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After Pearl Harbor, Bay Cityan Carl Boehringer Incarcerated by Japanese
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Bay City Diplomat Carl Boehringer at Bay City Eastern High graduation in 1921,
U.S. Diplomat Carl H. Boehringer, native Bay Cityan stationed in Tokyo during the Pearl Harbor attack, was captured by the Japanese and incarcerated seven more months.
Mr. Boehringer was among 45 U.S. diplomats at the U.S. Embassy who were placed in Japanese custody when the attack occurred.
Born Feb. 11, 1903, he was the son of Albert Gabriel Boehringer and Marguerite Alma Weber. His father was a partner with his brother Rudolph Boehringer in a florist business with greenhouses at 325 Park Avenue and store at 816-818 N. Jefferson St.
Both his parents were immigrants from Germany. He had two younger brothers, Albert and Frederick, and a younger sister, Margaret.
A 1921 graduate of Bay City Eastern High School, Carl Hermann Boehringer was graduated from Michigan Agricultural College, East Lansing, in 1925 and attended the Georgetown University Foreign Service School.
He held government diplomatic posts at Singapore, Jakarta, Manila, Osaka, Chungking, Nanking and Tokyo.
He married Norma Eunice Schmitt of Milwaukee in 1933 in Singapore and Phillis Chambers, 30, of Illinois Jan. 12, 1938 at the Akasaka Ward Office, Tokyo.
Mr. Boehringer, age 37, was one of 45 aides at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo during the Pearl Harbor sneak attack on Dec. 7, 1941.
While one local man, Seaman First Class Robert Headington, was killed when the USS Oklahoma was hit by five torpedoes, two dozen local people at Pearl survived. (See MyBayCity.com Dec. 7, 2011).
Boehringer pictured here
in Japan with the U.S. Foreign Service
He shipped from Mozambique, East Africa, to New York in August, 1942.
The U.S. embassy in Tokyo remained closed during the Allied occupation, as the U.S. was the occupying power in Japan. It reopened on April 28, 1952, following restoration of diplomatic relations under the Treaty of San Francisco. Mr. Boehringer then returned to Tokyo as counselor for economic affairs in the Office of the U.S. Political Adviser for Japan.
In 1952 Mr. Boehringer was named a commercial attaché in the Office of Economic Affairs in West Germany. While in Germany he worked on projects involving repatriation of German assets from Japan, such as gold, stocks, patents and trademarks, real estate and ships. Other officials working in this project area included Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles and Dean Acheson.
He spent 21 years in the U.S. Foreign Service and then took a post with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Japan.
Mr. Boehringer was a collector of art from the Far East. He wrote an article entitled "Meeting With The West" for American Heritage Magazine in August 1963, observing: "In the 1860s, Japanese artists pictured the first Americans in a newly opened land. Their work was a mixture of keen observation and delightful misinformation."
In 1968 he also wrote a small book entitled "Townsend Harris: Businessman-Diplomat." Townsend Harris (1804 - 1878) was a successful New York City merchant and minor politician, and the first United States Consul General to Japan. He negotiated the "Harris Treaty" between the U.S. and Japan and is credited for opening the Empire of Japan to foreign trade and culture in the Edo period.
Boehringer died Dec. 18, 1972, in Hong Kong.
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