File No. 763.72113/822
The Alien Property Custodian ( Palmer) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 4.]
Sir: I have your letter of the 27th ultimo, signed by Mr. Phillips, Assistant Secretary, your file So 763.72113/746, enclosing protest from the German Government against the treatment which this Government is alleged to have accorded German private property in the Philippines.1
In reply thereto I beg to say, no property belonging to German citizens in the Philippine Islands has been disposed of except where it came strictly within the provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act. German subjects residing in the Philippine Islands, who have not been interned, will receive their property or the value thereof as soon as the same has been segregated from that of their German associates and partners residing in Germany. In cases where property has been taken, in which Germans residing in the Philippine Islands have been partners, the German partner himself has generally applied for and been given a license by the War Trade Board to liquidate the firm’s interest and to turn over to the Alien Property Custodian the part or value thereof belonging to the enemy under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Several German subjects have been deported from the Philippine Islands by the Governor General, by virtue of his inherent powers, as undesirable residents.
We have treated the enemy property in the Philippine Islands in exactly the same way as the enemy property in the United States [Page 319] has been treated; that is to say, we are administering the same, and when it seems advisable to convert the same into money by liquidation or sale, that has been done.1
Respectfully yours,