Office of the Historian

840.50 UNRRA/7–3045

The Acting Director General of UNRRA (Hendrickson) to the Assistant Secretary of State (Clayton)

Washington, 30 July, 1945.

Dear Mr. Clayton: Attached you will please find a copy of a letter25 which we have today dispatched to the several Combined Boards.26 So that you may be fully acquainted with the chronological background of this matter, I am transmitting to you the following facts.

On 24 July 1945, Mr. V. A. Klentsov, the U.S.S.R. member of the UNRRA Council notified me orally but formally that the U.S.S.R. is requesting the United Nations through UNRRA to provide them with $700,000,000 worth of relief and rehabilitation supplies. He indicated at that time that the details and specifications of those supplies will be made available to us in the near future.

This Administration immediately requested the Canadian Ambassador to the United States, Mr. L. B. Pearson, to take the necessary steps prescribed in UNRRA’s Resolution No. 14,27 to determine the ability of the U.S.S.R. to pay for relief and rehabilitation supplies in suitable means of foreign exchange.

In the meantime, Mr. Klentsov called on me again on 30 July 1945 and left a memorandum with me, copy of which is attached.25 This memorandum contains a limited statement as to the breakdown of supplies required by the U.S.S.R.

So soon as more details become available to us, we shall again be in touch with the several Combined Boards.

Sincerely yours,

Roy F. Hendrickson
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. Combined Production and Resources Board; Combined Food Board; Combined Shipping Adjustment Board; Combined Raw Materials Board.↩
  3. For text, see Woodbridge, UNRRA, vol. iii, p. 57.↩
  4. Not printed.↩