Wer kennt Jim Thompson ?

[Otto-Nongkhai]

Jim Thompson wird mit der Thai Seide in Zusammenhang gebracht ,aber wer war dieser geheimnisvolle Mann wirklich ,der im Jahre 1967 ,zur Sonkranzeit bei seinem Urlaub in Malaysia ,
in den Cameron Highlands , auf unerklärlicher Weise verschwand.

War er ein CIA Agent und war dies der Grund für sein Verschwinden ,oder ein Glücksritter ,
der in der thailändischen Seide seinen Weg zu Ruhm und Reichtum sah ?

Jim Thompson kam aus einer wohlhabenen Familie aus Philadelphia und hatte Architektur studiert.

Jim Thompson kam zum ersten mal gegen Ende des zweiten Weltkriegs nach Thailand und zwar als Angestellter der amerikanische OSS ( Office of Strategic Service ) ,was später das CIA wurde.

1946 liess er sich von seiner Frau scheiden und kehrte nach Bangkok zurück ,wo er ein neues Leben beginnen wollte.
Die Seidenweberin Mamee ,ein islamisches Mädchen ,erweckte in ihm das interesse an thailändischer Seide.
Als reicher Ausländer versuchte er in Thailand ein Geschäft aufzumachen ,hatte aber keine Ahnung wie.
Bis eines Tages ein Bekannter aus dem Isaan ihm ein Stück handgewebte thailändische Seide zeigte.

Daran hatte er Interesse und im Jahr 1947 fuhr er nach Amerika und zeigte der Herausgeberin der Modezeitschrift "Vogue " einige Seidenmuster.
Er erhielt sofort den Auftrag ,Seidenstoffe für eine Modenschau in thailaendischer Seide anfertigen zu lassen.
Das war der Anfang.
Ihm hat Thailand viel zu verdanken ,die Wiederbelebung der thailaendischen Seidenindustrie ,Arbeit für viele Thais und Anerkennung für Thailand .

Ob er weiterhin für den CIA arbeitete ist ungewiss ,aber jim Thompson ist für die meisten Thais
der " Legendäre Amerikaner ",der Mann ,der es ganz alleine fertigbrachte ,die Aufmerksamkeit der Welt auf Thailand und die handgewebte thailändische Seide zu richten.

Über ihn hat das Thai I-TV einen mehrteiligen Film gedreht an dem mehr als 400 Schauspieler und eine 70 Mann starke Filmcrew beteiligt war.

Wer hat mehr Infos vom Jim Thompson ,oder einige Aufnahmen ?

Gruss

Otto

Quellenangabe:
gelesen/gehört im Lonely Planet ,Anders Reisen ,Farang ,Nation ,Bangkok Post,Thai-TV und Radio ,Farang ,Hallo ,SOZ ,Stefan Loose ,Tip-Thailand ,Brokhaus ,Kulturschock und Isanfreunds persönlichen Erfahrungen/Wissen.

Das Ganze kurz zusammengefasst und mit eigenen Worten wiedergegeben.

 

[Tschaang-Frank]

http://www.jimthompsonhouse.com/

 

[DisainaM]

er war vom OSS (Office of Strategic Services), dem Vorgänger des CIA nach Thailand entsendet worden, und erlebte das Thailand nach 1945 bis zu seinem Verschwinden 1967.

Beim CIA war eine burn notice über ihn erteilt worden, er war also eine heisse Kartoffel, die niemals in die USA zurück kehren konnte.

nun sind einige CIA Infos üer ihn öffentlich geworden.

CIA past of Bangkok's American 'Silk King' emerges - Yahoo!

CIA past of Bangkok's American 'Silk King' emerges

FILE - In this November, 1966 file photo, American businessman Jim Thompson examines a statue in Bangkok, Thailand. It's the cloak and dagger stuff, rather than the glitz and glamor, that's the focus of a recent book "The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War" by Joshua Kurlantzick, an author on Asian affairs with the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. (AP Photo)

FILE - In this undated file photo, Jim Thompson smiles shortly before he disappeared. Thompson mysteriously disappeared while going for a walk on Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967 in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia. It's the cloak and dagger stuff, rather than the glitz and glamor, that's the focus of a recent book "The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War" by Joshua Kurlantzick, an author on Asian affairs with the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. (AP Photo/File)

BANGKOK (AP) — Forty-five years after vanishing into a jungle without a trace, "Silk King" Jim Thompson remains a daily presence in Thailand: Shoppers crowd his elegant stores and the American expatriate's antique-rich residence is one of the capital's top tourist attractions.

Credited with the revival of a now booming silk industry, Thompson attained legendary status, enhanced by a bon vivant lifestyle at a time when Thailand was still truly exotic — and by his mysterious death. But little has been known about Thompson's intensely political, darker side — his freelance backing of Asia's insurgencies, clashes with Washington's Cold War warriors and his connections to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which to this day reportedly refuses to release his complete file.

It's the cloak and dagger stuff, rather than the glitz and glamor, that's the focus of "The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War" by Joshua Kurlantzick, an author on Asian affairs with the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

The book provides no new clues about Thompson's vacation walk into a Malaysian jungle in 1967 from which he never returned. Numerous theories range from his having been eaten by a tiger to abduction by U.S. intelligence agents.

But Kurlantzick says he uncovered a trove of other information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, departments of Defense and State and other U.S. government agencies through the Freedom of Information Act as well as unclassified material available, but mostly untapped, in the National Archives.

From this, emerges a portrait of Thompson as a U.S Army officer in the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA, who stood ardently behind America's immediate post-World War II policy of championing democracy and ridding the world of colonialism. He believed Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist who should be supported, and almost worshipped Pridi Banomyong, Thailand's pro-democracy statesman.

