high school program, at Wesleyan Methodist College in Central and was awarded a diploma on 28 May 1921. She then attended Anderson College in Anderson, South Carolina. Cleone’s father had practiced medicine in Pickens County since 1878 and had been one of the founders of Wesleyan Methodist College in 1906. Cleone grew up with ten siblings, seven sisters and three brothers, and was especially close to sisters Faith and Eunice throughout her life.

“During the winter of 1926-27 I took graduate work at Columbia University to better prepare myself to hold the job I was then on,” Harold wrote in 1928. He enrolled in the Teachers College of Columbia University in New York City in September 1926 for the winter session 1926-27 and completed eighteen graduate credits by the end of the term. The summer of 1927 he spent at the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee and added five more courses to his transcript. He returned to New York for the summer sessions of 1928 and 1929, completed his degree requirements and on 18 December 1929 was awarded a Master of Arts degree with a designation of Director of Industrial Arts and Vocational Education. The summers of 1931 and 1932 saw him back in Nashville for more work at George Peabody. The additional schooling paid off because when Clemson College created the Division of Industrial Education within the Textile Department during the academic year 1927-28, Harold was appointed head of the new division.

Harold’s graduate training exposed him to the latest concepts and practices in the field of education and provided him with information to share with his Clemson colleagues. Shortly after his return from Columbia University in the spring of 1927, Harold delivered a talk to Clemson’s faculty on “the Project Method of Teaching,” an idea developed and popularized by William H. Kilpatrick, a progressive Teachers College faculty member. Harold made it clear that it was not his “purpose in this paper to advocate any method of teaching… but rather to tell in as clear a manner as possible, just what the project method of teaching is as understood by some of the leading educators of the United States.” Again, on 15 December 1927, Harold, as assistant professor of education, spoke before the faculty on the place of mathematics in the curriculum. Clearly, Harold was becoming one of Clemson’s most respected young faculty members.

Professor Tate, in addition to his duties at the college, continued to serve in the U. S. Army’s officers reserve corps and spent two weeks at camp almost every summer. During the academic year, he completed army extension courses required to qualify for promotions in rank. He became a first lieutenant effective 26 July 1930 and was promoted to captain 11 September 1934. In his diary for 24 March 1935, he commented that he had worked on army correspondence courses for eight hours.

Harold apparently planned to make Clemson his permanent home and in 1931 purchased a tract of forty-four acres near Clemson from Olive Boggs Newton. Known as “Pleasant Curve,” the property was between Central and Clemson, and lay to the south of the old Southern Railroad right-of-way near the Greenville Highway. The Tates moved into the existing house on the property and lived there until the winter of 1935-1936 when contractor Walker Bearden completed a two-story house for the family. The new house provided a more comfortable place in which the Tate Family, now with three members after the birth of Harold Simmons Tate, Jr., could live and entertain friends and extended family.

By the end of the decade, the Tates had added a service station on their property at the intersection of the Greenville Highway and Highway 139. Jack Tate, Harold’s brother, ran the station in 1940, but in 1941 the station was leased to other operators. Because the station was “so close” to the Tates’ residence, they retained “the right to terminate this lease if leased premises should become the hangout of drunken parties…or shall begin to acquire the reputation of a ‘disreputable joint.’” Harold also used part of his land for small-scale farming, keeping chickens and cows, growing vegetables in his garden, and producing a few bales of cotton. All of these ventures allowed Harold to supplement his meager college salary that had, during the depression years of the 1930s, suffered from periodic reductions due to declining state appropriations.

Professor Tate was a very active member of Clemson’s faculty during the 1920s and 1930s. He taught his regular courses in industrial education, supervised students from his department who were engaged in practice teaching, gave speeches to numerous campus and community groups, served on college committees, produced research studies and papers, and began serious work toward his doctorate. During the spring term in 1929, Harold taught three classes: Industrial Education 46 (Problems in Industrial Education); Industrial Education 44 (Practice Teaching); and evening classes on alternating evenings off-campus in near-by Central and Newry for students who were practicing teaching. That schedule was typical of the course load that Harold handled each semester. Administrative duties also occupied much of his time. Harold recorded in his diary for 18 December 1933 that he had “started writing up courses which are to appear in catalog” and that he “had conference with [Professor] Crandall about curriculum for various courses in Vocational Education.”

Harold also gave informal talks and formal addresses to education and community groups as part of the general expectations for a faculty member. In May 1930, he addressed the graduating class of the Continuation School in Calhoun Fall on “Educational Opportunities of Today.” He spoke about the opportunities offered by vocational education and observed: “we are approaching a democracy in Education wherein every individual will have an equal chance to get real worthwhile knowledge.” On Confederate Memorial Day 1933, he explained the origin and meaning of that commemoration. After paying homage to Southern women and their devotion to their loved ones, he turned to the surviving Southern soldiers. “Left among us are still a few of the old confederate soldiers of the Civil War,” he observed. “We should do all within our power to ease their declining years as a token of our appreciation.” Before the Seneca public school teachers on 6 October 1936, Harold talked about “Activities in the New School.” He presented an overview of the available literature on the subject of the progressive educational practices espoused by John Dewey and others, suggested an outline for activities for a typical school day, and acknowledged that the “New School” concept was subject to valid criticism, including the complaint that it “takes all the time of [the] teacher in planning.”

To the students of Calhoun- Clemson High School, Harold presented a talk “On Guidance” on 18 April 1940 and suggested that of the “people looking for work, not one in six is getting adequate vocational advice.” He recommended that students start planning for their first job five years before they entered the job market. In most of these talks and addresses, Harold represented and, in subtle ways, promoted Clemson’s Industrial Education Department. At other times, his talks were obviously focused on encouraging students to take courses offered by Clemson College. Harold noted in his diary on 18 April 1935: “Made my first talk over the radio today. Station WAIM located at Anderson College, Anderson, SC. I talked on training Industrial Education teachers at Clemson College, SC.” In a question and answer format, possibly for use in another radio broadcast, Harold responded to a question about courses in Educational and Vocational Guidance planned for the 1939 summer session. Many schools in the state were in the process of setting up guidance programs, Harold observed, and “to meet this need the course in guidance at Clemson will let each student propose a plan of guidance which will really carry out the objectives of education in his or her school.”

Professor Tate, as part of his academic responsibility, wrote papers and contributed to broader studies in his areas of expertise. In 1934, Clemson’s president, E. W. Sikes, appointed Tate to a committee charged with studying South Carolina’s social and economic needs and reporting their findings to the faculty. The committee’s report concluded, “The two basic sources of inertia to progress in South Carolina are poverty and illiteracy.” Harold’s contributions to the committee’s report can be seen in the sections on vocational and specialized education. The committee supported trade schools, vocational guidance and “revised curricula in the institutions of higher learning in South Carolina so as to provide the training demanded of statesmen, business and professional men and other leaders,” all ideas that Harold advocated.

In May 1937, Tate participated in a two-week summer program at Fort McPherson, Georgia, conducted by members of Clemson’s faculty for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Tate and John Leland Brock, assistant professor of Vocational Education, contributed a section on “Organizing Courses of Study” to a longer study guide compiled for the project. In 1939, Robert L. Sumwalt, chairman of the State Planning Board, asked Professor Tate to “prepare for us a few pages on this subject [Industrial Education], which we can use as a basis in our report” on the factors “which influence the establishment of industry in the state.” Tate compiled a forty-three page paper titled “Industrial Education, A Factor in the Development of Industry,” and submitted it to Sumwalt’s committee on 1 April 1940. W. H. Washington, Dean of the School of Vocational Education at Clemson, in the foreword to Tate’s study, suggested “the citizens of South Carolina will do well to consider and to use what is now available through our state educational system” now that “Professor Tate has pointed to many of the problems involved.”

Even though he was a successful teacher and a respected expert in the field of Industrial Education, Tate felt the need to earn a doctorate. On 8 March 1935 he noted in his diary: “Went to Columbia with Washington. Saw Dr. Fulmer & discussed with him subject for dissertation.” Although he had completed his most recent graduate courses during the summer of 1932 at George Peabody, Harold decided that Pennsylvania State College offered the strongest program in industrial education in the nation. In June 1936, Harold wrote to Dr. F. Theodore Struck, head of the school’s Department of Industrial Education, and requested permission to begin graduate work there. Dr. Struck responded with, “I feel sure that we can arrange to have you take your doctorate here even though your schedule is not regular.” He also advised Harold to begin work immediately and also recommended the Doctor of Education degree because “it has the advantage of permitting you to take your work entirely in the summer sessions whereas the Ph. D. requires a year of continuous residence.” Harold completed two courses during the summer of 1936 and one more during the summer of 1937. He was granted permanent admission to the graduate school on 4 August 1937 and, at that time, had his previous graduate work evaluated by school officials. He was awarded credit for one year plus seventeen weeks of graduate residence credit. Pennsylvania State would also allow Dr. Struck to “arrange to give you credit by examination for work that you no doubt have taught and with which you are thoroughly familiar, but which was not taken in course at an institution.” Because Tate was expected to teach in Clemson’s summer program and was also required, as a US Army reserve officer, to spend two weeks at camp each summer, which he usually did, it was difficult to schedule summer courses. In March 1938, Tate applied for a grant from the General Education Board that would, as he wrote Dr. Struck, “allow me to complete my work for the doctorate at Penn. State as soon as possible.” Tate was hopeful that release time from Clemson would allow him to finish work for his degree within a year; however, he learned in late May that he had not received the fellowship. Nonetheless, he returned to Penn State for a brief time during the summer of 1938 and earned two more graduate credits.

