Scope and Content Note
The papers of Jeanne S. Mintz (1922-1994) span the years 1928-1993, with the bulk of the material concentrated on the period of her career, 1943-1965, when she was developing an expertise on the newly independent nation of Indonesia. Extensive files document her work with the Indonesian delegation to the United Nations as an analyst and press officer during the armed conflicts and negotiations that led to independence from the Netherlands after World War II, and her continuing scholarly interest in that country through the late 1960s and beyond. The collection also contains substantial material related to her field experiences during 1969-1970 pioneering remote sensor anti-infiltration technology in Vietnam. The papers are organized into General Correspondence , Professional File , Speeches and Writings , Miscellany, and Oversize series.
The bulk of the General Correspondence is clustered around the period of Mintz's deepest involvement in Indonesian affairs as a participant and scholar in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. Much of this correspondence is holographic and personal. Mintz maintained an extensive correspondence with her dissertation advisor, Rupert Emerson, covering Indonesian party politics, history, and social conditions. Correspondence with Alice Wibican, an employee of the Indonesian United Nations delegation, and with Indonesian officials documents Mintz struggle to preserve records and printed matter documenting the early diplomatic history of independent Indonesia. The most frequent Indonesian correspondent was Soedjatmoko, a writer, journalist, intellectual, and diplomat who was Indonesia's ambassador to the United States in the 1970s. Other Indonesian friends, colleagues, and informants represented in the General Correspondence include Basri Haznan, Nuradi, L.N. Palar, and Idajat Soejono. Many Indonesians use only a single name.
Additional correspondents include Andrew F. Brimmer, Arnold C. Brackman, George A. Carroll, Kenneth R. Hill, Alice Langley Hsieh, W. L. Holland, George McTuman Kahin, Philip E. Lilienthal, and Sol S. Sanders.
The Professional File is the largest series, comprising the bulk of the papers. It is organized into Academic , Biographical Material and Personnel Records , Department of Defense and Related Organizations , Indonesia , and General subseries. Documents touching on the Vietnam conflict, a major professional interest during Mintz's service with the Defense Department and related research organizations, are not as numerous or as comprehensive as the Indonesian material. However, the Operations Duffel Bag and John Silver file contains daily records of Mintz's service during 1969-1970 in Vietnam with COMNAVFORV (Commander Naval Forces Vietnam) field testing remote sensor technology in riverine combat situations.
The largest Professional File subseries, Indonesia , includes an extensive file of Indonesian and Dutch newsletters and other printed matter in English from 1945, when Indonesia declared independence from the Netherlands, to 1965-1965, the period of the successful military coup against Soekarno and the bloody suppression of the PKI (Indonesian communist party). Another large grouping relates to the Indonesian United Nations delegation, which includes an extensive chronological file containing both background material and daily records of the delegation. The name file includes an unpublished autobiography of L. N. Palar, head of the United Nations delegation during the critical period between 1948 and 1953.
The Speeches and Writings series features drafts, with related chronologies, of two unpublished, contemporaneous books by Mintz on the Indonesian revolution in the 1940s.
The largest file in the Miscellany relates to Mintz's elementary, high school, and undergraduate college education. There is also a file on the Music Box Canteen, a club for servicemen and women, and merchant mariners in Greenwich Village in New York where Mintz was a hostess supervisor during World War II.