Sir Robert Leslie Craigie, GCMG, CB, PC (1883-1959) was the British Ambassador to Japan from 1937-1941.
Born in Southsea, England on December 6 1883, the elder child and only son of Commander (lat...view moreSir Robert Leslie Craigie, GCMG, CB, PC (1883-1959) was the British Ambassador to Japan from 1937-1941.
Born in Southsea, England on December 6 1883, the elder child and only son of Commander (later Admiral) Robert William Craigie (1849-1911) and his wife, Henrietta Isabella Dinnis, he was educated at Heidelberg and entered the Foreign Office, where he gained a reputation for his skill as a diplomat. He was appointment head of the American department in 1928, and ambassador to Japan in 1937. As one of the Allied diplomats interned in Japan until agreement was reached for their repatriation, he observed the Doolittle Raid on 18 April 1942. In 1945 he served briefly as the chairman of the United Nations War Crimes Commission.
Craigie authored the foreword to Ten Years in Japan: A Contemporary Record Drawn from the Diaries and Private and Official Papers of Joseph C. Grew, which was published in 1944 and written by Joseph C. Grew, the United States Ambassador to Japan from 1932-1942, who was based in Tokyo at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941—the opening of war between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
Sir Craigie died on May 16, 1959, aged 75.view less