Editor's note: Betty recorded this as part of life's story, on tape in late 2002, and her granddaughter Kira has faithfully transcribed the recording. Her inspiration was T.E. Lawrence, and this is why her favorite quote of his is: "... example is eternal, and the rings of its extending influence infinite." We, her family, hope that her example may inspire others in turn. It doesn't always take years of war in the desert to achieve lofty goals. Many of the letters, photos, and documents related to the story will appear over time on this site.

Betty (second from right, seated) and her sister-in-law Margaret Campbell (right, seated) with the Thai delegation.

So that's how it turned out, very much. I applied for a job and they assigned me to the Southeast Asia department. I was given a particularly wonderful target area, which was Thailand. Almost all the areas that Japan invaded were, in fact except for China, owned by colonials from Europe, and even one small part from America. But Thailand had been a free country. Thai means free in the Thai language. So Thailand had been a free country for a thousand years, I think it was. A long, long time, many centuries. So the Japanese slogan of "we will free you" didn't go over very well when they went into Thailand and set up a puppet government in there.

The Thai had organized a very fine underground, under Nai Privi Phanamyong, and they helped us. Once a week everybody in the San Francisco office, which broadcast to all the areas that Japan had invaded, all the areas of Asia, once a week we had a meeting with directors from the state department. They were telling us what lines we should emphasize that week, but always without fail there was one line that we were to emphasize every week, and that was "America will help any people who will fight for their own freedom." The idea being that if they would help us with Japan, we would throw out Japan, their invaders, and also throw out European colonials, including ourselves, which we didn't do very quickly but finally did in the Philippines. Anyway, so that one line we emphasized every week, "America will help any people who will fight for their own freedom."

So the Thai underground under Nai Privi Phanamyong worked very closely with us, and they would send us intelligence, especially very valuable Japanese plans of Japanese installations in Thailand. And then another great thing that they did, since the planes in those days could land without totally crashing unless they were smashed by target. They could usually land and then the pilots could get out of the plane. And then the Thai people, under Nai Privi Phanamyong, would rescue the pilots and get them out through secret roads into areas of China or Burma or India that had not yet been invaded by Japan. Got them to safety. Into our own lines.

So my area, my target area was Thailand, and sent them news, accurate news broadcasts, and news commentaries I wrote, which combated the Japanese propaganda reports of how they had sunk all our ships and then the people who translated and broadcast our scripts, that was very interesting too. Because the cream of the crop of very brightest kids of Thailand's top families for a long time had been sent to colleges in either England or the United States. And there were a lot of them studying, a lot of these kids from Thailand, we were in San Francisco, and there were a lot of them in the University of California at Berkeley and a lot more at Stanford.

Thailand was invaded the same day the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor, which President Roosevelt, most of you won't remember this because you weren't alive then, but that night, the way he announced that Pearl Harbor had been hit, he said "December 7th, a day that will live in infamy." And that was the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked and also that Thailand had been invaded. So the Thai students were all caught, of course, in the United States, they obviously weren't going to go home to the Japanese puppet government. So they became ... we would write our scripts in English and these wonderful bright young men, and women ... became our broadcasters, they translated the scripts and broadcasted them.

Missionaries, who had lived in Thailand a long time and spoke the language were assigned to police these translators and make sure they weren't putting anything over on us. Of course, the young kids laughed at that, they said if they wanted to put something over on us they certainly could have regardless of the missionaries. But we trusted them absolutely and none of them ever welshed on us, the kids. Not that we ever discovered.

They were of course very happy about Nai Privi Phanamyong and we worked closely with him too. Our two best broadcasters, or at least so I thought, were Rachan Khana-Vanit and Swasdi Nitibhon. I loved Rachan especially. He was just a wonderful, lovely, kind, gentle young man. A great representative of his country, Thailand. As we went along I began to get some messages back with soldiers that were rescued by the Thai people, many badly injured and sent home. In fact, they brought me messages from the women of Thailand, and they asked if we could please write them some scripts on the movies and fashion in the United States. So I was allowed to do that once a week, I could write a script about movies, or fashion in the United States, for the dear Thai women who were helping our men down in Thailand so much.

