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The office files of the American Institute of Pacific Relations and the international Institute of Pacific Relations, containing correspondence and reports concerned with international conferences, research programs, and publications programs of both Institutes, and relating to the political, economic, and social problems in eastern and southern Asia and the South Pacific, as well as with problems of American foreign policy. There are many travel letters and on-the-spot reports relating to conditions in China, Japan, Russia, Australia, the Philippines, India, and Pakistan during the period 1933 to 1954.

Correspondence, memoranda, photographs, documents, manuscripts, wire recordings, and printed materials dealing mostly with Russian War Relief, Inc. (The American Society for Russian Relief, Inc.), 1940-1954. There are some materials on the Institute of Pacific Relations and its investigation by the McCarran Committee in the early 1950s. Also, personal and family correspondence, photographs, and other memorabilia. Correspondents include Hugo L. Black, Henry Sloane Coffin, Andrei Gromyko, John Hersey, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Arnold Toynbee.

The papers include correspondence, subject files, photographs, and printed materials. The majority of the collection concerns the mission of the American Red Cross to Russia in 1917-1918; Thacher served as a secretary of the mission. There are letters and telegrams by W.B. Thompson and Raymond Robins, records of supplies, shipments, and distribution reports and over 600 photographs from Russia, China, and Romania. There is substantial correspondence from 1918-1919 concerning Russia, including letters by Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, and Lillian Wald. A substantial part of the collection concerns Russian war relief in 1941-1942, an area in which Thacher was active. Printed materials include a pamphlet and an article on Russia prepared by Thacher after his return from that country in early 1918.