Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (12 page)

There are two accounts of this trip in the same notebook.
They are within a few pages of one another, yet they differ in detail. Ron was
already making a habit of elaborating his past. Further, the accounts teach us
to question the veracity of any Hubbard claim. The
Henderson’s
passenger
list shows that rather than having been allowed aboard only an hour before, Ron
was aboard fully twenty-four hours before she sailed.
²¹

On Guam, the 17-year-old Ron was tutored by his mother, a
qualified teacher, for what should have been his 12th or senior high school
grade. He was being prepared for the Naval Academy examination.
²²

During this period, Ron made his second trip to China, with
his parents. China was still in the throes of civil war, and travel there was
limited. Hubbard kept a diary of his trip aboard the
USS Gold Star
. The
ship docked at Tsingtao on October 24th, 1928, and stayed there for six days
before putting to sea for Taku. The Hubbards then travelled inland to Peking,
where they spent about a week.
²³

In his diary, Hubbard gave a fairly elaborate description of
the sights, probably seen on tours given by the Peking YMCA. He was unimpressed
by the marvels of Chinese architecture, and the only building which won his
vote was the Rockefeller Foundation. Even the Great Wall failed to elicit more
than a comment about its possible use as a roller coaster. Two years later, in
another notebook entry, hindsight had transformed the visit to the Great Wall
into a far more romantic experience, but that was Hubbard’s way. Hubbard’s
opinion of the Chinese was consistently low. Among other criticisms, he said
the Chinese were both stupid and vicious and would always take the long way
round.

While in Peking, Hubbard visited a Buddhist temple. He was
later to say that Scientology was the western successor to Buddhism, yet his
only comment at the time was that the devotees sounded like frogs croaking.

After Peking came Chefoo and then Shanghai. Ron made little
comment about Shanghai. It was cold, and the native part of the city had only
been re-opened to foreigners two weeks earlier. Then came Hong Kong, again with
little comment, and by December 15th, the Chinese adventure was over and the
Gold Star was back at sea.

The deep understanding of Eastern philosophy acquired by
Hubbard in China was boiled down into a single statement in one of his diaries.
He said that “the only trouble with China is that there are too many chinks
there.”
²⁶Inscrutable, but hardly a compendium of the great thoughts
of the Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian masters.

Hubbard was 17 and this was his last visit to China. In his
diary, he made no mention of any meeting in Peking with “old Mayo, last of a
line of magicians of Kublai Khan,” mentioned in one of his Scientology books.
²⁷David Mayo would turn up far later in Hubbard’s life, as one of the rebels who
split Scientology apart in the 1980s. But he is a New Zealander and makes no
claims of ties to Kublai Khan.

There is no record of Hubbard’s supposed travels in Tibet,
²⁸the “Western hills of China” or India.
²⁹A flight change at Calcutta
airport in 1959
³⁰seems to have been his only direct contact with
the land of Vedantic philosophy. Indeed in one of his early Dianetic lectures
he dismissed his teenage journeys, saying “I was in the Orient when I was
young. Of course, I was a harum-scarum kid. I wasn’t thinking about deep philosophical
problems.”
³¹

By Christmas 1928, Hubbard was back on Guam. He took the
Naval Academy entrance examination failing the mathematics section.
³²In August 1929, Harry Hubbard and his family returned to the US.
³³Harry was posted to Washington, DC and Ron enrolled at the Swavely Prep School,
in Manassas, Virginia, for intensive study to prepare him for the Naval
Academy.
³⁴His mother returned to her parents in Helena.

In December 1929, Hubbard acted in the school play. By this
time, he had developed eyestrain and his near-sightedness prevented him from
qualifying for the Naval Academy.
³⁵

Hubbard enrolled at the Woodward School for Boys in
February, 1930, and graduated that June.
³⁶Woodward was mainly
catered to difficult students and slow learners. At 19, Hubbard was a year late
in graduating from high school.

At Woodward, Hubbard won an oratory contest. He was always a
great talker. The set subject was apt for a man later to be accused of
entrapping his followers in a brainwashing cult: “The Constitution: a Guarantee
of the Liberty of the Individual.”
³⁷

Hubbard’s book
Mission into Time
says he enlisted in
the 20th Marine Corps Reserve while a student at George Washington University.
Shannon obtained Hubbard’s Marine Service record which confirms that Hubbard
actually joined the Reserve in May of 1930,
³⁸four months before
enrolling at University. Within two months, he had been promoted to First
Sergeant, a leap of six ranks. When Shannon asked the Marine Corps Headquarters
they were as baffled as he was by such rapid peacetime promotion. The answer is
quite simply that the 20th was actually a Reserve training unit connected to
George Washington University. Hubbard later explained his promotion by saying
it was a newly formed regiment and his superiors “couldn’t find anybody else
who could drill.”
³⁹

On October 22, 1931, Hubbard received an honorable discharge
from the Marine Reserve. In his service record, there is a handwritten note
under the character reference: “Excellent.” In another hand beneath this is written,
“Not to be re-enlisted.”
⁴⁰There is no explanation of either
statement. Hubbard’s discharge followed on the heels of criticism of his poor
academic performance.