During the fall of 1938, Tate applied for the position of State Supervisor of Industrial Education in West Virginia. Apparently, he was not unhappy with his Clemson situation, but the vacant position paid $3,600, an attractive salary for an academic. Dr. Struck wrote a letter for Harold in support of his candidacy and commended him for his “fine character and ... pleasing personality.” “We have come to regard him highly [at Penn State],” Struck wrote, “ not only as a graduate student but as a leader in industrial education who has a sound philosophy of both practical arts and vocational education.” Even though Tate was not successful with his job application, it was clear that he had established a national reputation in the field of Industrial Education. L. H. Dennis, the executive secretary of the American Vocational Association and a frequent correspondent, noted in a March 1939: “Your name has been mentioned a number of times here by certain ones of us in Washington who are interested in your welfare. Perhaps one of these days something of interest might appeal to you.” In 1940, Harold was listed, for the first time, in Who’s Who in American Education.

With the support of Dr. Struck, Tate applied to the Julius Rosenwald Fund in January 1939 for financial support for a proposed study on “The Negro in Industry in the South.” The purpose of the study, Tate wrote, was “to find out just what the situation is with reference to the Negro in industry.” “Since the writer is in charge of the training of white industrial teachers at Clemson College… he believes that the knowledge of the Negro in industry will help give better background to white industrial teachers…,” he concluded. He planned to use part of the study as his doctoral dissertation. Professor Struck endorsed Tate’s proposal: “I like the plan of work outlined by Professor Tate. It reflects sound judgment, familiarity with the social and economic needs of the South, and a foreward-looking, progressive, point of view.” Unfortunately, the fellowship was not awarded and Harold started investigating other potential dissertation topics. In the meantime, Harold continued to accumulate course credits with the generous cooperation of his doctoral advisory committee, headed by Dr. Struck. In April 1940, the committee allowed six credits for a field study that Harold had conducted and then had published as a Clemson College Bulletin. By June, Harold had formulated a new topic for his dissertation. He planned to examine “the duties and responsibilities of state supervisors of industrial education” using a detailed survey to elicit information from the holders of that position in various states. Dr. Struck approved the idea and offered to discuss appropriate techniques during the summer while Harold was at Penn State during the summer of 1940. Harold not only enrolled in a course for credit, he also taught two classes that summer. Those responsibilities left him little time for dissertation work, as he acknowledged in an August letter to Cleone. “I haven’t done much organized work on my dissertation but I have had a number of conferences on it,” he wrote. In another late August letter, Harold remarked, “I surely am enjoying my teaching and would like to be considered again….” He also mentioned “some of [the] Ind. Ed. boys are having to leave due to emergency training programs.” As soon as he returned home, he also had to perform his two week tour of duty as a reserve officer. He spent the time at Jacksonville, Florida, as he had done the summer before, working at Headquarters, Second Military Area.

Although the war against Germany had been a reality since 1939 and the policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt allied the United States with England and France, the Tate family seemed little affected by those realities until early in 1941. In February, Tate received a notice from Headquarters, Second Military District, that he had been selected for one year’s active duty at Camp Croft, South Carolina, and that he should take a physical examination as soon as possible. Harold wrote to Dr. Struck about the new development: “I may have to defer action on my dissertation for a year.” Harold’s orders were changed, however, and he was ordered to report to Fort Benning, Georgia, on 19 March for duty with the Twenty-Fourth United States Infantry. This unit had been organized on 1 November 1869 and, from the beginning, was composed of African-American soldiers with white officers. The regiment served in the west during the frontier wars of the 1870s and 1880s and saw service in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and in the Philippines during the prolonged insurrection there. After duty along the Mexican border during World War I, the regiment was reorganized and assigned to Fort Benning in 1922. In his first letter home, Harold reported that “everybody connected with the 24th is fine to me, the Negroes are ‘snappy’ as soldiers and as courteous as they can be. There is only one Negro officer & he is the chaplain.” Harold began the practice of writing a letter to Cleone every day and for most of the war, continued to do so. Cleone also wrote practically every day, and Simmons, his young son, would also pen occasional letters to his father.

Clemson College had difficulty in finding a temporary replacement to take charge of Tate’s classes and his other duties. W. H. Washington, in a letter to Harold on 2 April expressed his pleasure that “you are pleased with your assignment” even though “we were not glad of your absence from Clemson.” According to Dean Washington, J. L. Brock, the lone professor remaining in Industrial Education, “has a real load.” Tate retained his position at Clemson while away on active military duty and his initial expectation was that he would be away for a year only. In September 1941, Harold wrote Cleone, “Does Mr. Washington expect me back in March [?] There is no way of telling whether we will be re-ordered for an extra year or not.” During the fall semester, Harold’s colleague, J. L. Brock, served as acting head of the Industrial Education Department and Dr. Zed H. Burns, from Appalachian College, was employed to share the teaching load. Professor Brock explained the arrangement in a letter of 22 October to Tate. Dr. Burns “is in charge of the Practice Teaching at Calhoun-Clemson, and I am working with the group at Central,” Brock wrote. “We divide our time just about equally between Art Metal Work and Vocational Education 61,” he concluded.

Any hope for his return to Clemson and the resumption of his civilian career, evaporated on 7 December 1941 with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Just before he heard the reports of the attack, Harold wrote in a letter to Cleone and Simmons: “Things are about to simmer down to normalcy even though dissembling the Casual Detachment is about as large a job as putting it together.” For several weeks, he had been in command of the Casual Detachment of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry, a small group of men who had been left behind for various reasons while most of the regiment had been on maneuvers in South Carolina and Florida. Cleone had started her usual letter to Harold Saturday night, 6 December, but had not finished it. When she resumed writing Monday morning, she noted, “So many things have happened since I started this letter that I have neglected to finish it.” She assured Harold that “you can depend on this, whatever orders for our men come out of this affair will be backed by all of us to the letter. So just remember, we are behind you 100%….” Harold was clearly pleased with Cleone’s pledge of support. He wrote in his next letter, “as long as the home folks carry on as you…are doing America[n] soldiers will have the best morale in the world. God bless such attitudes as the result will be victory.” For much of the rest of December, Harold was involved in making preparations for relocating his regiment at a moment’s notice. He informed his family that “we have to get everything in readiness to be able to move within 12 hours after the order for such movement arrives. This may mean we move in a day, a week or a month.” He had been informed that when orders did come for the regiment to move out, he would be “in charge of the storage and caretaking detachment” and would rejoin the regiment at a later date.

Tate was granted a six-day leave, effective 20 December, and was able to spend Christmas in Clemson. He also learned that he had been placed on special duty for the period 11 January to 10 April 1942 “for the purpose of attending the Battalion Commander and Staff Officer Course” at The Infantry School, Fort Benning. Harold was pleased with the new assignment and wrote Cleone, “If hard study will cause one to pass then I will pass.” Harold reported in a letter to Cleone that Colonel Lockett, the regiment’s commander, had told him that even though he had detailed him to school, he had not wanted to do so “since my services were valuable to the Regiment.” After classes began, Harold wrote to his wife, “the instruction is excellent and better organized than I have seen at any other place…The Lecturers are good [,] their visual aids are the best I have seen also. Instructors have a good sense of humor which helps tremendously.” As a teacher, Harold was interested in the techniques used at The Infantry School and often commented on the effectiveness of the instructors. “Some of the best teaching I have ever seen anywhere I have seen here in the Inf. School. It has certainly given me a lot of ideas on visual aids.” As a student once again, Tate was anxious before his first exam. “I have heard from my first test and I passed it,” he wrote Cleone on 9 February, “it had me worried but now that I have found out the good news my worries are over so far as that one test is concerned.”

Before Tate finished the school, the Twenty-Fourth Infantry received ordered, dated 10 March 1942, to prepare to move to an unspecified destination. On 18 March, another order clarified the situation. The move, a permanent change of station, would begin 23 March and would be completed by 26 March. The new location was Camp Sutton, near Monroe, North Carolina. Harold, however, was scheduled to continue with his course and rejoin the regiment after he completed his work, but on 29 March, another order changed those plans. The Twenty-Fourth Infantry was ordered to the west coast for deployment abroad and Tate had to withdraw from school immediately and rejoin his regiment. In view of his impending departure from the United States, Harold in a letter to Dean Washington at Clemson, cited an act of Congress passed in December 1941 that “makes it mandatory that all Reserve Officers in service with the United States Army in December 1941 be continued on active duty for the duration of the war,” and asked for an extension of his leave of absence that would end on 1 April. He expressed regret that he had to make the request “since my work at Clemson means a great deal to me, but the situation which makes such a request necessary is beyond my control.”

