793.94/16074
Memorandum by the Ambassador in Japan (Grew)
I called this afternoon on the Minister for Foreign Affairs and carried out the instructions of the Department (Department’s 197, June 13, 5 p.m.)24 with emphasis and with appropriate reference to previous representations which we have made on the subject of the bombing of Chungking.
The Minister replied that he invariably passed our representations on to the military authorities whose reports generally showed discrepancies with our own reports. With regard to Chungking the military authorities maintain that they exercise the utmost care and that they attack only military objectives. I replied that their indiscriminate [Page 692] bombing of civilian populations is not a matter of speculation but of fully confirmed fact. I thereupon re-read to the Minister pertinent portions of Ambassador Johnson’s 438, July 13, noon, 1939,25 which had already been brought to his attention on June 2. I spoke as on my own initiative of the serious risks that are being incurred.