Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 1, 1879
No. 69.
To the same:
Sir: In continuation of my letters Nos. 65, 67, and 68, with regard to the German steamer Hesperia, to which I have as yet received no reply, I have the honor to inform your excellency that I shall now order the said steamer, which has been kept in quarantine for three days and a half without consent from the German authorities, to proceed forthwith to Yokohama, its place of destination.
With the assurance of my most distinguished consideration,
His Excellency Von
Eisendecher,
Imperial German Minister
Resident:
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of Your Excellency’s esteemed letters Nos. 65, 66, 67, 68, and 69, concerning the quarantine affair. As, however, the matter in question has already, as Your Excellency knows, been brought to an end, I do not intend particularly to revert to the same; but there remains one point which I cannot here avoid laying stress upon. The German steamer “Hesperia” was detained at Nagaura in conformity with the quarantine regulations, of which Your Excellency received communication on the 3d instant; afterwards, when the said regulations had been revised and altered, the quarantine authorities were instructed that there was nothing to prevent the prescribed term of quarantine from being shortened, whereupon they informed both the German Consul and the master of the ship that the steamer would not be permitted to quit the quarantine ground until the prescribed disinfection had taken place. Although the above-mentioned two gentlemen had declared that they agreed to this, the said steamer, according to the report received from the authorities concerned, left the quarantine station without paying any regard to the protest of the medical officer, on the pretext that Your Excellency’s orders to that effect had suddenly arrived.
Notwithstanding that we on our part, as Your Excellency is well aware, have done everything in our power to meet as far as possible Your Excellency’s demands, Your Excellency has issued orders, which have set at naught the lawful regulations promulgated by my exalted government. Such a proceeding appears to me pregnant with grave consequences, and I therefore most respectfully request that Your Excellency will have the goodness to vouchsafe me some explanation of the same.
With the highest consideration,
Minister of Foreign Affairs.
His Excellency Terashima
Munerori,
Minister of Foreign
Affairs:
Sir: I had the honor to receive Your Excellency’s esteemed letter of yesterday concerning the quarantine of the steamer “Hesperia,” at the end of which letter you ask me for a further explanation with regard to the said vessel’s departure for Yokohama, by my orders.
In the first place I have, from the contents of Your Excellency’s letters, dated respectively the 3d, 9th, and 12th instants, reason to presume that Your Excellency views the quarantine question from a standpoint totally different from the one I occupy. I hold the opinion, that in order that the sanitary measures, which are considered necessary with regard to ships—be they detention, inspection, or disinfection—shall be binding on German vessels, they must have been sanctioned by the German Consular authorities.
Under the existing treaties, which invest the German authorities with jurisdiction over German ships, it was my duty to maintain that right, and I could not consider the seven days’ detention, ordered by Your Excellency’s exalted government, as binding on German ships, as long as I had not, on my part, sanctioned such detention.
As I had the honor to state to Your Excellency in my note of the 12th instant, No. 66, nothing was further from my intentions than to oppose the precautionary measures in contemplation; on the contrary, I authorized at once the Consul to issue a circular to German shipmasters, by which a detention of German vessels by the Japanese authorities was legalized.
Your Excellency, on the other hand, considers the regulations issued by the high Japanese Government as dejure equally binding on all foreign ships; nor have you in your letters, dated the 3d and 9th instant, asked for my sanction, but in your letter of the 12th instant you informed me that the inspection ordered by me could have no influence on the duration of the quarantine.
Guided by the treaty stipulations and the instructions received from my high government, I could, as long as no final arrangement had been arrived at, only sanction such quarantine measures against the steamer Hesperia as appeared to be really required in the public interest. But the medical report and the state of health on board the steamer made me consider a detention as without purpose, especially as I was aware that a real strict quarantine was not carried out by the Japanese.
I took, under these circumstances, in order to avoid a conflict, the course of explaining my views in my letters No. 67 and 68 to Your Excellency, of protesting, and of asking that the steamer be liberated. I then waited from the 11th until the 14th for the purpose of affording Your Excellency’s exalted government an opportunity of its own accord to set the “Hesperia” free.
As this was hot done, I determined on the evening of the 14th, fully convinced as I [Page 680] was that no danger could arise from the liberation, to let the steamer come up, a step, in which I, formaliter, was perfectly justified, as long as I had not given my sanction to the regulations as far as German ships were concerned. Even then I should have waited, if I had not on the evening of the 14th been informed in Yokohama, that an inspection had only just been ordered, that the quarantine doctor had to make a report, and that according to its tenor, and eventually after a disinfection had taken place, the liberation would ensue. According to this information the liberation might yet be delayed for days, while I, a few hours previously, had, from private utterances of the Minister of the Interior and of the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, assumed that the ship would immediately be set free, in consequence of a report already made.
I should have had no objection whatsoever to the disinfection mentioned by Your Excellency, and I should also have instructed the captain to that effect, if I had had any knowledge of it.
Finally I express to Your Excellency my regret at the occurrence, which, without doubt, could have been avoided if Your Excellency had been good enough to reply in time to my letters No. 67 and 68, or to personally intimate a desire in this respect.
If Your Excellency had intimated to me, officially or privately, verbally or in writing, that the German authorities were doubtless entitled to be heard in the affair, and that the detention perhaps was not absolutely necessary, but that the Japanese Government were especially desirous that the quarantine in this case should last seven days, then I have no doubt that I should have complied with a desire thus intimated to me.
I regret especially, with regard to Vice-Minister Mr. Mori and to the Minister of the Interior, to whom my thanks are due for their conciliatory efforts, that the affair at last took a turn that was unpleasant to all the parties.
I request Your Excellency, &c.,