Tate described the trip cross country in a letter to his family spanning several days. The troop train passed through Louisville, Kentucky on 2 April, stopped in Kansas City, and then “stopped right at the foot of Pikes Peak for rest and exercise.” Harold remarked, “it is quite a thrill to have command of a large number of men like this and I really wish I commanded a group like this all the time.” After the troop train arrived in San Francisco, the men were housed in the Cow Palace until it was time for departure. Harold, who had often kept a diary of daily events for a few weeks or months at a time, began the practice again with the first entry dated 13 April 1942, the day that he embarked for overseas service. For the rest of his life, with only an occasional break of a few days, weeks or months, Harold wrote in his diary every day. The diary entries for the war years provide an uncensored, detailed picture of life in the army from the perspective of an educated and inquisitive officer. Harold made only a few daily entries during the voyage across the Pacific, perhaps because he was prone to seasickness. “Loaded & Embarked on Bloemfontain a Dutch Boat. Left S[an] F[rancisco] at 4:45 P.M. At about 6:00 pm I was very seasick & could not eat.” By the fourth day out, he was feeling better and was able to take meals in the dining area. He was appointed fire patrol officer for the ship on 16 April. His major responsibility, he recorded, was “to keep down smoking & plan to close bulkhead doors in case of fire or disaster.” On 28 April, he wrote, “sighted land. Samoa Group….Some of boats of convoy left us.” He witnessed a burial at sea on 2 May. The force’s surgeon, Colonel Bolton, died during the night and at 4:15 in the afternoon, after the two chaplains from the Twenty-fourth Regiment conducted the service, “the captain of the ship helped slide the flag draped canvas covered body to the waves.” Harold continued the practice of writing letters to his family while he was on the ship, but was limited in the subjects he could discuss. In a letter to Cleone that had the date clipped by a censor’s scissors, Harold remarked, “censorship is necessary and a lot of things I should like to write but refrain from writing because it might give some comfort to the enemy. There is no censorship on love and that I hereby send in abundance.” In another letter written on board ship, Harold informs his family, “We get the news every day and it is a great help to boost our spirits to hear about Tokyo bombings, R. A. F. raids, etc.”

On 4 May, the ship arrived at its destination and the troops disembarked, as Harold recorded in his diary, “without important incident.” Three ships were needed to transport the 124 officers and 3,270 enlisted men to the South Pacific island of Efate, located approximately six hundred miles northeast of Australia and three hundred miles west of Fiji. Only twenty-five miles wide, east to west, and sixteen miles across, north to south, the island, although little developed, had two natural harbors: one on the west side of the island at Vila, the island’s only town, and the other, Havannah Harbor, on the northern coast. From May until October 1942, the Twenty-Fourth Regiment provided perimeter defense for the island with Harold’s battalion, the Second, located along the eastern section of Efate. In addition to securing and defending the American bases, the soldiers built roads, loaded and unloaded equipment and supplies from ships, provided labor details for Quartermaster and Ordnance officers, helped with mosquito control, installed and maintained the communications system, and guarded the air base. After October, the defense concept changed and the Twenty-Fourth Regiment became part of a mobile strike force, with all three battalions under the command of Colonel Hamilton Thorn.

After spending the first night on the island “on [the] ground with only a raincoat,” Harold was delighted the second night when he “went to bed in a real honest-to-goodness bed even though it was only a pallet on the ground.” Three days after landing, Colonel Thorn called all of the regimental officers together. “He gave them a good stiff lecture on cleanliness, shaving, courtesy, and training,” Harold recorded. “He especially stressed training for Jungle combat.” Even though there were often rumors that Japanese planes were nearby or that strange lights were seen off the coast, the Japanese never attacked the island. Later, however, in 1943 and 1944, some companies of the Twenty-Fourth Regiment were transferred to other islands where they did engage the enemy. During the first weeks on Efate, Colonel Thorn and many of his officers thoroughly examined the island through systematic reconnaissance. Major Tate spent a great deal of time acquiring horses from some of the local French inhabitants. On 23 May, Harold wrote that he was “still working on collecting horses. Have about 8 already broken. Keeping them in the prison corral.” The horses were especially useful because roads were almost nonexistent and horses could traverse the jungle trails. On 28 May Harold boarded a boat for Ferari Bay, the site of a new camp for members of the Second Battalion. The camp, “named for Col. Hamilton Thorn, is a beautiful spot; quite the nicest place I have seen on this island,” Harold noted in his diary. By the end of June, the road system was improving and Harold was able to travel from Camp Thorn to Vila in one day. Bridges, built by the men of the Twenty-Fourth, spanned some of the smaller streams, but at Rentabeu Bay it was necessary to cross the water on a raft. Harold recorded, on 15 July, one memorable crossing: “Had to wait from 12 noon to 6:30 to go on raft to cross. We came near not getting across. It took us two hours with all officers, NCO’s & Colored soldiers rowing & pushing with poles for dear life. A real experience. Fortunately we did not drift out to sea.”

Living conditions improved dramatically for Tate at Camp Thorn. After first sleeping on the ground, he moved to a pup tent, then to a larger pyramidal tent, and finally, as he explained to Cleone in a letter of 25 August, “we had the native chief build us a native shack which we now call Collins Hall after the officers’ quarters at Benning….” Harold enclosed a diagram of Collins Hall that showed seven small bedrooms and a larger living room. “The floor of the living room is finger coral,” he wrote, “the other floors are split bamboo.” He continued: “In each room we have a tank of water and a spigot so we can wash & shave without going outside….In the living room we have a bar where we mix drinks when we can get them. We do not have ice yet but I understand that it won’t be long until we get a special refrigerator.” Food was plentiful and usually appealing, especially the special meals prepared for holidays. Harold described his Thanksgiving meal, 1942, in a letter to Cleone: “In the Battalion staff officers’ mess we started off with French champagne with the toast: ‘May we all spend the next Thanksgiving day at home.’ Then we had a large roast turkey stuffed with dressing. We had giblets with noodles cooked in turkey stock, fresh cabbage with a home made thousand island dressing, hot coffee, and pear cobbler pie. One could not have desired a nicer dinner.”

Although Major Tate never complained about the conditions under which he lived and worked in Efate in his letters home, he did reveal many of his concerns and frustrations about everyday life in his diary entries. He wrote on 18 August, “morale of Reg. Officers very low due to not being backed up in discipline and to a poor promotion policy.” He also explained the problem with the promotion policy. “It seems to me that a reserve officer in a reg. of regular officers has very little chance,” Harold remarked. “Some regulars want the Reserve Corps done away with [,] others want top possible rank for these to be 1st lt’s or capt’s….I believe they should keep all regular officers in organizations where they have no reserve officers and put the reserve officers together, use rigid selection and then there would be less belly-aching,” Harold concluded. Tate was sensitive to the issue because he was commissioned as a reserve officer in 1925 upon graduation from Clemson, and his continuous active service began only in March 1941.

The issue resurfaced on 11 December when Harold was told by his commanding officer, Colonel Julian G. Hearne, “to report into Regiment immediately with all belongings for a new assignment.” Colonel Hearne also handed Harold “an unsolicited letter of recommendation” dated the same day. The letter praised Harold for the work he had done as executive officer of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Infantry. Colonel Hearne wrote: “I am sorry to see you go. However, if it will mean advancement for you, then I am glad. Your manner of performance of duties as executive officer of this battalion during the more than eight months we have served together has been highly pleasing to me. You could have taken over the battalion from me at any time, and you would have done a good job. You have been loyal, energetic, capable and of good disposition. You have shown initiative. Little more could be asked of anyone.” Harold reported to Regimental Headquarters in Vila, the center of the island’s government and commerce. He was informed that he the commanding general wanted him “to take over the duties of the Military Police & possibly the Provost Marshal.” General Johnson “was also very frank about the set-up and he told me that he would not put me under an officer who was junior to me.” Harold had also learned that his name had been placed on a list of officers slated to return to the United States for further training and promotion, and General Johnson promised that by assuming the new job, Harold would not lose his slot on the cadre list. Even so, Harold confided in his diary, “I feel very uneasy about the whole thing [,] very let down and it seems to me that my reward for doing a good job…is to be passed over to promote Major Grimes, a West Pointer, and who was a captain when we left the states to come over here.” The next day, Harold began to make the rounds with two officers experienced in the work of the military police in order to learn about his new responsibilities. “Saw man in solitary confinement,” Harold wrote, “being soft hearted this is one part of my work which I dread.” On Christmas Eve, 1942, special order No. 154 made the reassignment official, effective 26 December. In a 27 December letter to his family, Harold wrote about his new job: “I have now been made Provost Marshal and Military Police officer after spending about two weeks learning my new job. So far I like it very much since so many things happen, never leaving a dull moment. Any place where there are soldiers contacting civilians there is bound to be some friction; when this friction occurs trouble sometimes results and all kinds of problems arise.” Harold also recognized other positive things about his new position. In a letter to family written 31 December, Harold projected an air of self-confidence. “Well the longer I am on this job the better I like it,” he assured Cleone. “It of course does not have the promotional possibility the other one had but it carries more responsibility and I am much more my own boss.” There were other rewards of a more immediate kind that Harold also enjoyed. In a January 1943 letter home, Harold mentioned the convenient laundry service, hot showers, all in contrast to life in the jungle. “In the bush in eight months not a bite of ice cream, no ice. Since being in here [Vila] we have ice cream once per week and lots of other cold things,” he wrote.

