Office of the Historian

861.77/2206: Telegram

The President of the Technical Board (Stevens) to the Secretary of State

Harbin, August 16, 1921—noon.
[Received 1:47 p.m.]

Hayakawa, the new president of South Manchuria Railway, has just visited Harbin. Elaborate entertainments which are always the preliminary to intrigues in the Far East. Strongly urged me to approve change of gauge Changchun-Harbin to South Manchuria gauge, to which I replied would require serious consideration. This matter was up in the year 1919 but I succeeded in quashing as the files of the Department will show;34 such a proposition must not be entertained. I anticipate Japan will seek to make it a condition of negotiations with Allies regarding Technical Board and financiering. … He [Hayakawa] has been given unlimited powers to decide tactics main railway line and the Army ordered to show absolute submission to him.

Stevens
  1. See telegrams of Apr. 17, 1919, from the Ambassador in Japan, and of Aug. 11, 1919, from the President of the Technical Board, Foreign Relations, 1919, vol. i, pp. 606 and 612, respectively.↩