Subpoena For American Who Visited China

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28386, 19 September 1957, Page 13

Subpoena For American Who Visited China

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 18. Earl R. Williamson, aged 28, a former Oakland, California, teacher who toured Communist China against the wishes of the United States State Department, returned to the United States yesterday and was promptly greeted with a subpoena to appear before the House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee.

“Weil, I guess I’ll be a guest of the United States Government,’ Mr Williamson told journalists at San Francisco’s international airport.

Two San Francisco police inspectors boarded the Pan American clipper which brought Mr Williamson from Honolulu and served the summons on him so quietly that no-one knew it until the teacher himself announced it.

In Honolulu today Mr Williamson said an Immigration Department official seized his passport from his hand and walked away. Mr Williamson said he was told ip, Hong Kong that he might have his passport withdrawn. He said he did not feel he was breaking a law by visiting Communist China. He said he did not resent the call by the Un-American Activities Committee to appear before it in Washington on September 26. “This is democratic procedure,’’ he said. “They are not going to scare me.’’

He said he went to China from Russia because he was curious to see the country. “It is a very important country and I feel the American people have an obligation to learn something about it,” Mr Williamson added. Mr Williamson was one of 100 Americans who attended the Moscow Youth Festival last July at the invitation of the Soviet Government. Forty-one of them accepted an invitation to tour Commu. L’t China.

The Chinese people were curious about him as an American, and his group of 41 was free to move about in the Chinese communities they visited. Asked if he had done anything immoral or illegal, Mr Williamson replied: “Immoral? Heavens no. I have not broken a law and I have trust in the judgment of the American people and our Government.”