After a few weeks in his new position, Tate received an “order transferring my assignment from the 24th Inf. To the Headquarters Force 9156.” In his diary on 22 February 1943 he recorded, “I am as glad as can be and hope I won’t be transferred back, unless such could result in a promotion.” His old unit, the Second Battalion, boarded a transport ship that day and left for a new assignment. Harold was pleased to be left behind, even thought, as he explained in a letter to his family written on 9 March, “I have plenty of work to do.” He listed “cases of all kinds: patients escaping from hospitals, men from ships going a.w.o.l., near murders, illicit selling of liquor, killing calves, cutting down coconut trees and many other things come up in our day to day duty.” He also had to deal with issues that arose from an American military force that was composed of both white and black soldiers but was still segregated. In an entry of 28 April 1943, Harold recounted a discussion with a soldier “about a censored letter in which he brought up discrimination between white and colored. Compared some of our leaders to Hitler and showed deep resentment toward white soldiers.” Another complication on the island was the “condominium” system of government in which representatives of both the French and English, the two nations that had had a presence on Efate for years, shared governing authority. If Americans soldiers were involved in conflicts with French citizens, Tate would deal with the French representative; if the issue was with British citizens, then he would contact the representative of the crown. In one case, the British representative, Mr. Seagoe, came to Harold “to get a summons for Mr. Webster, skipper of the Showa, authenticated. Webster & his crew are British subjects but they man an American boat and are therefore in a sense under joint jurisdiction,” Harold recorded in his diary. Harold developed a very friendly and cooperative relationship with the representatives of both governments and was a frequent guest at dinners given by local residents.

Although most duties were routine and predictable, occasionally Tate was called on, usually on short notice, to provide assistance for a special event. On 15 September 1943, he participated in a secret meeting in Gen. Neal Johnson’s office during which he and other officers were told that Eleanor Roosevelt would arrive at Bauer airfield at 10:30 the next morning. Harold would be responsible for providing military policemen along the route of her caravan and Harold himself would serve as her “special body guard.” Mrs. Roosevelt arrived “in a big B-25 which was arranged for passenger travel.” “The party went to Army Hospital [,] talked to patients [,] nurses [,] doctors and saw wards there, then to Naval Hospital where she ate dinner with the patients one on each side of her…,” Harold recounted in his diary. When she returned to the airfield to board the airplane to continue her tour, “she personally shook hands with me and thanked me for the MP escort,” he wrote. General Johnson also thanked Harold. In a letter dated 18 September, the general expressed his “sincere appreciation and extreme satisfaction for a difficult task well done…on the occasion of a recent visit to this base of a most distinguished visitor….” “Your performance,” Johnson concluded, “is another indication of your splendid spirit of cooperation and attention to duty, and your organizational ability.” Writing to his family on 21 September, Harold was able to recount the events of Mrs. Roosevelt’s visit “now that censorship has been removed from this particular news item….” Harold remarked that, “she made three speeches and all three were well received because she does not ‘put on’ at all but is straight from the shoulder with what she has to say.” Even though there was press coverage of Mrs. Roosevelt’s trip to the South Pacific in the newspapers, Cleone could not discover Harold’s precise location because the news reports were general; however, in October she received a letter from Francis Henderson, a naval officer who had visited Major Tate while he was also in the Pacific area. After cautioning Cleone not to mention the name of the place in letters written to Harold, Francis continued: “It is a small island in the New Hebride islands called EFATE….The town is Port Villa a small native town with a large Army & Navy base.” In Cleone’s next letter to Harold, she revealed that she knew where he was stationed. “I received a letter from Francis H. yesterday…His letter was most interesting as he, of course, spoke of you, etc.” Finally, after eighteen months on Efate, Harold’s family learned of his location, and by the end of the year, he was allowed to add “somewhere in the New Hebrides” to his letters.

In December 1943, Tate learned of an opportunity to apply for admission to a Military Government School back in the United States. The army was preparing for the occupation of Japan and Germany after the end of the war and officers with training in military government would be needed to administer the occupied areas. To Harold this was an interesting prospect. He talked with both General Johnson and Colonel L’Abbe on 3 December and they both agreed “to back me for the assignment if I cared to apply, that there was not much hope of promotion here….” Harold also secured letters of support from several officials he had worked with in his capacity as Provost Marshall. Mr. Blandy, the British Resident Commissioner in the New Hebrides, praised Major Tate for his “great assistance to the British, French and Condominium Administrations in the many problems of mutual interest, affecting natives as well as non-natives, arising out of the presence of the United States Armed Forces on Efate, and his practical and efficient collaboration and tact in such affairs has contributed greatly to smooth working all round.” General Neal Johnson, Harold’s direct supervisor, also had high praise for Harold’s accomplishments:

“Major Tate has performed his duties as Provost Marshal of this Base in a superior manner, and his many contacts with British and French civilians, both government officials and local residents, have been of the greatest value in maintaining cordial relations. In addition, it has been his duty to investigate and handle many affairs dealing with Tonkinese and Melanesian natives which has given him considerable knowledge of these peoples.”

Even though Tate did not receive the assignment he sought, he was given additional duties, perhaps because his superior officers considered him such a capable officer. On 19 February, he was appointed Fire Marshall and a week later received orders detailing him to the G-3’s office. The G-3 was the staff officer responsible for issues related to operations, training, and information management. Harold explained his new duties and his reason for accepting the new responsibilities in a letter to his family dated 1 March 1944. “The new job requires the meeting and dealing with all officers on the island,” Harold wrote, “and as such should be very interesting.” He still had all of his other responsibilities, but clearly saw the possibility of promotion in the new arrangement. “It may be that the present G 3 gets another assignment and then I might be made G 3. If this happens I would then no longer be Provost Marshal but would have a much more responsible job…[and] that particular position carries a position vacancy for a Lieutenant Colonel.” Nothing, however, came of the possibility of promotion and on 1 April Harold wrote in his diary: “Relieved as Assist AC of S G3 and reverted to my Prov. Marshal’s job. Thank goodness for that.” Within a few days, however, there were major changes in Harold’s situation. He explained in a letter to his family, “in the change of table of organization the provost marshal’s job was cut which left me surplus….” There was, however, the real possibility of an early rotation back home. After almost two years in the South Pacific, such an opportunity was very attractive. On 15 April, Tate left Efate for Noumea, on New Caledonia, the site of the 6th Replacement Depot, and the first stop on his journey home.

While waiting for orders to return to the United States, Harold was assigned as provost marshal of the staging area of the 6th Replacement Depot, a job that, as Harold noted in his diary, “suited me fine.” His duties were familiar and did not require all of his time so he could enjoy the “moving picture show [which] is about fifty yards from my quarters,” he explained in a letter home. He also was near the post office and the post-exchange, and enjoyed convenient laundry service. He used some of his time to reapply for assignment to the School of Military Government, at Charlottesville, Virginia, “to be trained for ultimate duty in civil affairs in the Far East.” His commanding officer, Colonel A. E. Parlee, wrote a strong letter of recommendation in support of his application. “Major Tate has, without doubt, much energy and a keen sense of duty,” the colonel wrote. “His initiative and organizational ability resulted in an appreciable improvement in the conduct and efficiency of the Military Police guard,” he asserted. On 13 July, the orders that Harold had been waiting for finally came through. He was ordered to return to the United States by air transportation and report to the Security Intelligence School in Chicago by 12 August. Harold landed in San Francisco 20 July and left the same evening by train for Chicago. From there he traveled to Greenville, also by train, where he saw his family for the first time in twentyseven months.

Tate spent about a month at the Security Intelligence School in Chicago where he completed the Public Safety Officers’ course and then reported to the School of Military Government at Charlottesville, Virginia. He finished training on 28 October and received a final academic rating of “excellent.”

Afterwards he was ordered to another military school at the University of Chicago where he reported 1 November 1944. Harold’s family joined him in Chicago and Simmons enrolled at Hyde Park High School. Harold’s studies, which began on 6 November at the Civil Affairs Training School, consisted of courses in subjects relevant to his eventual assignment in the Far East. The Japanese language course was especially difficult, as evidenced by a diary entry of 2 January 1945: “Not much progress in Japanese but can speak it just a little.”

