Patrick J . Hurley Patrick Jay Hurley ( January 8 , 1883 , Choctaw Nation , Indian Territory — July 30 , 1963 , Santa Fe , New Mexico ) was a highly decorated American soldier with the rank of Major General , statesman , and diplomat . He has since been known as 赫爾利 " hè ěr lì " in China , a phonetic rendering of his last name into Chinese . 1908 — 1941 . Hurley started a law practice in Oklahoma in 1908 . During World War I , Hurley served with the Judge Advocate General ' s Department of the 6th Army Corps , American Expeditionary Force in France . For his service in this capacity , Hurley received the Army Distinguished Service Medal . In November 1918 , Hurley was detached to the 76th Field Artillery Regiment and participated with this unit in the combats near Louppy - le - Château , France . Hurley voluntarily proved a reconnaissance under heavy enemy fire and was subsequently awarded with Silver Star for gallantry in action . After the war , he attended George Washington University , where he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity . He became active in the Republican Party and was appointed Assistant Secretary of War by President Herbert Hoover in 1929 . He was promoted to Secretary of War after the death of James W . Good and served in President Hoover ' s cabinet until 1933 . World War II . Hurley received a promotion to brigadier general in 1941 when the United States entered World War II , and General George C . Marshall dispatched him to the Far East as a personal representative to examine the feasibility of relieving American troops besieged on the island of Bataan . He was successful in delivering additional food and ammunition to the soldiers on three separate occasions , but could not evacuate them . After the conclusion of this mission , he embarked on a series of assignments as a personal representative of President Franklin D . Roosevelt . He served as minister to New Zealand in 1942 and then flew to the Soviet Union , becoming the first foreigner to receive permission to visit the Eastern Front . Over the next two years , he visited the Near East , Middle East , China , Iran and Afghanistan on behalf of the president . In the course of his duties , he met with a number of local political leaders , including the nominal head of the Zionist movement in Palestine , David Ben - Gurion . The report that he sent to the president on Ben - Gurion and Zionism was quite negative . He was appointed US Ambassador to China in 1944 . Decorations . Major general Hurley served in two World War and received a lot of military decorations for bravery of distinguished service . Here is the list of his decorations : China . Hurley arrived in China in August 1944 , as a personal envoy from President Roosevelt to Chiang Kai - shek . His written directive from the President was as follows : Military operations in China against the Japanese had been severely hampered by a lack of cooperation , bordering upon personal enmity , between Stilwell and Chiang . The strongly anti - Communist Hurley eventually came down on the side of the Generalissimo , and he supported the replacement of Stilwell with General Albert C . Wedemeyer . Throughout his tenure in China , Hurley felt that his efforts were being undermined by State Department officials , principally John Stewart Service and John Paton Davies in China , and John Carter Vincent in Washington , who he felt were unduly sympathetic to the Communist forces led by Mao Zedong . In early November 1944 , upon the resignation of Ambassador Clarence Gauss , Hurley was officially offered the ambassadorship to China , but initially declined " with a statement that the duties he had been called upon to perform in China had been the most disagreeable that he had ever performed - - and further , he felt that his support of Chiang Kai - shek and the National Government of China had increased the opposition directed toward himself by the un - American elements in the State Department . " Upon receiving a telegram from the President on November 17 , urging him to take the job because of the critical nature of the situation , he reluctantly accepted . Hurley ' s dealings with the State Department did not improve . Moreover , President Roosevelt ' s February 1945 Yalta Conference with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin resulted in a secret agreement in which , among other things , the Soviet Union was granted concessions in China that Czarist Russia had lost in the Russo - Japanese War early in the century . This , Hurley believed , was the beginning of the end of a non - Communist China . He held out hope that after President Roosevelt ' s death , President Harry S . Truman would recognize what he regarded as the errors of Yalta and would rectify the situation , but his efforts in that direction were in vain . On November 26 , 1945 , he submitted a scathing letter of resignation . " I requested the relief of the career men , " he wrote , " who were opposing the American policy in the Chinese Theater of war . These professional diplomats were returned to Washington and placed in the Chinese and Far Eastern Divisions of the State Department as my supervisors . Some of these same career men whom I relieved have been assigned as supervisors to the Supreme Commander in Asia . In such positions most of them have continued to side with the Communist armed party and at times with the imperialist bloc against American policy . " Besides Hoover himself , Hurley was the last living member of the Hoover administration . Political candidacy . Hurley was the Republican candidate for a seat in the United States Senate for the state of New Mexico in 1946 , 1948 , and 1952 , but he lost all three attempts . Mining . Hurley started the United Western Minerals Corporation of Santa Fe , New Mexico . It was involved in the rush to start uranium mining in the Ambrosia Lake region of New Mexico in the 1950s . See Uranium mining in New Mexico .