811.5294/136a: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Charge in Japan ( Bell )

406. The Department yesterday made public the following statement:

“The movement in California to recast the State laws affecting alien land tenure has been receiving since its inception the close and interested attention of the Department of State. The relation of certain treaty provisions to the proposed measure is being discussed clearly and ably in California and will doubtless prove an element in the State’s decision as to the adoption or rejection of the proposed measure. In the meantime the Department has had numerous discussions of the most friendly and candid nature with the Ambassador of Japan and it is believed he thoroughly realizes, as we have sought to make clear, that no outcome of the California movement will be acceptable to the country at large that does not accord with existing and applicable provisions of law, and what is equally important, with the national instinct of justice.”

Davis