After completing his training in Chicago in early May, he returned with his family to Clemson on leave and then reported to the Civil Affairs Holding and Staging Area, Presidio of Monterey, California, on 24 May 1945. The officers trained in civil affairs remained in Monterey until the end of the war with Japan was in sight and Harold was able to have his family with him during the summer of 1945. Finally, on 17 August Harold and a group of other officers left Hamilton Field, California, and flew to Manila, in the Philippine Islands which they reached on 23 August, after several stops on their way across the Pacific.

The officers were loaded aboard LSTs [Landing Ship, Tank] on 27 August, ready for the voyage to Japan. At 1:30 in the afternoon on 3 September 1945, the day after Gen. Douglas MacArthur had accepted the signed declaration of surrender from Japanese officers aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, a flotilla of more than 30 LSTs sailed from Manila harbor carrying the American military government officers to Japan. On 12 September, the LST Tate was aboard dropped anchor in Yokohama Bay and the next day the men went ashore. Harold reported to the municipal government section of the 8th Army, and then took a train to Tokyo. “We could see the damage which had been wrought,” he wrote his family. “I used my Japanese to the extent of asking where the station to catch a train to Tokyo was,” he continued. Harold also explored the city of Yokohama where he and a fellow officer “went up to an old antiaircraft position where we talked to a Lieutenant and five soldiers. Almost all the talking was in Japanese…I have never seen people as polite and happy as these soldiers seemed to be. They certainly seemed happy that the war was over.”

On 21 September 1945, after arriving inTokyo, he was assigned a room in the Dai-Iti Hotel, and the next day helped set up the municipal government offices in what had been Tokyo’s American Club. Harold also learned about a position in textiles on the staff of SCAP, Supreme Commander Allied Powers. In the meantime, his job involved inspecting Japanese factories and, as he wrote in his diary, meeting “with managers and directors of big plants who wish to reopen.” On 27 October 1945 Harold recorded in his diary, “wound up all affairs with 8th Army in preparation for going to SCAP tomorrow. I hate to leave 8th Army because they have been so nice to me.”

The next day, he reported to his new job and learned that he was assigned to write the cotton textile portion of the report to the Pauley Reparations Committee due in two days. He described his new job as head of the Textile branch of SCAP in a letter to Cleone and Simmons: “There is a certain thrill which comes with a job like this because we are on the top staff level and much of our study determines important action.” His first priority was gathering as much information about the state of textile manufacturing as he could by interviewing textile leaders and gathering statistics from all available sources. In a letter of 31 October, he wrote his family, “I have interviewed some big textile manufacturers who want to begin work….I try to help them all I can because these people over here need plain ordinary clothing more than anything else.”

On 13 November 1945, Tate participated in a conference “at which the top men in cotton textiles aired out their problems[.] The two biggest ones…are imports of raw cotton which the Gov. will request soon and the possibility of being allowed to export to pay for the raw cotton.” For the next two years, his energies were focused on solving those problems. In addition to issues involving cotton, he also supervised work in the silk, rayon, wool, flax, jute, and hemp industries.

After Tate had been in Japan for five or six months, he began to look to the time when he could return home. In February 1946 he learned that he had been recommended for promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel, but was philosophical about his prospects. “If I do not get it [promotion] I wont be too disappointed because I have just about become accustomed to lack of promotion. I think the main thing is to get home even if I do have to drop to a $3000 salary at Clemson,” he remarked in a letter to his family.

A few days later, he wrote that the officers had been asked if they wanted ‘to bring our dependents to Japan.” He replied, “yes if I have to stay long enough for such.” By the end of March, Harold had started looking at available houses in Tokyo so that he would have a place if Cleone and Simmons joined him. If that happened, he planned to “make another leave proposition to the college and stay out here for the broadening experience. If I cannot get you here then my place is back there with you,” he wrote.

In April, Harold learned that his application for promotion had been turned down because officials in the war department decided that “the responsibilities of the position have not greatly increased since the termination of hostilities, nor is increased rank necessary for the adequate performance of the duties assigned the officer.” Harold immediately renewed the application and based his argument for advancement on his increased responsibilities. He noted that the organization chart for the Economic and Scientific Section of SCAP “carries the grade of lieutenant colonel for the position of chief of the Textile Branch…, the position now held by Major Tate.” The position itself had also become more important in the six months he had been on the job as evidenced by the presence of a special U. S. textile mission in Japan that had spent three months studying textile problems. Fred Taylor, chairman of the International Textile Mission, wrote in a letter in support of Harold’s promotion, “the Mission was impressed by the difficult conditions under which the operations have been conducted and by the manner in which Major Tate has tackled his job.” Even with such strong support, he would not be promoted in the spring of 1946.

Tate’s efforts to bring his family to Japan were more successful. On 15 April 1946, he wrote Cleone, “The situation is this: since I am in the scarce category of being a civil affairs officer I have been frozen and not subject to release….SCAP decided to allow dependents to come to the theater but in order to get on the highest priority list one had to agree to stay two years longer overseas. I chose this alternative and soon you & Tim [Simmons] will be on the way here.” The two-year commitment meant that “the time has almost come for me to resign my job at Clemson….” Harold felt it would not be fair to the college to ask the administration for an extended leave of absence even though “if I were home now I could go on working at Clemson the rest of my life…,” he explained to his wife and son. He did ask for an extended leave and received a notice in July that the Board of Trustees had granted an additional year of military leave. During the first week in July, Cleone and Simmons drove in the family’s new car 3,000 miles to Seattle where they were to set sail for Japan later in the month. They arrived in Yokohama on 2 August 1946 and were in their house in Tokyo in time for supper.

By the end of September, Simmons had enrolled as a senior at the American School in Tokyo. Harold also started writing letters to Harvard College in reference to Simmons’s application for admission in the fall of 1947. Life for the Tate family assumed a normalcy that had not existed since 1941 when Harold was called to active duty. Apparently pleased with the prospect of a prolonged tour of duty in Japan, Harold, in November 1946, applied for release from military service in order to continue as chief of the Textile Division as a civilian. General W. F. Marquette, chief of the Economic and Scientific Section, supported Harold’s request with a letter that detailed his subordinate’s work. Since joining the division on 27 October 1945, Harold’s “duties and responsibilities have been on the highest levels in this Headquarters so far as textiles and the textile industry in Japan are concerned,” General Marquat wrote. The general noted some of Harold’s specific accomplishments while in charge of textiles for SCAP: Harold had “made a comprehensive report of the Japanese textile industry for the Pauley Reparations Commission…was instrumental in initiating the cotton import program for Japan of 890,000 bales of American cotton involving $125,000,000…[and was responsible for overseeing] all directives to the Japanese Government on matters concerning the raw materials for, the manufacture of, the finishing of, and the preparation for export of all textile and leather manufactured in Japan.” General Marquat also praised Harold for his ability to work with Japanese leaders. “Major Tate’s position involves his dealing with cabinet members of the Japanese Government, with Bureau Chiefs, with the presidents of trade associations and with the presidents of all kinds of textile companies,” the general wrote. “He has carried out these relationships with a maximum of efficiency and tact over the past thirteen months.”

Even though Tate enjoyed his work in Japan, he also continued to show a strong interest in Clemson College and the vocational education program there. In a letter to W. H. Washington, one of his Clemson colleagues, Harold wrote in January 1947, “…I have one of the most interesting jobs I have ever had. Of course, it is necessarily not of a very permanent nature, but I would like to keep this job until some real progress in the textile industry in Japan has been made.” He also asked another Clemson friend to write “giving me information about some of the inside movements, etc., within the college faculty. What is your opinion as to the future of Industrial Education at Clemson College?” Clearly Harold was looking to the future and trying to decide what he wanted to do. That was evident from the contents of a letter he wrote to W. H. Washington in late February 1947. After mentioning that his leave from Clemson would expire in July, he confided to Washington, “I think the thing for me to do now is resign from Clemson, since I have decided to take a civilian position here as Chief of the Textile Division on MacArthur’s staff, the job I now hold.” Accordingly, Tate resigned from the active military effective 20 April 1947. But on 18 February, he received a temporary promotion to the grade of Lieutenant Colonel in the Army of the United States, so for two months he enjoyed the promotion that he had sought since 1943.

Upon retirement from active duty, Lt. Col. Tate reverted to the Officers’ Reserve Corps, an affiliation he continued until he reached mandatory retirement age in 1963. The Clemson situation, however, was not immediately resolved. In fact, when Harold sent a letter in July to Dr. R. F. Poole, Clemson’s president, offering his resignation from the faculty, Dr. Poole suggested that Harold continue his leave for another year. Harold readily agreed to this arrangement with the understanding that “if the time does come when you need to accept my resignation before another year has elapsed, please feel free to do so.”