Differing claims have been made in Scientology literature
for Hubbard’s achievements at George Washington University. It has been said he
attended the first courses in nuclear physics,
⁴¹even that he was “one
of America’s first Nuclear Physicists.”
⁴²The former is unlikely, it
was a little too late to be the first such course, and the latter is a
downright lie. Even Hubbard’s last wife, Mary Sue, has admitted that her
husband was not a nuclear physicist, though she made the preposterous statement
that he had never claimed to be.
⁴³The claim was excused as a
mistake made by over-zealous Scientologists, which remained uncorrected in
literature copyrighted to Hubbard for 30 years. In fact, Hubbard made that very
claim in a Bulletin called the
Man who invented Scientology
, published
in 1959.
⁴⁴

Hubbard was not a “Nuclear Physicist” by any stretch of the
imagination. He was a student in the School of Engineering at George Washington
University, majoring in Civil Engineering. According to his college records,
⁴⁵he was enrolled in a course called Molecular and Atomic Physics in the second
semester of the 1931-32 college year, receiving an “F” grade in what was
certainly an introductory course. By his own admission, Hubbard was poor at
mathematics
⁴⁶and his records support this showing nothing better
than a “D.” He was later to demonstrate how superficial his understanding of
physics was in a book called
All About Radiation
. Ignoring Hubbard’s admission,
two Scientology biographical sketches say he graduated not only with an
Engineering degree, but also a Mathematics degree.
⁴⁷

For some time Scientology publications carried the legend
“C.E.” (Civil Engineer)
⁴⁸after Hubbard’s name. In fact, Hubbard
failed to graduate. At the end of his first year he was put on probation for
his poor academic performance, and at the end of the second asked to leave.
⁴⁹In 1935, Hubbard wrote: “I have some very poor grade sheets which show that I
studied to be a civil engineer in college.”
⁵⁰Scientology official
Vaughn Young says the idea that “C.E.” stands for “Civil Engineer” is mistaken.
Apparently the acronym represents a certificate awarded in the early days of
Scientology. The same logic applies to Hubbard’s BSc (Bachelor of Scientology),
and his self-awarded “Doctor of Divinity.”
⁵¹

Hubbard’s inflated claims usually have some slim basis in
fact. He was an elaborator, not an originator. His much publicized authority as
a scientific and philosophical pioneer was founded on his purportedly long,
intimate experience of Eastern mysticism, and his training as an engineer and
physicist. Hubbard built his house on the very shaky foundation of a two week
vacation in Peking and a Fail grade in Molecular and Atomic Physics.

Behind the prosaic facts, was a clever and articulate boy,
who did not manage to keep up with his schoolwork. Far from the legend Hubbard
was to create, there is little exceptional about Ron Hubbard’s childhood and
adolescence. Contrary to his later claims, he was with his mother until he was
16.
⁵²The evidence shows he was part of a loving family. His parents
were probably upset by his failure to win a place in the Naval Academy, or to
qualify as an engineer, especially in the dark times of the Great Depression.
Ron later said: “My father ... decreed that I should study engineering and
mathematics and so I found myself obediently studying.”
⁵³

Hubbard was already writing in his teens, struggling to
generate fiction. His journals are packed with attempts at pulp stories. Even his
diary entries were obviously written for an audience suggesting that even then
Hubbard’s distinction between fantasy and reality had blurred?

1.

Hubbard,
Hymn of Asia,
appendix.

2.

Hubbard,
Mission into Time
, p.5; Hubbard,
Have You Lived Before this
Life?
p.298.

3.

Hubbard,
Mission into Time,
p.6.

4.

Flag Divisional Directive 69RA “Facts about L. Ron Hubbard Things You
Should Know”, 8 March 1974, revised 7 April 1974.

5.

Hubbard,
What is Scientology?,
p.xlii.

6.

Newspaper headed Helena Daily Independent, but not found in a search of
the Montana Historical Society records. Further, veteran newsman Russell Miller
in conversation has said that this is not an original document, as the type is
modern.

7.

Adventure
magazine,
vol.93, no.5, 1 October 1935, Hubbard
“The Camp-Fire”.

8.

US government retype of 16 November 1966 of a letter from H.R. Hubbard
to George Washington University 19 September 1930. The dates in this document
are entirely consistent with external evidence – e.g. notes 9, 11, 14, 20, 23
and 37. However, his enrollment at Woodward is given as “30 February”, an error
which persisted into the first draft of this book.

9.

H.R. Hubbard Navy records.

10.

Michael
Linn Shannon “A biography of L. Ron Hubbard”, unpublished article.

11.

Church
of Scientology of California v. Armstrong exhibit 62, p.1. It is highly
important to realize that the cult sued Armstrong because it wanted the return
of authentic Hubbard documents. The cult – and Mary Sue Hubbard who intervened
in the suit – did not question the authenticity of any document attributed to
Hubbard during the trial. Indeed, neither the cult nor Mary Sue Hubbard would
have litigated to secure the return of forged documents. The Hubbard diaries –
exhibits 62, 63 and 65 give a fascinating insight into his state of mind as a
teenager. No later recollection by this story-teller can equal these
contemporary and near contemporary records (this last because Hubbard re-wrote
and improved upon even his diaries). The documents in evidence in the Armstrong
case were briefly unsealed. Assertions by the scientologists that documents
were stolen by Armstrong are untrue, as is the assertion that the copies of the
exhibits that used by me (and provided by me to Miller) were stolen. This
assertion was dismissed in the High Court in London, when the Scientologists
failed to injunct the publication of Miller’s Bare-Faced Messiah.