Pan, V.S. Papers

Major General, Army of the Republic of China

The papers of V. S. Pan include cargo manifestos, certificates for the receipt of materials, correspondence, military directives, and a statistical report concerning shipments of U.S. military supplies to the Republic of China.

Size: 2.5 linear inches (approximately 30 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: The donor gave his copyright interest in writings in this collection, and in any other collection in the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration, to the United States of America. Documents created by U.S. Government employees in the course of their official duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents in this collection presumably belong to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Kanishk Singh (2018) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

Major General Van Sung (V.S.) Pan served as a Personal Representative of the Republic of China with responsibility for ensuring the timely and complete delivery of United States Military aid shipments to Taiwan in the months before the Communist victory on mainland China in 1949.

The papers of V. S. Pan include cargo manifestos, certificates for the receipt of materials, correspondence, military directives, and a statistical report. Pan, a Major General in the Army of the Republic of China, was responsible for supervising the receipt of shipments of military aid from the United States in 1948-1949. The documents in this collection are arranged in a single series, a Chronological File, and date from December 1948 to April 1949.

Prior to the Communist victory in China in October 1949, the United States provided hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the Republic of China (also known as Nationalist China), despite warnings from some U.S. officials that the Nationalist cause was hopeless. As Personal Representative of the Republic of China, Major General Pan was responsible for the complicated logistics involved in receiving military aid shipments from the United States at Keelung, Taiwan, and confirming their contents once they were unloaded. The documents in Pan's papers indicate that he prepared certificates confirming the receipt of materials, after first noting any damaged items or missing cargo. Pan then signed the certificates and had them countersigned by a U.S. officer. The supplies included weapons, ammunition, spare parts, gasoline, trucks, and medicine

The collection also includes correspondence regarding "exceptions" (missing or damaged materials), a statistical report on U.S. military aid to the Nationalist Chinese in 1948-1949; and a photograph of Pan, which has been transferred to the Truman Library's Audiovisual Collection.

More information on U.S. relations with the Nationalist Republic of China can be found at the Truman Library in the papers of Dean Acheson, John Paton Davies Jr., Edwin A. Locke Jr., John Melby, and Harry S. Truman.