Ira Victor Morris

Morris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1903 to a Jewish family, the son of Constance Lily (née Rothschild) and Ira Nelson Morris.[2] His mother was the daughter of Victor Henry Rothschild; and his father was the son of Nelson Morris, the founder of Morris & Company, one of the three main meat-packing companies in Chicago. He graduated with a B.A. from Harvard University.[2] As his father was a diplomat who was named the Minister to Sweden (1914–1923), the younger Morris was raised abroad.[2] Morris wrote both fiction and non-fiction works which focused on international politics and Americans living abroad.[2] After visiting the countries devastated by World War II, Morris started writing many articles criticizing the conduct of the war and later, the cold war.[1] His wife wrote The Flowers of Hiroshima (1959) which exposed the aftereffects of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[1] They founded the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture which assisted victims of the bombings.[1]

In February 1925, he married Sweden-native Edita (née Toll).[2] In 1930, she began a long-term affair with fellow Swede and artist, Nils Dardel despite her marriage to Morris (Dardel died in 1943).[3] Their son Ivan Morris was a British author and Japanologist whose third wife was author and theatrical producer Nobuko Uenishi (later married to impresario Donald Albery).

He died in 1972.[2]