Institute of Pacific Relations

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The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) was an international organization established in 1925 to provide a forum for discussion of problems and relations between nations of the Pacific rim. IPR was governed by the "Pacific Council," with "National Councils" in the U. S., Russia, China, Japan, Australia, and 10 other countries.[1] IPR was founded in the spirit of "Wilsonian internationalism," an awareness of the United States' new role as a world power after World War I, and a belief that liberal democracy should be promoted throughout the world. To promote greater knowledge of these problems, the IPR supported conferences, research projects and publications, and after 1932 had a quarterly journal, Pacific Affairs.

IPR was financed by important grants from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and other major corporations — which, according to IPR American Council Executive Secretary (and self-proclaimed Communist Party member)[2] Frederick Vanderbilt Field, subsidized his publication of proposals "as anticapitalistic as the articles he wrote in later decades for The New Masses and The Daily Worker."[3]

Field had been hired in 1928 by IPR Secretary General Edward C. Carter, a self-described "fellow traveler."[4] Carter also hired Field's Harvard classmate Joseph Barnes (who would later be identified under oath as a Communist by four different witnesses),[5] as well as Owen Lattimore, who would become editor of Pacific Affairs.

Among other IPR staffers identified as Communists or collaborators with Soviet intelligence agents were Kathleen Barnes, Hilda Austern, Elsie Fairfax-Cholmely, Chi Chao-ting, Guenter Stein, Harriet Levine, Talitha Gerlach, Chen Han-seng (a member of the Sorge spy ring)[6], Michael Greenberg (named as a source in 1945 by defecting Soviet courier Elizabeth Bentley), and T.A. Bisson (Venona's "Arthur")[7], as well as Kate Mitchell and Andrew Roth, both of whom would be arrested in the 1945 Amerasia scandal.[8]

IPR was closely allied with Amerasia. The two organizations shared the same building, and many members of the Editorial Board of Amerasia were officers or employees of IPR. [9] An FBI review of Amerasia and IPR publications found that approximately 115 people contributed articles to both.[10]

Soviet defector Gen. Alexander Barmine told FBI investigators that then-chief of Soviet Army intelligence Gen. Berzin told him in 1935 that IPR in China was cover for Soviet military intelligence.[11]

Many of the members of IPR were also among those referred to as the China Hands--a group of American diplomats known for their expertise on China and the Far East. As the Chinese Civil War began to go in the favor of the Communists, some among the China Hands recommended that a Communist China should be accepted as inevitable, and that the U.S. should open relations with Mao Zedong to prevent China from allying itself too closely with the Soviet Union. This led to accusations by the China Lobby that policies drafted by the China Hands had "lost" China to Communism, and to charges that a Communist conspiracy was at work among the China Hands and within the Institute of Pacific Relations.

In the early fifties, the IPR came under what one author called "a relentless attack from the American right",[12] which included a lengthy investigation by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. This controversy resulted in legal battles and reduced funding for IPR, and the Institute ceased operations in 1960.The attacks on the Institute began with a study by dissident IPR member Alfred Kohlberg, an American businessman who had owned a textile firm in prewar China. After finding what he believed were Communist sympathies in IPR, Kohlberg first published an 80 page report, then launched a publicity campaign against the Institute. This eventually led to Congressional investigations of IPR.[13]

Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin repeatedly criticized IPR and its former chairman Philip Jessup. McCarthy observed that Frederick V. Field, T.A. Bisson, and Owen Lattimore were very active in IPR and claimed that they had worked to turn American China policy in favor of the Communist Party of China.

In 1952, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), chaired by Senator Pat McCarran, spent over a year reviewing some 20,000 documents from the files of IPR and questioning IPR personnel. It was revealed that Marxists had published articles in the IPR journal and that Communists had attended an IPR conference in 1942. In its final report the SISS stated:

“ The IPR itself was like a specialized political flypaper in its attractive power for Communists ... British Communists like Michael Greenberg, Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley, and Anthony Jenkinson; Chinese Communists like Chi Chao-ting, Chen Han-Seng, Chu Tong, or Y.Y. Hsu; German Communists like Hans Moeller (Asiaticus) or Guenter Stein; Japanese Communists (and espionage agents) like Saionji and Ozaki; United States Communists like James S. Allen, Frederick Field, William Mandel, Lawrence Rosinger, and Alger Hiss.[14] ”

The unanimous report concluded:

“ The IPR has been considered by the American Communist Party and by Soviet officials as an instrument of Communist policy, propaganda and military intelligence. The IPR disseminated and sought to popularize false information including information originating from Soviet and Communist sources.[…] The IPR was a vehicle used by the Communists to orient American far eastern policies toward Communist objectives.[15] ”

