Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) Records
Scope Note
The Institute of Pacific Relations records in the Manuscripts division of Archives at the University of Hawai‘i Library consists of approximately 56 linear feet of materials documenting the international council, national councils, conferences, finances, and local chapter. It has been divided into five primary series (Councils, Conferences, Finances, Hawai‘i Chapter, and Correspondence Files) and three smaller series (Conference Programs and Publicity, Photos and Scrapbooks, and Separated Materials). There may be some overlap between the contents of Series A-E and Series F-H and between materials in Series F and G. The majority of the records pertain to the period from inception of IPR to the move of the Pacific Council and IPR headquarters to New York City in 1934. This removal reduced the amount of IPR records held in Honolulu. World War II brought restrictions in mail and shipping between the Mainland and Hawai‘i, further reducing the volume of records found here.
Dates
- Creation: 1922-1959
Creator
- Institute of Pacific Relations (Organization)
Conditions Governing Access
Material with personal information may be redacted by the Archives staff. Some fragile items may need to be handled by the staff only.
Conditions Governing Use
All requests for permission to reproduce manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Archives. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the University of Hawai'i Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must be obtained by the user.
Historical Note
The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) began as a group of men and women working to improve relations among the nations of the Pacific Rim. Its first formal session took place in Honolulu in June and July 1925, but preliminary discussion and planning occurred earlier. The original plan involved a conference of YMCA members from throughout the Pacific but by 1924 had been expanded to one involving leaders from all the Pacific Rim nations, regardless of race, religion or politics, in which participants could discuss political, economic, social and cultural issues of concern within the region. During the initial conference, participants concluded that the gathering had been successful enough to warrant the establishment of a permanent organization.[1]
By the end of the 1925 conference, a number of individuals and organizations from throughout the region had pledged, or had already paid, contributions to support the Institute. Approximately $78,000 had been collected in Japan, China, Korea, Philippines, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as well as in the United States and Hawai‘i.[2] Delegates had chosen a temporary committee to select members of a governing body to be called the Pacific Council, had established a permanent secretariat located in Honolulu, had initiated the creation of national councils in the participating countries, and had called for conferences to be held every two years.[3]
Between its first conference in 1925 and the fifth in 1933, the IPR held conferences every two years during which representatives from the different national councils presented research papers and conducted related round-table discussions on a wide variety of Pacific problems. This “conference diplomacy,” to use the group’s term, was the region’s first major example of non-governmental organizational activity. IPR thus attracted considerable governmental and media attention. Conferences took place in Honolulu, 1925 and 1927; Kyoto, 1929; Shanghai (with a special session in Hangchow), 1931; and Banff, 1933. Coinciding with increasing tensions between China and Japan and between Japan and the United States, the next conferences in Yosemite (1936) and Virginia Beach (1939) occurred at three-year intervals. Wartime conferences were held at Mt. Tremblant, Québec (1942) and in Hot Springs, Virginia (1945). Postwar conferences commenced with a meeting at Stratford-on-Avon in 1948, and gatherings at Lucknow (1950), Kyoto (1954) and Lahore (1958) followed.
In the 1950s McCarthyism cast suspicions of anti-Americanism upon international organizations generally, and the IPR became one of the major targets. Previously, in the late 1940s, prominent people in the United States including some members of IPR had become disenchanted with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government in China because of that government’s corruption and inability to solve many pressing problems in China. IPR never engaged in formal or systematic criticism of the Chiang regime. After the fall of Nationalist China and the government’s fleeing to the island of Taiwan in 1949, the McCarthy movement took the lead in blaming American "pro-communists" in the government, universities, and international organizations for the fall of China to the communists. For example, Senator Pat McCarran, in the course of a 1952 Senate investigation of IPR activities, stated that IPR was responsible for the success of the Chinese communists. None of these charges were substantiated, but the consequences resulting from the charges by the McCarran committee were devasting. Funding sources dried up, membership declined, tax exemption issues arose, and the IPR was forced into dissolution in 1961.
Evidence in Hawai‘i of the effects of the McCarran committee charges appears in letters from local business leaders E.G. Solomon, president of American Factors, and James D. Dole, head of Dole Pineapple, asking that their names be removed from the IPR’s 1953 mailing list.[4] In December 1953, the Hawai‘i chapter of the IPR voted to reorganize itself as a separate, independent organization titled the Pacific and Asian Affairs Council (PAAC), by which it has been known since. News articles about the Hawai‘i chapter’s name change and reorganization make clear these were the result of the charges by McCarran and others associated with McCarthyism.[5] This marked the end of the Hawai‘i connection with the IPR.
[1] “Statement of Institute of Pacific Relations Held at Honolulu, Hawaii, June 30 th to July 15 th, 1925,” pp. 1-2, Institute of Pacific Relations Records, (M00004), box A-1, folder 2, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
[2] Statement of Pledges and Payments to Budget of Institute of Pacific Relations, Honolulu, T.H., July 14, 1925, in IPR Records, box C-1, folder 1.
[3] “Statement of Institute of Pacific Relations...,” p. 8.
[4] Esther E. White, secretary to the president, American Factors, Limited, to Institute of Pacific Relations of Hawaii, 15 May 1953, and “the secretary to Mr. Dole” to Institute of Pacific Relations, 9 June 1953, IPR Records, box D-16, in folder labeled “Honolulu Branch–General Activities 1953, #2.”
[5] Various clippings in PAAC General news clippings, 1954[sic]-1956, PAAC Records, box A3.
