McKee, Ruth Eleanor, 1903-

McKee was born in 1903 and grew up in Ventura County, CA; BA, University of California, Southern Branch (later UCLA), 1926; spent ten years at the Library of Hawaii, publishing poetry in small magazines; published first novel on the history of Hawaii, 1934; wrote 5 subsequent novels; moved to Sonoma County, CA, 1936; wrote 3 monographs while working as a historian for the War Relocation Authority (WRA); began working for the US Dept. of State, 1951; appointed US Consul at Tokyo, 1958; retired to Cape Cod, 1963.

From the description of Papers, 1905-1972. (University of California, Los Angeles). WorldCat record id: 38000092

Biography

McKee was born in 1903 and grew up in Ventura County, California; BA, University of California, Southern Branch (later University of California, Los Angeles), 1926; spent ten years at the Library of Hawaii, publishing poetry in small magazines; published first novel on the history of Hawaii, 1934; wrote 5 subsequent novels; moved to Sonoma County, California, 1936; wrote 3 monographs while working as a historian for the War Relocation Authority (WRA); began working for the United States Department of State, 1951; appointed United States Consul at Tokyo, 1958; retired to Cape Cod, 1963.

Additional Biographical Narrative

Ruth Eleanor McKee (1903-) was a poet and novelist, a historian for the War Relocation Authority (WRA) and an officer in the U.S. Foreign Service. Her childhood was spent in Ventura County, California. She later wrote that it was this environment of isolation which caused her to begin reading and writing at an early age. Her first writings were journals and poems. At the age of 14 she took her father's car and a revolver and ran away to Los Angeles, seeking local color for a novel. She was found three days later, employed as a cook.

She received a Bachelor of Arts from the Southern Branch of the University of California in 1926. That same year she had enough money for a one-way ticket to Honolulu, and with Kathryn MacFarlane, also a writer, she began a new life in Hawaii.

She remained there for ten years, working at the Library of Hawaii. During this time she published poems in the small magazines of the day, such as Voices and Lyric West . Typescripts of her poems are here in the papers, as well as copies of some of the publications. She contributed dozens of book reviews to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, signing herself R.E.M. In 1934 Doubleday in New York and John Lane in London published her first novel, The Lord's Anointed . Still considered one of the best fictions to treat the history of Hawaii, it received good reviews and sold well. She published five more novels.

In 1927 she had married a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, Darr Alkire. She was divorced the following year and assumed custody of her son Michael. They left Hawaii for California in early 1936 to live in the Redwoods in Sonoma County. There she wrote her last published novels, all of them successful critically and financially. The most successful was Christopher Strange, a novel of California from Gold Rush days through the turn of the century, including the development of Palm Springs.

She wrote three significant monographs while working as historian for the WRA. These monographs were summaries and analyses after the fact. Research materials for this writing are in part here in the papers. She also began novels about Japanese Americans, but these were not published. They exist here in manuscript, and are perhaps of some value in recreating the lives of those people whom she observed and with whom she had great empathy.

Michael was killed in a plane crash in 1950. In 1951 she began working for the Department of State, ghostwriting articles, primarily about Germany. In 1958 she was appointed United States Consul at Tokyo, for Tokyo, by President Eisenhower. She hoped to use this experience to further her knowledge about Japan and Japanese Americans. She retired from the Foreign Service in 1963 and moved to a house she had built in West Chatham, Massachussetts, on Cape Cod, where she lived until her death.

The papers are the gift of her literary executrix, Mrs. Margaret Ringnalda.

by Dan Luckenbill, May 1975

From the guide to the Ruth Eleanor McKee Papers, 1905-1972, (University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Department of Special Collections.)