Elizabeth Bentley testified that NKVD spy chief Jacob Golos warned her to stay away from the IPR because it was "as red as a rose, and you shouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole."[16]. Likewise, Louis Budenz, former editor of the Daily Worker, testified that Alexander Trachtenberg of the Communist Party-affiliated International Publishers told him that party leaders thought the IPR was "too much a concentration point for Communist; the control could be maintained without such a galaxy of Communists in it."[17]

The accusations of a subversive conspiracy were never substantiated, although critics charged that IPR scholars had at times been naïve in their statements regarding Communism and Stalinist Russia. Owen Lattimore was charged with perjuring himself before the SISS in 1952. After many of the counts were rejected by a Federal Judge and one of the witnesses confessed to perjury, the case was dropped in 1955. The IPR lost its tax-exempt status as an educational body in 1955, when the Internal Revenue Service alleged that the Institute had engaged in the dissemination of controversial and partisan propaganda, and had attempted to influence the policies or opinions of the government. The legal actions to regain tax-exempt status lasted until 1959, with the final judgment rejecting all the Internal Revenue Service's allegations.[18] Despite the outcome, the IPR's finances were exhausted by the protracted litigation, and the institute dissolved in 1960.

[edit] Sources and notes

  1. ^ Akami, Tomoko (2001). Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan, and the Institute of Pacific Relations in War and Peace, 1919-45. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-22034-3. 
  2. ^ Kai Bird and Svetlana Chervonnaya, “The Mystery of Ales,” The American Scholar, Summer 2007
  3. ^ Robert Sherrill, "A Life Devoted to a Lost Cause," New York Times, October 16, 1983
  4. ^ FBI file: Institute of Pacific Relations, Section 2, PDF p. 3
  5. ^ "The Case Against I.P.R.," Time, September 3, 1951
  6. ^ Maochen Yu, "Chen Hansheng's Memoirs and Chinese Communist Espionage," Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 6-7 (Winter 1995/1996), p. 274
  7. ^ Robert L. Benson, The Venona Story. National Security Agency, Central Security Service
  8. ^ Institute of Pacific Relations, report of the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, 1952, p. 97, pp. 147-59
  9. ^ Office memorandum: Rosen to Ladd, Re European Recovery Program, November 22, 1949, p. 3 (FBI file: Institute of Pacific Relations, Section 47, PDF p. 44)
  10. ^ FBI Report: Institute of Pacific Relations, January 18, 1951 (FBI file: Institute of Pacific Relations, Section 47), PDF p. 9
  11. ^ Teletype, April 1950 (FBI file: Institute of Pacific Relations, Section 4, PDF p. 134)
  12. ^ Marshall, Jonathan (1976). "The Institute of Pacific Relations: Politics and Polemics". Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars Vol. 8: pg. 35. 
  13. ^ Marshall, Jonathan (1976). "The Institute of Pacific Relations: Politics and Polemics". Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars Vol. 8. 
  14. ^ Institute of Pacific Relations, report of the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, 1952, p. 97
  15. ^ Institute of Pacific Relations, report of the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, 1952, p. 223-225
  16. ^ Senate Internal Security Committee, Hearings on the Institute of Pacific Relations, p. 437
  17. ^ Institute of Pacific Relations, report of the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, 1952, p. 97
  18. ^ Institute of Pacific Relations fonds. University of British Columbia Archives. Retrieved on 2006-08-15.

[edit] References

  • Tomoko Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan, and the Institute of Pacific Relations in War and Peace, 1919-45 (London; New York: Routledge, 2002).
  • Paul Hooper, Elusive Destiny: The Internationalist Movement in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980)
  • John Thomas, Institute of Pacific Relations (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974) is limited to the IPR experience under McCarthyism.
  • Paul Hooper, “The Institute of Pacific Relations and the Origins of Asian and Pacific Studies,” Pacific Affairs 41 (Spring 1988): 67-92
  • Paul Hooper, ed., Rediscovering the IPR: Proceedings of the First International Research Conference on the Institute of Pacific Relations (Honolulu: Department of American Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 1994).
  • William Holland, “Source Materials on the Institute of Pacific Relations,” Pacific Affairs 58.1 (Spring 1985): 91-97.
  • John B. Condliffe, “Reminiscences of the Institute of Pacific Relations,” (Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, 1981)
  • Frederick V. Field, From Right to Left: An Autobiography (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1983)
  • Michio Yamaoka, ed., The Institute of Pacific Relations: Pioneer International Non-Governmental Organization in the Asia-Pacific Region (Tokyo: Waseda University, Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, 1999).