Extent
56 Linear Feet (93 5-inch document boxes, 26 2.5-inch document boxes, 2 6-inch boxes, 1 2.5-inch photo box, 8 flat boxes)
Language
English
Provenance
How the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) records at the University of Hawai‘i came to the Archives is not entirely clear. Professor Paul Hooper, a University historian, first heard that they were in Sinclair Library of the University of Hawaii, then discovered the largely unidentified materials stored in library in the early 1970s. University Archives accession records indicate that responsibility for the IPR materials was transferred from the Hawaiian Collection to Archives in 1973, after Hooper's initial appraisal and arrangement (see Processing Information note).
After Hooper had identified the records as pertaining to Institute of Pacific Relations, he pieced together as best he could an account of the provenance of the collection as follows.
The IPR, the first substantial non-governmental organization concerned with international and intercultural issues in the Pacific region, was formed in Honolulu in 1925. Its central administrativel body, the Pacific Council, had headquarters in Honolulu from 1925 until 1934 when the headquarters moved to New York City. National councils were established in all the major Asia-Pacific nations and those European nations with regional colonies in the Asia-Pacific area; local branches were created in a number of major US cities, inlcuding Honolulu. The IPR continued expanding it conference, research and publication programs until well into the 1950s when the McCarthy movement raised charges of pro-communist activities, leading to the demise of the IPR by the end of the decade.
In 1953 the Honolulu Branch renamed itself the Pacific and Asian Affairs Council (PAAC), severed its formal connections with the IPR and initiated an independent program. Nevertheless, the IPR records that remained in Honolulu continued to be housed by PAAC officials for some time despite the severance of institutional ties.
Sometime during the 1950s the PAAC staff apparently decided that it could no longer continue to store the IPR materials. According to Professor Hooper, it appears that Mrs. Ann Yardley Satterthwaite, a person long active in the Pan-Pacific Union and local chapters of other international organizations, provided storage space for them at her home. Following her death in October 1963, they apparently were transferred to the University of Hawai‘i, although the details of the transfer are not clear.
The three series—F, G, and H—formed in 2017 from materials housed alongside Series A-E are assumed to have been part of the original transfer, but as they are not described in the initial finding aids and no accession records exist, their provenance is uncertain.
Existence and Location of Originals
Many of the items in the IPR records are carbon copies; if originals of these documents survive, they are most likely to be in the IPR Collection in Butler Library, Columbia University.
Processing Information
Receiving permission to search through the uncataloged manuscript materials found in Sinclair Library, Dr. Hooper (see note on provenance) located them and subsequently arranged and inventoried them in the spring of 1973.
In the subsequent years, archival workers weeded published items from the collection; performed basic preservation work by rehousing the materials in acid free folders and boxes, removing metal fasteners, and photocopying or retyping fading or highly acidic documents; and revised the inventory to update it and put it in a more consistent format. The one major exception to separating out published materials is the decision to retain the published report of the investigation by the McCarran subcommittee of the U.S. Senate into the IPR.
In his initial arranging, Dr. Hooper organized the records into five series: Councils (materials on the Pacific Council and the various national councils); Conferences; Finances; Honolulu Branch; and Correspondence Files (organized under names of individuals associated with the IPR). While evidence exists that this was not the original order, the Archives staff continued it since too little evidence remained to reconstruct the entire original filing system. Each series has been assigned a letter which accompanies the box number; box numbering starts with one in each series. Likewise, the folder numbering begins at one in each box. Frequently as staff weeded, removed metal fasteners or rehoused items to limit the number of sheets of paper per folder, they had to divide the contents of one box into two boxes. In these situations, to avoid renumbering all the boxes to the end of the series, they added lower case letters to the box number, resulting, for example, in boxes D-2a and D-2b.
Initially, the Correspondence series (Series E) had only folder-level entries. Several years later, Dr. Hooper volunteered to work on the series to improve access. Going through each folder in Series E, he made a notation for each document containing organizational matters. He did not cite seemingly routine items. The cited documents only amount to approximately twenty percent of the total, however, so in depth research will require an individual to look through each appropriate box. In addition, users need to be aware that, while we have tried to be consistent, references to individuals may vary regarding the use of initials and given names. Common names of countries with IPR connections are used interchangeably (e.g. “Holland,” “Dutch” and “Netherlands”). The use of “communist,” “McCarthyism” and related terms almost always reference post-WWII anti-communist activities in the United States.
The original accession of IPR records included records of the early years of the Pacific and Asian Affairs Council. As the PAAC records are also in the Manuscripts Collections of the Archives in the University Library, the archivist determined to separate from the IPR records the records of PAAC created after its reincorporation in December 1953. Folders 8-21 of box D-17, and all of boxes D-18 through D-20 of the IPR collection were removed and became boxes A1-A4 of the Pacific and Asian Affairs Council records (Manuscript M014).
During a review of the collection and finding aid in 2017, three further series were added to encompass materials housed with the collection and presumably accessioned with Series A-E but not described in any extant inventory. These are Series F (Conference Programs and Publicity), Series G (Photos and Scrapbooks), and Series H (Separated Materials). The contents of Series F-H might overlap with those of Series A-E in some places. Rather than inserting the materials into the previously formed series, however, the items were left largely as found in 2017. The boxes were grouped into series, but the box titles and the arramgement of their contents were not altered.
The level of processing and description varies from series to series. Series A and B are represented with folder-level entries. Series C and D are represented with box-level entries; a folder-level print inventory can be consulted in the Moir Reading Room, but most of the useful information contained has been incorporated into the box titles in this electronic finding aid. Series E has been processed to folder level but is described here in terms of folder groups; for information about a selective item-level inventory prepared by Paul Hooper, see the "Other Finding Aids" note under Series E. Series F-H contain some materials described at folder level and others at box level.
- Author
- Paul Hooper, revised by Katherine Fisher
- Date
- 2005, revised 2017
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Repository Details
Part of the University of Hawaii at Manoa Libraries Repository