The Hoover Institution Library & Archives has acquired the collection of Easley Jones (1884–1947), a professor of English at the University of Illinois who volunteered for service with the American Red Cross (ARC) in the Far East from 1919 to 1921. The journals and photographs in the collection document his service with the ARC in China, Korea, Japan, and Siberia. The entries include his impressions of Vladivostok, a city in Russia near the borders of China and North Korea, which in 1919 was under Allied control during the intervention in the Russian Civil War.
Jones travelled west on the Trans-Siberian Railway, celebrating Christmas along the way and describing the events and people he saw in great detail, including the turbulent changes in authority in Vladivostok, which he ultimately left in spring 1920. He traveled through Korea and China to Japan, where he spent several more months in 1920. Jones returned home via the Philippines, India, the Middle East and Europe, all of which he describes as they appeared to him in 1921.
A photograph from the collection shows a panoramic image of Vladivostok, circa 1919 or 1920. The collection also contains personal photographs and the original negatives of other photographic prints and glass lantern slides, a number of which were hand tinted in Japan, acquired in the course of Jones’ travels.
