William Richards Castle, Jr.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Richards Castle Jr. (1878-1963) was an Ambassador, Assistant Secretary of State, and Under Secretary of State during the administration of Calvin Coolidge. A career diplomat with great wealth from his family's Hawaiian holdings, he rose rapidly to the highest levels of the United States State Department. He took a strong interest in Pacific issues, in part because of his background.

William Richards Castle, Jr. was born in Hawaii to a missionary family in 1878 during the waning days of the Hawaiian monarchy. His father, William Richards Castle served King David Kalakaua as Attorney General and later as Hawaiian Minister to the United States, where he was an active proponent of annexation. William Richards Castle, Jr. attended Harvard College, graduating in 1900. He remained at Harvard as an English instructor and assistant dean in charge of freshmen until joining the World War One war effort by going to Washington and opening a Red Cross bureau to assist in reuniting families and locating missing men overseas. As Director of Communications, he and his assistants ultimately handled 10,000 letters per day.

In 1919 he joined the State Department, rising meteorically in part because of his family’s money and connections. He served as assistant chief of the division of Western European affairs, later as its chief. He was made an Assistant Secretary in 1927. He was briefly Ambassador in Japan to carry on negotiations incident to the London Naval Conference. He was named to this position in large part because he could afford it; at that time, a large private income was necessary to offset the cost of an ambassadorship because the State Department's ambassadorial salaries were then low. His appointment to Tokyo was only for the duration of the five-power naval conference in London, and he returned to the United States to serve as Under Secretary of State.

Following his departure from the State Department, Castle became an American isolationist and opposed conflict with Japan, in part because he feared the potential impact of such a conflict on Hawaii.