Tate’s work to find solutions to the many problems that existed in post-war Japan continued. In a letter to William H. Draper, Under Secretary of the Army, he explained the issues that were resistant to change. Harold had “watched the small beginnings of industry develop from an almost prostrated condition [in October 1945] to one of promise, especially in the Cotton Branch which we think at present is very successful.” “The fact which impresses me the most with the whole situation in Japan,” he continued, ”is the almost complete lack of raw materials and her utter dependence upon the rest of the world not only for the credit with which to buy these raw materials, but also for the supply of them. Unless this country soon can manufacture for export, it must perish, for it cannot raise sufficient food for its large population….” Another difficulty that limited exports was the requirement that even though Japanese products could not be sold in the United States, other nations purchasing from the Japanese had to pay for the goods in dollars. Some of the restrictions were lifted on 15 August 1947 when the War Department allowed the private purchase of all Japanese commodities except tea, silk and other textiles. America’s cautious policy toward trade with Japan was based on concern over competition from Japan that could materially harm the textile industry in the United States.

Other nations were also concerned about competition from Japan. Great Britain sent a Parliamentary delegation, headed by Hervey Rhodes, to Japan in the fall of 1947 to investigate the state of textile production. Tate accompanied the delegation to textile factories in Nagoya, Kobe and Osaka and provided detailed statistical information regarding production.

In early March 1948, while Harold was in the United States to confer with government officials about textiles in Japan and then to appear before a Senate sub-committee considering a bill authorizing a $150,000,000 revolving fund for the purchase of raw textile fibers, the British Board of Trade invited him to visit Great Britain to confer on textile matters. There he met again several members of the British delegation that had visited Japan the previous year, including Hervey Rhodes, Stanley Prescott and Frank S. Winterbottom, toured factories in Manchester and elsewhere, and was entertained at a dinner at the House of Commons on 24 March. He returned to Tokyo in early April after a productive trip and recounted his experiences in England in a letter to Dr. William P. Jacobs, the president of the American Cotton Manufacturers Association: “I saw many different kinds of plants, including wool, rayon, cotton, and finishing plants. I also had some interesting conferences with manufacturers as well as various government groups. I detected on the part of the English a fear of world price undercutting in order to capture various markets. I tried to assure them that as long as we were in control, we would not allow cutthroat competition, but only sound, normal competition.”

Meanwhile, officials in the Chinese government had approached him about a job as advisor to that government on textile matters. While in Washington in March, Tate interviewed with the Chinese advisor on trade affairs and, upon his return to Japan, made plans to visit China. He arrived in Shanghai on 24 April where he consulted with Dr. K. N. Chang of the Central Bank of China and also had several conferences with members of the National Cotton Yarn Cloth Control Commission. Shortly after his return to Japan, Tate accepted the offered position as technical advisor to the Chinese government on textiles. Then he wrote to President Poole at Clemson and tendered his resignation from the faculty. He also explained that the new job in China was “bigger than the one I have had in Japan by far and carries with it many more responsibilities.”

In his new position, he would work with “the Textile Control Commission of China which has control of the various phases of textiles. It controls rather strictly the procurement of all cotton, domestic and foreign, the manufacture of it into cloth, and the sales end of the field,” he wrote to his friend H. Wickliffe Rose, head of the American Viscose Corporation, in early May just before he left Japan. China has “about 5 million cotton spindles and about 3 ½ million of them operating. There are 450 million people to be clothed, almost six times as many as in Japan,” he continued. The renewable, two-year contract with the Chinese government offered a substantial salary, provided a place to live along with the exclusive use of an automobile and driver, and paid all moving and traveling expenses. Harold and Cleone arrived in Shanghai on 27 May and settled into a small apartment and he began work on the many problems facing the Chinese textile economy.

Before they left Japan, the Tates were guests of honor at a dinner given by friends of the couple in the Japanese textile industry. In a speech by one of the Japanese officials at the 20 May event, Tate was praised for his accomplishments while in Japan. He had “laid for us the firm foundation of rehabilitation of the industry,” the speaker reminded the audience. After recounting the difficulties faced by the textile industry in the post-war period, the speaker asserted “I am not going to sing his praises…I shall only say that the name ‘Tate-San’ is very popular among thousands of our people, whether or not they are engaged in the textile industry, and he is looked upon by us as the father of the reborn textile industry of Japan.”

China’s available supply of cotton was insufficient to meet the clothing demands of her population and could not even keep the textiles mills running at full capacity. The United States, in an effort to promote “a politically and economically stable China,” agreed to provide $70 million in aid for the purchase of cotton for China’s mills. The amount of aid allocated, however, would provide only a fraction of the cotton needed to keep the mills running. Many of the traditional cotton producing regions in China were in areas controlled by the communists, and the Nationalists, from the capitol in Nanking, could not depend on domestic supplies to meet the demands of the cotton mills. Tate consistently urged Chinese officials, including Prime Minister Wong Wen-Hao and C. T. Chen, Minister of Industry and Commerce, to support the creation of an export company. In addition to writing frequently to Minister Chen to keep him informed of the situation in textiles and submitting reports on cotton production, trade possibilities, and world cotton issues, Harold participated in a Chinese Trade Mission to Indonesia that October.

The Tates lived in an apartment in Shanghai and enjoyed the amenities available in such a cosmopolitan city. Cleone wrote to her sister Eunice, “I have German friends, also French friends, in fact the variety of people here is what makes it so interesting.” She also mentioned “there are plenty of parties here to keep us busy.” In another letter to her sister in October 1948, she wrote “the civil war here is not so close and there is no danger at present….If danger should come the Americans would be notified by the Embassy….U. S. ships are in the harbor here all the time as well as Pan American and Northwestern Airlines to America.” In a 10 November letter to a relative in South Carolina, Harold mentioned the deteriorating political situation in China: “The American Consulate General notified me by mail Saturday…that all Americans who have no impelling reason to stay should leave for the United States. I planned to stay as long as I can do good. However, Cleone may leave for [the] United States.” In fact, because of the serious situation in China, Cleone left Shanghai on 4 December, along with other Americans, aboard the U.S.S. General A. E. Anderson bound for San Francisco. She landed on 22 December and was back in South Carolina five days later.

Harold remained in Shanghai and worked as usual through the spring even though the political position of the Nationalist Chinese government was becoming increasingly tenuous as the Communists pushed toward Shanghai. In early May, realizing that the inevitable collapse of the government for which he worked was at hand, Tate sent out letters of inquiry seeking employment elsewhere. To his former supervision General Marquette at SCAP in Tokyo he wrote, “as it looks very much like I shall have to evacuate China, I should like to offer my services in some capacity…in your section.” He also applied for a position in India, but without success. He soon learned that even though the officials of the Nationalist Chinese government had fled to Formosa, his employment would continue and he would work in Hong Kong, but the payment of his salary was a problem. He received no salary after March 1949.

A letter to his family dated 31 May 1949 described the fall of Shanghai to the Communists. “Last Tuesday May 23 this city was in Nationalists hands,” he wrote, “but when we awoke on Wednesday one of the first things I could see from my window was a long column of soldiers in a peculiar unfamiliar uniform.” These were soldiers from the Peoples Liberation Army. Both the Joint Management Board and China Textile Industries Incorporated, the agencies with which Harold worked, were taken over by the Military Control Commission of the Peoples Liberation Army. “Those now making up the staff from the General Manager down to the lowest workmen were told to proceed as if nothing had happened,” Harold continued. But he noted that the general manager and business manager had been assigned “an observer and a deputy observer” who would “report to his chief if he thinks something is wrong….” Even with the new Communist regime in control, there was some discussion about his continuing to serve as a textile advisor to the authorities. Harold visited the American Consulate and requested the Legal Department to give an opinion about the legality his continued employment by the new government. He was especially concerned about the impact of such employment on his standing as a reserve officer in the US Army.

The American Consulate’s legal department finally responded in mid-July with the opinion “that such a decision rests with the individual.” His final decision, as he wrote to his family on 17 July, was “to get out of China as quickly as I can and return to the United States.” Over the next two months, Tate lost the use of both the automobile and the apartment that had been provided by the previous government. He had no income and with constantly rising prices due to inflation, he scrimped and saved in order to survive until he could leave Shanghai.

The Nationalists continued to blockade the city and even conducted sporadic bombing raids over Shanghai during the summer months thus making it virtually impossible for anyone to leave. Harold had little to do although he continued to go to his old office to work on a final report of his activities. Much of his time he spent reading novels, visiting with his friends, or dining occasionally at the American Club. In a letter written to his family on 31 July, he reflected on the fourteen months he had spent in China. “As I look back on our coming now, it was a great mistake,” he concluded. “What have we gained: we are separated, certainly no gain; I am in China and cannot get out; I have no job. True, I made good money for awhile but I would not have come if I could have looked into the future and seen what I am having to put up with.”

