Amerasia

AMERASIA. A monthly magazine (1937–1947) devoted to the Far East and the American involvement therein, Amerasia had a limited but prestigious readership, most of which consisted of Far Eastern specialists in the official and academic worlds. It was started by Frederick V. Field, the secretary of the American branch of the Institute of Pacific Relations, an academic organization, and Philip J. Jaffe, a businessman long a student of the Far East. Both had been editors of China Today, a left-wing journal covering somewhat the same area, which ceased publication in deference to the new venture.

Under the guidance of an editorial board of Far Eastern specialists, Amerasia presented a broad political analysis of the realities of the Far Eastern situation (e.g., the developing Chinese Communist revolution and Japanese imperialist invasion of China) and its implications for American policy. With the coming of World War II, the journal’s contents increasingly discussed anticipated postwar problems. At the same time many members of the editorial board resigned to join in the war effort; others withdrew as objections to the founders’ left-wing connections were brought into greater prominence.

In June 1945, in one of the government’s first noisy salvos into what was later recognized as the Cold War, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested the two remaining editors, three officers of the government, and a journalist, accusing them of trying to pass government secrets to a foreign power. Several thousand allegedly confidential papers were seized as evidence. After a few months of sensational headlines, the Amerasia Case, as it became known, petered out. The great bulk of papers turned out to be not so secret. On the contrary they proved to be an embarrassment to the government because they revealed the true situation in China, which the government had gone to great lengths to conceal from the American public. Neither side wanted a lengthy, expensive, and highly publicized trial, so a compromise was reached whereby two of the defendants paid a nominal fine and the government dropped the case.

Field, Frederick V. From Right to Left. Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1983.

Jaffe, Philip J. The Amerasia Case from 1947 to the Present. Privately published, 1979.

Klehr, Harvey, and Ronald Radosh. The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Institute of Pacific Relations Hearings before Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act. 82nd Cong., 1st sess. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1951.