Eugene Dooman

Eugene Hoffman Dooman (1890 – 1969) served as counselor at the United States Embassy in Tokyo during the critical negotiations between the two countries during World War II. Born in Osaka to missionary parents of Assyrian background who themselves were born in northwest Iran, Dooman knew Japanese as a native. His parents had arrived in Japan after having been trained in their native Urmia, where the predominant Christians were ethnic Assyrians. Originally belonging to the Syriac-based Church of the East, a church with a strong medieval missionary history throughout Asia, the Assyrians had seen centuries of persecution under various Muslim rulers in Turkish and Persian lands since the conversion of the Mongol descendants to Islam in the late 13th century. The rampage of Tamerlane westward destroyed the last major urban communities and drove these Christians into remote mountain areas.

It was the coming of American missionaries to northwest Iran in 1834 that brought education and a higher standard of living as well as a window to the West for families such as the Doomans. Both the men and the women in this family benefited from the educational opportunities that were offered through the American Boys’ College and Fiske Seminary, the latter modeled on Mount Holyoke College, which is one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women in the United States.

Eugene Dooman’s parents ended up in Japan because Presbyterian mission activity in the late 19th century was widespread and Japan and China had become new grounds for work. Like Abraham Yohannan, the first instructor in Persian and other Middle Eastern languages at Columbia University, the Doomans benefited from the training they received in Urmiyah and went on to become active in the religious field themselves.

First joining the State Department in 1921, Eugene Dooman spent much of his diplomatic career in Japan with a two year stint in London (1931-33) and five years in Washington (1933-37). He left Japan in 1941. Earlier that year (Feb 14) as US embassy counselor, he delivered FDR’s ultimatum to Foreign Minister Ohashi in Tokyo which warned that if Japan attacked Singapore, it would mean war with the US. Later, in 1945, Dooman was involved with Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew (who had headed the Tokyo embassy when he was stationed there 1937-1941) as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of State James Dunn in the decision over calling for Japanese surrender. Dooman was one of the draftees of the warning to Japan in 1945 prior to dropping the atomic bombs (http://www.doug-long.com/stimson6.htm).

Interviewed in 1962 as part of Columbia University’s oral history project, his reminiscences about the Occupation of Japan have provided useful material for historians. The Eugene Dooman archives are held at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.