In early August, Harold learned that a ship of the American President Lines, the S.S. General Gordon, would arrive in Shanghai in September to pick up Americans who wanted to leave the country and he immediately put his name of the passenger list and set about securing an exit visa. He also continued his efforts to secure his unpaid salary. He left China on the S.S. General Gordon on 24 September and arrived in Hong Kong a few days later. After a stop in Japan, Harold arrived in San Francisco in October and then began his journey to South Carolina with stops in Los Angeles, Houston, New Orleans, Memphis, and Birmingham to see about job possibilities. He finally got to Greenville on 21 October and was reunited with Cleone. Once in Clemson, Harold continued to pursue the fulfillment of his contract with the Chinese Nationalists and sought payment of his salary. At the same time, he contacted many of his friends in the United States and the Far East asking for help in finding another position.

Dr. R. F. Poole, Clemson’s President, suggested that Tate take advantage of the free time he had to contact Dr. S. Lewis Land, head of the Department of Industrial Education at Pennsylvania State College, to determine his status in the doctoral program that, because of his army service, he had not been able to pursue since the summer of 1940. Dr. Land replied that even though Harold’s dissertation title, “The Duties and Responsibilities of State Supervisors of Industrial Education,” had been approved, he should “prepare a brief plan outlining the scope of the study, procedures to be used in making it, and provide a brief tentative outline for it for submission to your committee.” When Harold learned that he lacked four weeks residence credit and a final examination on the dissertation when completed, he decided to go to State College to confer with Dr. Land. While at Penn State in January 1950, he learned about an opportunity in the Philippines for a visiting lecturer in vocational education under the auspices of the Fulbright program and decided to apply for that position.

In March, Harold received a letter from his long-time friend L. H. Dennis, Executive Secretary of the American Vocational Association with the news that his application for the Fulbright position in the Philippines looked assured. It was not until late June, however, that he received definite word from the Committee on International Exchange of Persons that he had received an award. The award was for a term on nine months and required that Tate serve as a visiting lecturer in vocational education, affiliated with the Philippine School of Arts and Trade in Manila. He and Cleone were scheduled to sail from San Francisco aboard the S. S. President Wilson on 27 August 1950. In the meantime, the Tates took up residence at State College during July and August where Harold, as he informed Dr. Poole in a letter written 21 July, he was “working very hard to complete the requirements for my degree.” “I will complete all course work but do not think I will quite finish writing all of my thesis,” he remarked.

In late July, Cleone wrote Simmons, “the dissertation is gradually taking shape and today Tate took the skeleton form of it to his major Prof. for discussion and was told that he was handling it in a masterly way….” After accepting the Fulbright award, he made arrangement with his graduate committee to allow him to take his final oral examination to defend his dissertation before the final version of his thesis was completed. He was granted permission to submit two chapters to his committee and take the examination based on the material compiled. That would allow him to complete the dissertation while in the Philippines and receive his degree in absentia.

The Tates arrived in Manila on 17 September 1950, rented a house, and settled into a new and difficult environment. Harold wrote his colleague at Clemson, L. R. Booker, “Manila is interesting but hot…Prices are high.” Much of his time was spent in conferences, gathering data, and planning for his own lectures in vocational guidance and vocational education that would begin late in the fall. He also found time to complete the final draft of his dissertation and send it to Dr. Land.

On 29 October 1950, he noted in his diary, which he resumed in August on the trip to the Philippines, that he had “completed the draft of the thesis, wrote the letter to accompany it and plan to try to send it off tomorrow.” Dr. Land and Professor Friese read the thesis very carefully and sent back a four-page letter with suggested corrections, most of which, in the words of Dr. Land, “are minor ones involving only sentence structure, punctuation, and the like.” Tate then received the good news from Dr. Land that his dissertation had been approved with only a few minor corrections and that his degree would be awarded on 27 January 1951.

Tate’s work in the Philippines was demanding. He described some of his activities to his Clemson colleague L. R. Booker in a letter written 5 December 1950. “My course in vocational educational surveys has already started, and I am busy trying to give some American ideas on the subject to about 50 Filipino teachers,” he explained. “To enliven the course and to make it more profitable, we are considering the implications contained in the Bell Report, a recent economic survey made in the Philippines advocating vocational education among other things,” he concluded. In addition to teaching and advising Philippine government officials, including Gilbert Perez, the Director of Vocational Education, Harold also wrote several articles for local publication. One article, “The Munos Agricultural School of the Philippines,” appeared in the July 1951 issue of Agricultural Education.

While in the Philippines, Tate continued his service in the U. S. Army Reserves and spent two weeks on active duty in Tokyo in April and May 1951. After two attempts to reach Japan by military aircraft were aborted by the failure of an engine, he finally arrived in Tokyo where he was assigned to temporary duty in a textile group in the Industry Division. There he met many of his friends and former colleagues who, he wrote to Cleone, “have shown genuine pleasure at seeing me again.” “Tokyo has grown by leaps & bounds” in the four years since he had last been there and “people look healthy and very well fed…and seem much more friendly than before….” When he returned to Manila, he found a letter offering him a position in South Carolina working for the State Department of Education in the area of Trade and Industrial Education. Even though he wanted to accept the appointment, he declined, because, as he wrote to his friend L. R. Booker, “I am led to believe that I may be recalled to active duty in June….” If not recalled to active service in the Far East, Tate planned to leave Manila on 26 June 1951 and arrive in New York about 23 August. Cleone had already decided to leave the Philippines in May so that she would be able to attend Simmons’ Harvard graduation on 21 June. Accordingly, she booked passage on a ship bound for the United States with a stop in Yokohama, Japan, where she met and visited with some friends. After a brief layover and change of ships in Honolulu, Cleone arrived in Los Angeles on 8 June. A hurried trip across country brought her to South Carolina where she joined her sister Faith, and together they traveled to Boston. In a letter of 27 June, she described the ceremonies to Harold: “It was an outdoor ceremony, with the dignitaries led in by the sheriff, military aides of the Governor, etc., etc., on down to the graduates themselves. The various caps & gowns were colorful and the officials with their high topped hats, cutaway coats and morning pants gave the ceremony quite a tone.”

As Tate’s Fulbright year ended in June 1951, he found himself in a quandary about his future. He expected to be recalled to active military duty and assigned as textile technologist and engineer to the quarter master section of General Headquarters in Tokyo. A complication developed when, as he related in a letter to Cleone, “Last Tuesday, June 5, I was called to the ECA [Economic Cooperation Administration] office and was given a copy of a cable from Washington offering me tentatively a job in Greece…. If I get a firm offer I shall accept, then you can join me in Greece.”

On 23 July 1951 the Department of the Army officially revoked the earlier order that placed Harold in active military service. Free to accept the offer in Greece, Harold left Manila, returned to the states for a brief visit in South Carolina, and then spent time in Washington in an orientation program for his new assignment. He flew to Athens where he arrived 17 August and immediately went to work. In a letter to W. H. Washington in Clemson, dated 5 September, he explained his new responsibilities as Chief of the Textile Section. “The Textile Industry is by far the most important one here and any contribution made to help this industry by ECA will help the economy of Greece,” he remarked. “I am now in the midst of making a textile survey of the country with the idea of recommending specific ECA assistance.” Because the textile mills were scattered all across Greece and the Greek Islands, he spent part of each week traveling.

After Cleone arrived in Athens on 20 October 1951 aboard the S.S. New Hellas, “looking young, exuberant and pretty and with many Greek friends around her,” according to a diary entry of that date, the Tates enjoyed a busy social life. There were dinners, teas, cocktail parties, dances and frequent trips out of Athens, especially after the arrival of their new Buick. In a November letter to Simmons, Harold described an interesting dining experience he had just had while on the island of Syros. “Since arriving I have eaten Greek food exclusively, enjoying it to the fullest,” he noted. “Last evening we…enjoyed a large red fish cooked in olive oil after eating hors d’oerves of roasted salt octopus and fresh sardines just from the sea.”

In October 1952, after surveying sixty-four mills, Tate and his staff produced a 262-page “Report on A Survey of the Greek Cotton Textile Industry.” Among the recommendations contained in the report was one to allow the spinning industry to expand in order to increase the export of finished textile products. Also, the report stated, “the Greek textile industry needs to be modernized, repaired, rehabilitated and brought up-to-date.” Cotton farmers must strive to produce higher quality fibers in greater quantities. Government supervision, although required to prevent “labor exploitation, adulteration in quality of textiles, [and] collusion to impose on the public,” should be kept to a minimum.

Once the report was finished, Harold’s job responsibilities changed. He commented in a letter to his friend Sheldon C. Wesson, “the character of my job has changed somewhat in the last few weeks to much heavier emphasis on technical help to the Greek textile manufacturers.” He cited his implementation of research done at an American college that produced increased efficiency in Greek mills.

Harold also began to look to future job opportunities during the fall of 1952 because, as he wrote to a friend, “although I still have and like this position, recurring reorganizations may catch up with me and leave me stranded.” In response to a letter from Clemson’s dean of education, W. H. Washington, enquiring about Harold’s interest in a job teaching graduate courses in education at Clemson beginning in September 1953, Harold expressed a desire to become the head of a proposed Greek textile school after his contract with the Mutual Security Agency expired in August 1953.