I spent a lot of my time ... my husband Don was working in Los Angeles by now, his firm had transferred him down there, so I would fly down or he would drive up frequently on the weekends, but other than that I saw a lot of the Thai people. They invited me to their homes and taught me their recipes, wonderful Thai curry that I still used to make until I got so mashed up that I had to give up my home. Anyhow, I became great friends with the Thai people. I saw a great deal of them, they came to my house and I went to theirs, and got to be really very close friends with them. Of course they stayed on, after the war ended, they stayed on to finish their studies at Stanford and Berkeley. And OWI continued to operate the San Francisco office for about a year after the war, dealing with all the aftermath of it in various ways.

About two or three months, I can't remember exactly how long but I think it was about two or three months, after the war ended low and behold over our ticker tape came a most horrifying piece of news information. That the United States, Britain, and Thailand had signed a treaty. Because of the puppet government that the Japanese set up in Thailand, Thailand was being ceded to the British Empire. This free country, for a thousand years, being ceded to the British Empire. We had said repeatedly, we will help any people who will help fight for their freedom. I couldn't believe it, I was so horrified. I went to Marvin Rosenburg, who was the head of the Thai division, and I said, "Marvin! Look at this, something terrible, look what's happening, we've got to fight this right away, and you're the natural person to lead this fight." And he said, "What do you mean? That I'm going to stand up and tell the President of the United States he can't sign a Treaty?"

And I said, "Marvin, look what we're violating everything we stood for all through the time we've been broadcasting. And you're the natural person, the head of the Thai division, you're the natural person." He said, "I'm not going to get involved in anything like that and don't you do it either."

But I went right over his head and I started a letter writing campaign the likes of which , I think, has probably never been seen before. I called everyone I knew all over the country, and I asked them to call lots of people too. And I said, "Write the president, Jimmy Burns, head of the state department, the chairman of the foreign relations committee in the senate and the house, and your own representatives in congress and tell them all." I explained to them what we'd been doing about how we'd help anyone who would fight for their freedom. And I said, "Explain this to all of them and tell them that we've got to get that treaty reversed." And by gosh we got that treaty reversed. I think it was only a little more than a week, and then a little later I got a letter from John Carter Vincent, who was head of the Far Eastern affairs division of the state department. A wonderful letter from him saying the treaty was "considerably modified" to protect Thailand's (then Siam's) freedom. We got that treaty reversed. And I said next to having my children I think that was probably the greatest achievement of my life because Thailand became a free country again right away.

Not long after that, by then the king had died and the young king was not of age yet, so they had appointed Nai Privi Phanamyong, who had led the underground, he was appointed regent of Thailand, to rule until the young king would be of age. So about a couple months later, I guess, after we got the treaty reversed, Nai Privi Phanamyong and his wife and all his military retinue came to the United States to pay President Truman a friendship visit for saving Thailand from the British empire. And he stopped off, I was living in LA by then, and he stopped off on, in LA, on his way to President Truman. He rented a cottage, one of the private cottages, at the Beverly Hills Hotel and gave a dinner there in my honor for saving his country of Thailand. Oh, that was one of the high points of my career. And I had a lovely, wonderful, evening with him. And he and his wife and his military retinue. I have a photo of all of them, with my husband and me, sitting there in the Beverly Hills hotel. And that and John Carter Vincent's letter, I just cherish. I have a great, big, huge folder on all the different types of letters we sent for our campaign to save Thailand. I have a wonderful, large folder, and a picture of Rachan Khana-Vanit and Swasdi, our two best broadcasters. So somebody said, "Gee, I think somebody could make a good movie of this."

Betty with Rachan Khana-Vanit and Swasdi, the Thai broadcasters who helped in the campaign.

I did feel that I was doing something similar to what Lawrence had done because I was throwing out a very dominating Japan, in other words, my job right along was Japan, not England, I didn't realize England was going to be so guilt-ridden too. But I felt that by stopping Japan from setting up a Japanese empire there I was doing kind of the same thing as Lawrence when he was helping the Arabs throw out the Ottoman people, who had so dominated Arabia for so long. And it was interesting also that he had very few, because of the hit and run guerilla tactics he used, he had very few, very light casualties among the English and the Arabs as opposed to tremendous casualties among the Ottomans who had been so cruel to the Arabs for so long. Who had tremendous casualties both in people and in loss of territory.

Well then we did save Thailand, but in many other ways we violated our statement that America would help people that would fight for their own freedom, because we went right in after the war and helped the French take back what was still Indochina in their terms, and helped the Dutch take back Indonesia, and so on and so on. And so we violated everything we'd said again there.

Betty was reunited with her Thai colleagues and friends in 1970 in Los Angeles.