Paxton, John Hall, 1899-1952.

John Hall Paxton: American foreign officer; vice-consul in Nanking, 1925-1929; various posts in China, 1930-1942; in 1937 was aboard the U.S.S. Panay when it was bombed by the Japanese; served in Teheran in 1943; returned to China as cultural attaché, 1944-1946; consul to Sinkiang, 1946-1949; escaped over Himalayas in 1949; broadcast for Voice of America until 1951; consul to Isfahan, 1951-1953.

John Hall Paxton: American foreign officer; vice-consul in Nanking, 1925-1929; various posts in China, 1930-1942; in 1937 was abroad the U.S.S. Panay when it was bombed by the Japanese; served in Teheran in 1943; returned to China as cultural attaché, 1944-1946; consul to Sinkiang, 1946-1949; escaped over Himalayas in 1949; broadcast for Voice of America until 1951; consul to Isfahan, 1951-1953.

John Hall Paxton spent the first twenty-three years of his life living alternately in the United States and China. Born July 28, 1899, in Galesburg, Illinois, Paxton was the eldest son of Presbyterian missionaries to China home on leave after the Boxer Rebellion. In 1901 Paxton left with his parents for China but returned to America in 1912 to attend Pittsburgh's Brookline Public School. One year later he returned to China, entered the Shanghai American School, and graduated with a high school diploma in 1917. Paxton came back to the United States once more in 1917 to attend Phillips Academy and then Yale College. He graduated from Yale with a B.A. in 1922.

In the fall of 1922 Paxton matriculated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, but soon moved to France where he gained admission to L'Ecole libre des Sciences Politiques in 1924. Along with V.C.C. Collum, he spent his time translating Jacques de Morgan's Prehistoric Man and other French scientific works.

The young graduate student did not remain long in France, for in late 1924 he sailed for New York to take the Foreign Service examination. After passing the test in 1925, he spent several months in training and then received an assignment to Nanking, China. Although never destined to be a major policy maker, John Hall Paxton did become a skilled reporter for the State Department during the next twenty-five turbulent years of Chinese history.

From 1925 to 1929 Paxton served as Vice-Consul to Nanking, watching four Chinese governments rise and fall within two years. Nanking finally returned to a semblence of political stability in 1927 after the bloody "Nanking Incident" when Nationalists looted foreign property and took over the city. Paxton helped evacuate foreigners during the crisis and afterwards worked to restore American property and prestige.

From 1930 to 1942 Paxton held a variety of posts in China, including Language Attaché at Peiping (1929-1931), Cousul at Canton (1932-1934), Consul at Chefoo (1934-1936), Second Secretary of the Embassy at Nanking (1937), and Consul at Shanghai on assignment to Nanking (1938-1942). In each of these positions he watched Sino-Japanese tensions escalate into open warfare.

On several occasions Paxton was more than just an observer. He directed the evacuation of foreigners from the Chinese city of Sian in 1936 and then found himself caught in the cross-fire between Chinese and Japanese forces in 1937 while aboard the U.S.S. Panay . Japanese bombers accidentally sank the American gunboat, an act which only worsened an already poor American-Japanese relationship. Paxton continued to monitor events in China until the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when Japanese troops interned the entire American Consulate at Nanking. Six months later he and his co-workers were repatriated by a Japanese exchange ship.

After a brief assignment to Tehran, Iran (1943), Paxton returned to China as a Cultural Attache (1944-1946) and later became the American Consul to Sinkiang, China's northwest province (1946-1949). From his frontier post he recorded the efforts of various Communist factions-Chinese and Russian-to win military and political control of the area. And in 1949 he gained national attention by fleeing over the Himalayas to escape advancing Communist troops.

Returning to the United States, Paxton made radio broadcasts to Asia for the Voice of America until being reassigned as Consul to Isfahan, Iran, in 1951. During this time he corresponded with many refugees from China and helped with their resettlement.

Paxton died suddenly of a heart attack on June 23, 1952 at the age of 53.