General Joseph W. Stilwell and Dr. William B. Bettus

Written by Weijiang Zhang

The Stilwells [Joseph W. Stilwell] and Horsfalls together took a Chinese-style house outside the Legation Quarter?Language officers studied at the North China Union Language School founded in 1910 to teach missionaries and later expanded to include the many foreign advisers in the Chinese service as well as businessmen and any others who wanted to learn?  Dr. William B. Pettus, founder and director of the school, complained that Stilwell and Horsfall had picked up a bad accent in California which could lead to confusion.

(Barbara Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-1945, pp. 66-67)

The above quotation from Barbara Tuchman's book was the only published information about General Joseph W. Stilwell (1883-1946) and William B. Pettus (1880-1959)n until the extensive studies of the Pettus Archival Project at Claremont Graduate University uncovered a lifelong student/teacher relationship between Stilwell and Pettus. For example, in late 1930s when the Japanese occupation of China intensified, Stilwell helped Pettus ship boxes of documents and artifacts from China to the United States for the sake of safety.  In the early 1940s, General Stilwell helped Pettus secure army officers to be trained in Chinese language and culture for China's war front.  And in 1940, General Stilwell and General Marston (U.S. Marine Corp) respectively received honorary doctorate degree from the California College in China, which highlighted Stilwell's outstanding achievement and contribution to the College of Chinese Studies in Peking and the California College in China in California.

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Preface to Papers between William B. Pettus and General Joseph W. Stilwell and Stilwell Family 

Written by Colonel John Easterbrook 

The papers contained in this document reflect and document a unique teacher-student relationship that not only continued, but also strengthened as the years went on.  In this case the student went on to become a very prominent American, and yet the friendship that was fostered many years earlier continued to grow. 

These papers are a portion of the William B. Pettus collection at Claremont Graduate University.  The papers were bequeathed to the University by Pettus and remained unopened for many years.  Recently Professor John Regan of the University and Zhang Weijiang, a visiting scholar from China, began investigating the collection and quickly came to realize the importance of the collection.   Containing papers from many now prominent people such as Joseph W. Stilwell, Pearl S. Buck, Hu Shi, and John L. Stuart, the collection is a major source of information on a number of historical facets that heretofore have not received much investigation.  In particular they shed increased light on the more recent history of China and a portion of the US role in that history.

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Introduction to Papers between William B. Pettus and General Joseph W. Stilwell and Stilwell Family

Written by John Regan and Weijiang Zhang 

The collection of papers on General Joseph W. Stilwell and William B. Pettus is one of the sub-collections out of the Pettus Archival Project at Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California.

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