Chapter 6: The Tehran Conference

Getting back to our chronological order of time, it is now 1941, and just before Christmas the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and United States gets embroiled in a global war against the Axes, Germans and Italians in Europe & Africa, and the Japanese in the Pacific. The American military presence in Iran is significantly more prevalent and visible. Americans set up a camp in a place called Amirabad, just uotside of Tehran (about 15 minutes ride), almost a city in itself, which housed all the military personnel and their equipment, all logistics, transportation, and vehicles, all communication and entertainment facilities, etc, etc.

By mere chance, one day as I was standing at our store door, I met this G.I., Corporal Douglas Cook (a young man in his early twenties) when he got off the personnel carrier. They always disembarked in front of our store as one of their stops. I think the smell of freshly ground coffee must have attracted him and caused him to approach and talk to me. Anyhow, we became friends and he started coming to the store more frequently (every time he had furlough) talking about things Armenian and things about America. One day when my mother was at the store, she wondered if he would like to come and have an Armenian lunch with us some day being that he was so far away from home and family. Needless to say he was thrilled to accept the invitation and was anxious to discover different Armenian and Persian dishes. He was very polite, well mannered, and intelligent. Made a good impression on my mother. We had several such get togethers. He was always the gentleman, which spoke well for the city of Toledo ,Ohio where he was from. He was from a middle class family, and I think his parents owned a neighborhood hardware store. He always brought me some American magazines, like Look, Readers Digest, or National Geographic. He also took me to the camp a few times and gave me the tour of the facilities. I even witnessed a boxing match and some entertainment put on by some Armed Forces entertainers.

As 1943 rolled around things got thicker politically. The war was dragging on,so, the Allied powers decided to have a summit, to plan their future military activities. They chose Tehran, Iran for their meeting place. In November 1943, the conference between President Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin took place at the British Embassy in Tehran, directly across the street from our store.This was strategically planned,since the Soviet Embassy was conveniently located directly across the street on the north side of the British Embassy .They blocked off the street in between and made a passage way between the two ,whereby Stalin could safely pass thru to the British Embassy without fear of any assassination plots. Obviously, a great deal of planning and security precautions took place, for months prior to the meeting. Rumor had it, that there were six or seven Stalin doubles since he was always afraid of assasins. Anyway , after the conferance, there was an air of importance and well being prevailing in Iran, about their role in matters of important universal decisions.

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