The Japanese Minister to Acting Secretary of State Adee.
Washington , September 29, 1905 .
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note No. 218, dated September 26, in which you informed me that the Department received a telegram from the American chargé d’affaires at St. Petersburg to the effect that the Russian general staff do not hope to have all the necessary arrangements made for the exchange of the prisoners of war before October 7; that there are two Japanese prisoners of war at Med vied, who have been sentenced to six and eight months’ imprisonment for insubordination; and that Count Bobrisky, a Russian prisoner of war in Japan, has been condemned to five years’ imprisonment on a similar charge; that the chargé expresses the opinion that the Russians would remit the imprisonment of the two Japanese if the Japanese Government would do likewise in the case of Count Bobrisky.
Having communicated by telegraph the substance of the above dispatch to the Imperial Government, I am now in receipt of instructions to inform you that the Imperial Government have already arranged to remit the imprisonment of all the Russian prisoners of war held by Japan, irrespective of the nature of the penalty to which they have been condemned, on the day on which the peace treaty shall come in force, provided that the Russian Government would likewise remit the imprisonment of all the Japanese prisoners of war held by them on the same date.
I have now the honor to request you to be so good as to communicate the proposed arrangement of the Imperial Government to the Russian Government, and ascertain their views thereon. The Imperial Government are further desirous to obtain at the earliest moment the definite reply of the Russian Government to the proposition of the Imperial Government, transmitted to you in Mr. Hioki’s dispatch No. 49, of the 18th instant, regarding the place where the delivery of the prisoners shall take place.
Accept, etc.,