But Washington executed an about-turn and began to back assorted Asian strongmen and the French in colonial Indochina — "a scurvy race" he called them — on grounds that it was fighting the greater menace of Communism. Thompson became disillusioned and angry.

He was devastated when Pridi was ousted in a coup followed by the killings of many of his followers and a succession of thuggish leaders from the military, which remains a powerful force in Thai politics to this day.
"I wanted to use Jim to broaden the story to Thailand's relations with the United States, and to explore this whole generation of those who had come out of the OSS in World War II and then were pushed out by the Cold War," Kurlantzick said in an interview.

Scion of a wealthy East Coast establishment family, educated at Princeton University, James H. W. Thompson dabbled in architecture and partied in New York before volunteering for the army. A wartime marriage ended in divorce. Serving with distinction in North Africa and Europe, he was about to parachute into Thailand with an OSS team when the war ended.

In Thailand, Thompson became deeply involved with Lao, Cambodian and Vietnamese insurgents who used the country as a base in fighting the French, helping to supply weapons and serving as a go-between, often acting without approval from headquarters. Although discharged in 1946, Thompson continued to "serve as a de facto intelligence officer," Kurlantzick says, one useful to all sides until the radical shift in U.S. policy when he and other colleagues in the OSS found themselves on the "wrong side."

"Jim was an idealist, a romantic, an anti-imperialist and there was no more idealistic time than just after the war," the book quotes a one-time U.S. diplomat, Rolland Bushier, as saying.

America's secret entry into the war in Laos in the early 1960s finally destroyed his vision of "an America that used its power to build democracy in the region, that could distinguish between local grievances and global communism, and that inspired Asians as a liberator, not as a new colonizer."

Like a number of like-minded Americans at the time, Thompson was investigated by the FBI for suspected "un-American activities," and "although Thompson once had been extremely valuable to U.S. intelligence, the agency finally put out a 'burn notice,' on him, warning all employees to stay away from him," the book notes.

By this time, he had started The Thai Silk Company, reviving a largely moribund industry, helping thousands of poor villagers in the process and introducing Thai silk to the world. Dinners at his traditional Thai home, filled with antiques he had collected, became a must-do for visiting celebrities, diplomats, spies and journalists, many of whom described them, and Thompson's personality, as unforgettable.

A number of those who knew him personally have recalled a more optimistic, upbeat individual than portrayed in the book, and almost certainly it isn't his politics which is now remembered by most.

"Jim may have disappeared decades ago but he remains alive today through the legacy of his great silk products, the help his company still gives poor rural folk and through the preservation of Thailand's rich artistic heritage," says William J. Klausner, president of The James H. W. Thompson Foundation, which serves as caretaker of his residence-museum and promotes Thai culture.

Kurlantzick says Thompson was a "multifaceted, generous and foresighted man, but he was in some ways too idealistic, bordering on the naive and it became his downfall in many ways."

Toward the end, aged 61, Thompson felt the hopes of his generation had been dashed, the old Asia he loved was fast becoming too Westernized, and the most passionate love affair of his life, with the wife of an American diplomat, had ended. Like other expatriates, he could never go home again, and yet sensed that he would never become truly Thai.

Perhaps, the book suggests, the real tragedy befell Thompson before his disappearance.

 

[ฉลาม]

Ich kann mich auch erinnern, daß es da ein Jim Thompson Haus gar nicht so weit entfernt von der Deutschen Botschaft in Bangkok gab.

 

[clavigo R.I.P.]

Das Jim Thompson House gibt's immer noch, aber in der Nähe der Deutschen Botschaft? Da haste aber kräftig zu laufen!
Visitor Information

Oy und ich waren 1990 in Cameron Highlands und unser Guide meinte er wäre vom Tiger gefressen worden.

 

[HPollmeier]

Vgl. auch

thailand-interaktiv.de

Die Geschichte stand hier schon einmal mit mehreren Bildern, aber ich habe keine Lust mehr, sie zu wiederholen; wird ja ohnehin nur kritisiert.

Und über Seide findet ihr hier

http://www.nittaya.de/literarisches-22/thailand-sachthemen-33411/index4.html - Nr. 37 -

noch einige Worte.

 

[Yogi]

Vgl. auch
Die Geschichte stand hier schon einmal mit mehreren Bildern, aber ich habe keine Lust mehr, sie zu wiederholen; wird ja ohnehin nur kritisiert.

Du kannst ja auch mal etwas Positives zum Forenmiteinander beitragen. Jetzt steigst du in meinem Ansehen.

 

[jai po]

 

[Franky53]

Das Jim Thompson House gibt's immer noch, aber in der Nähe der Deutschen Botschaft?

wahrscheinlich meint er das Restaurant in der Saladaengrd.soi 1 zwischen Silomrd. und Sathonrd.

das Jim Thompson House Museum nahe der BTS STation National Stadium ,direkt am Khlong Saen Saep ist mit den origilal Thaiholzhäusern ,die hier zusammen getragen und wieder aufgebaut wurden sehr sehenswert.
hier hat es auch ein Textilshop ,und ein Restaurant .

kann man auch über den Khlong SaenSaep mir dem Klongtaxi erreichen ,einfach Saphan Hua Chang aussteigen und 100 m den Khlong entlang.

 

[Micha L]

Wenn ich mich recht erinnere, sind das mehrere Häuser.

 

[Derk]

Besuch im Thompson-Haus + Museum in form einer Englischstunde

Gruss,
Derk