Concerns about his tenuous job status were replaced with happier thoughts in late December 1952 when Harold Simmons Tate, Jr. and his fiancée, Betty Anne Coker, arrived in Athens to be married. The event was described to Sheldon C. Wesson in a letter written 29 December: Simmons “married a South Carolina girl…in the St. Andrews Protestant Church December 22nd. After January 1st they will be located near Stuttgart, where Simmons is a 2nd Lt. In the Artillery. In September 1953 he will finish his two year hitch and will return to the U. S. to study law at Harvard.”

Changes continued in the organization of the American Mission for Aid to Greece. Effective 1 August 1953, the Mutual Security Agency was abolished and replaced by the Foreign Operations Administration. Harold and Cleone also planned to return to the United States on home leave after being away for two years. Cleone left Athens 17 August to fly to Montreal to visit one of her Greek friends, and Harold sailed on board the S. S. Excalibur for Naples on 10 September. He took advantage of stops at several Italian ports to see nearby attractions in Pisa, Florence, Genoa, and Milan and also disembarked at Marseilles and Barcelona before arriving in New York on 30 September. Harold spent a few days in New York renewing acquaintances before he traveled to Washington where he learned that he “was scheduled for termination along with most other technical assistance people in Athens,” due to funding cuts. Harold made the rounds visiting with Washington friends and investigating job possibilities, especially those in foreign countries.

Through his friend John Thode, Harold learned about an available position for an educational advisor in The Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia and on 15 October wrote a letter indicating his interest. In early November, Harold was called for an interview after receiving strong letters of recommendation from Dean W. H. Washington of Clemson and Dr. S. Lewis Land of Penn State. Dr. Land commended him for his “outstanding leadership ability,” writing that he “gets along well with those with whom he works and would bring to your position the personality, energy, cooperativeness and ability that are vitally needed in the development of an effective program of instruction in military science and tactics.”

His work at Fort Benning began on 1 December 1953 in the newly created post of education advisor to The Infantry School’s commandant, Maj. Gen. G. S. Meloy, Jr., and the assistant commandant, Brig. Gen. Carl F. Fritzsche. Even though Tate had spent a year at Fort Benning in 1941-42 after being called to active duty and was familiar with the base and the work of The Infantry School, he now worked not as a military officer, but as a civilian. Even so, he was assigned an apartment on the base and also allowed full privileges at the Post Exchange and Officers’ Club. During his first months at Fort Benning, much of his time was spent in conferences and meetings, observing instruction, and working on solving problems. In addition to those activities, General Fritzsche, directed Harold to conduct a review of the school’s educational program and submit a report at the end of twelve months. The same techniques that he had relied on to develop information for his doctoral dissertation were used for this project, and he surveyed fifty-three officers at Fort Benning. Based upon the replies he received, a sixty-seven-page report, “An Educational Appraisal of the Infantry School,” covering the period from 1 December 1953 to 30 November 1954, was developed and submitted. In addition to an overview of the state of The Infantry School, the report also included twenty-four specific recommendations that would “assist in improvement of certain standards of The Infantry School.” One of the pressing needs identified was “a long range plant expansion and building program….”

In 1965, John Coombes, the staff military writer for the Columbus, Georgia, Ledger-Enquirer, in an article titled “Post’s Infantry School Owes Much to Harold Tate,” highlighted accomplishments during Tate’s twelve years as education advisor. Coombes referred to the 1954 report, commenting, “just about all of the original recommendations which Tate submitted have been fulfilled and incorporated into the school’s operation.” “The last to be realized,” Coombes continued, “was his suggested revision of the building program, which culminated in the opening of the huge new Academic building last year.” Coombes also believed, “much of the credit for the constant review and improvement of the school’s instruction, and the development of its teaching philosophies, can be traced to Tate.” General Fritzsche also recognized the importance of Harold’s report at the time it was submitted. He wrote a letter of appreciation on 28 May 1955 in which he praised Harold for his “many contributions for improvement in the school…” citing his educational analysis as “particularly outstanding….” “His penetrating observation, thorough appraisal and evaluation together with complete recommendations, have been instrumental in initiating appropriate action for achieving and maintaining the high standards of educational proficiency desired by the Commandant of The Infantry School,” he concluded.

Work on special studies of various components of The Infantry School continued even as Tate performed his routine duties. In April 1957, for example, the commandant requested “a study of the student evaluation system now being used at USAIS [United States Army Infantry School] be re-examined and compared with systems used by some of the other service schools.” In less than three weeks, Harold had completed the study and submitted it, along with his recommendations, to the commandant. In January 1958, he submitted a report titled “Recommended Reorganization of The Infantry School” in which he emphasized future planning, the creation of course directors for all courses offered, and the utilization of ongoing research programs to improve course results. And in 1959, Harold conducted a major study of the Army Ranger course offered at Fort Benning. For nine weeks, volunteers for ranger training pursued a course that was “exacting and demanding, both physically and mentally,” according to this report; and that stressed “combat conditioning, good combat habits, and practical, realistic, hazardous field work.” All phases of training were observed, including field exercises at the Ranger camp near Dahlonega in the mountains of north Georgia. There, as noted in his diary, Harold watched a night exercise in which a power house “was attacked by Rangers who had crossed the stream in boats.”

Harold’s effectiveness as the educational advisor to The Infantry School was shown by the numerous “outstanding” ratings he received when his work was evaluated by the school’s assistant commandant. On four occasions during his career at Fort Benning — 1957-1958, 1964-1965, 1966, 1966-1967 — he was awarded the highest possible rating. Typical were the comments of General Stanley R. Larsen, Assistant Commandant, in his evaluation of Harold’s performance for 1957-1958. “I consider Dr. Tate a major asset to the U. S. Army and the U. S. Government,” Larson wrote. “The tangible product of Dr. Tate’s efforts and the quality and value of his advisory services clearly shows that he performs his duties in an outstanding manner,” he concluded. The ultimate recognition for Harold’s service came on 13 December 1968, at the end of his career, when he was awarded the “Meritorious Civilian Service Award for outstanding achievement, initiative, professional competence, and unselfish devotion to duty for the period 1 January 1962 to 1 December 1968.” Justification for the award was based on a long list of Harold’s accomplishments which were summarized in these words: “His extensive and detailed knowledge, unceasing research in the field of education, and his unique ability to make valid evaluations for improvement of academic training through use of the appropriate educational programs and techniques won for Dr. Tate the respect and professional esteem of his superiors and subordinates at the Infantry School and of his colleagues in other service schools and institutions of higher learning.”

Harold described the ceremony and his reaction to it in his diary: “The citation was very strong and I believe more than I deserve. It is appreciated nevertheless.” The next day, he and his wife drove to Columbia to the house they owned at 1620 Milford Road, a location only five minutes from Fort Jackson, where they planned to spend their retirement years.

The Tates remained active in retirement and took advantage of the amenities offered by Fort Jackson and Columbia. They attended performances at Columbia’s Town Theater, used the post exchange at Fort Jackson, and relied on the medical facilities on the post. Harold also continued his interest in his family’s history and used the records available at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History and the South Caroliniana Library on the campus of the University to search for information about his ancestors. His diary entry for 10 November 1969 notes, “worked in Caroliniana until about 1:10 PM….Found reference in Index to Keowee paper to Tillman Tate and Cynthia Long’s wedding.” He and Cleone were also members of the South Caroliniana Society and they attended the annual meeting of that organization on 22 April 1975, an event he described in his diary: “Went to South Caroliniana Society meeting where the crowd was large, affluent & colorful. Found that Cleone & I made a contribution to help buy some of the papers.”

Harold was also one of the founding members of the South Carolina Genealogical Society. In his diary on 6 October 1970, he wrote: “Went to the meeting Mr. Fanning had called at the Richland County Library…of the group interested in forming a Genealogical society. They decided to form such a group.” During the 1970s, Harold and Cleone often attended the reunion of the Millfords, the family of Harold’s grandmother Emily Alice Millford who had married James Howard Simmons.

Harold was also an active member of several other organizations during his retirement years. For example, he belonged to the Military Order of the World Wars and attended the meetings of the Columbia chapter. Reunions of the Clemson Class of 1925 were regularly attended during the 1970s, and at the reunion in June 1971, Harold was “surprised” when one of his classmates “read a petition to the members of the class asking the Alumni Association to cite me as a distinguished alumni. All members then signed the petition…I am pleased that my classmates thought enough of me to do this,” he recorded in his diary.

The daily diary entries became less detailed by the late 1970s, but continued to reflect Harold’s interest in world, national and local affairs. He often visited the library at Fort Jackson to read the Wall Street Journal and other papers, and watched his investments in the stock market very carefully. Visiting with family, writing letters, and keeping up with doctor’s appointments also occupied much of his time. His health became more precarious and by June 1981, his diary entries ended. Harold Simmons Tate died 12 April 1982 in Columbia, South Carolina.