John Moore Allison

Who was John Moore Allison?

John Moore Allison was a US diplomat most commonly known for being US Ambassador to Japan from 1953 to 1957. Before 1953 he had been Foreign Service Officer in various places in China and Japan. From 1957 to 1958 he was Ambassador to Indonesia and from 1958 to 1960 to Czechoslovakia. In the 1960s and 1970s he was Professor at the university of Hawaii. In 1973 he published his memoir, Ambassador from the Prairie.

On January 26, 1938, John M. Allison, at the time consul at the American embassy in Nanking, was struck in the face by a Japanese soldier. This incident is commonly known as the Allison incident. Even though the Japanese apologized formally on January 30, this incident, together with the looting of American property in Nanking that took place at the same time, further strained relations between Japan and the United States, which had already been damaged by the Panay incident less than two months earlier.

In 1957, during his ambassadorship to Indonesia, he recommended the U.S. government mediate on the Western New Guinea issue.