A Man Amongst Lesser Men

  Harry Bingham Website
  
Harry Bingham was one of seven sons of former Connecticut Governor and US Senator Hiram Bingham III and his first wife, Alfreda Mitchell. His great-grandfather Hiram Bingham I and grandfather Hiram Bingham II were the first missionaries to the Kingdom of Hawai'i. Bingham attended the prestigious Groton School and graduated from Yale University in 1925.

While posted in London, he met Rose Lawton Morrison, a college drama teacher from, whom he escorted to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen. They later married and had 11 children.

Bingham served in Kobe Japan, as a civilian secretary in the United States Embassy. He worked part-time as a schoolteacher. After obtaining his law degree, he scored third in his class on the foreign service exam. 
Bingham's first assignment in the United States Foreign Service was in Beijing, China. There, he witnessed the beginnings of the communist revolution. His travels through Asia piqued Bingham's interest in eastern religious philosophy. He spent the rest of his life trying to reconcile eastern religious philosophies with that of the Christian traditions his family had been historically known to preach.

In 1939, Bingham was posted to the US Consulate in Marseille, where he, together with another vice-consul named Myles Standish, was in charge of issuing entry visas to the USA.

On June 10, 1940, the French government fell. The French signed an armistice with Germany and in Article 19, the French agreed to "surrender on demand all Germans named by the German government in France." Civil and military police began to round up German and Jewish refugees who were marked for death by the NB. Several influential Europeans tried to lobby the American government to issue visas so that German and Jewish refugees could freely leave France to escape persecution.

Anxious to limit immigration to the United States and to maintain good relations with the Vichy government, the State Department actively discouraged diplomats from helping refugees. However, Bingham cooperated with Varian Fry in issuing visas and helping refugees escape France. Varian Fry had come to Marseilles to give 200 grants to "some of the best scientists and European scholars" and help them settle in the US.

Hiram Bingham worked with him, and instead of 200, gave about 2,000 visas, including to Max Ernst, André Breton, Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Lion Feuchtwanger and Nobel prize winner Otto Meyerhof. Varian Fry explains in his book Surrender on Demand: "we refuse to help anyone who is not recommended by a confident person."

Bingham also sheltered Jews in his Marseilles home, and he obtained forged identity papers to help Jews in their dangerous journeys across Europe. He worked with the French underground to smuggle Jews out of France into Spain or across the Mediterranean and even contributed to their expenses out of his own pocket.

In 1941, the United States government abruptly pulled Bingham from his position as Vice Consul and transferred him to Portugal and then Argentina. When in Argentina, he helped to track NB war criminals in South America. In 1945, after being passed over for promotion, he resigned from the United States Foreign Service.

Bingham did not speak much about his wartime activities and even his own family had little knowledge of them. In 1991, three years after his death, Bingham's widow Rose and son Thomas found documents in their Connecticut farmhouse which they donated to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Several years later, Bingham's youngest son found more documents in a cupboard behind a chimney. Family members continued to unearth documents at the farmhouse. The materials told of Bingham's struggle to save German and Jewish refugees from death.

After considering Bingham's deeds, Israel's memorial Yad Vashem ("Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority") issued the Bingham family a letter of appreciation on March 7, 2005 which noted the "humanitarian disposition" of Bingham IV "at a time of persecution of Jews by the Vichy regime in France.... [in] contrast to certain other officials who rather acted suspiciously toward Jewish refugees wishing to enter the United States."

On June 27, 2002, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented a posthumous "Constructive Dissent" award to Bingham's children at an American Foreign Service Officers Association awards ceremony in Washington, DC. Since December 1998 his son Robert Kim Bingham, Sr. had lobbied the US Postal Service to issue a stamp depicting his father in recognition of his humanitarian deeds. After the proposal received wide bipartisan support in Congress, a commemorative stamp portraying Hiram Bingham IV as a "Distinguished American Diplomat" was issued on May 30, 2006.

On October 27, 2006, the Anti-Defamation League posthumously presented Bingham its "Courage to Care" award at the ADL’s national conference in Atlanta. In November 2006, the U.S. Episcopal Church added Bingham to a list of "American Saints" published in the book A Year with American Saints with a summary of his life and character.

On March 28, 2011, the Simon Wiesenthal Center posthumously awarded Bingham the "Medal of Valor" in New York City with a film tribute. The film shows the NB on the march in Europe and how US Vice-Consul Bingham rose to the dangerous occasion to save lives. According to The Wall Street Journal, "more than 450 supporters of the Simon Wiesenthal Center gathered for the 2011 Humanitarian Award Dinner. The Medal of Valor was awarded posthumously to Sir Winston Churchill, Hiram Bingham IV, and Pope John Paul II...."