Dirty Work: Tracing the Career of a US Police Adviser Who Worked in Okinawa and Then Moved on to Other Cold War Trouble Spots in Southeast Asia

Paul Howard Skuse (1909–1994) was a Boston patrolman and naval officer in the Pacific theater of World War II and the Korean War who served from 1946 to 1958 as a police adviser in Okinawa (Ryukyu Islands). Afterwards, he became a police adviser in Indonesia, Laos, and Vietnam working under the United States Agency of International Development (USAID)’s Office of Public Safety (OPS). Skuse’s career provides a window into US clandestine operations during the Cold War in Okinawa and Southeast Asia that have remained largely hidden from public view and are left out of most history books.