Office of the Historian

500.A15a3/387

Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the Japanese Ambassador (Debuchi)

[Washington,] November 12, 1929.

After explaining that what I said was tentative and in no sense an ultimatum and that I was prepared to go to the conference with an open mind, and further, that what I said had no connection with the British, I went over the aide-mémoire86 with the Japanese Ambassador explaining the positions throughout and pointing out clearly among the other points that the West Pacific bases question would be affected by the opening of the ratio question, and explained to him how strongly our people out there felt about the result of the [Page 274] last conference on the base question. I told him that the last part of the aide-mémoire was merely an attempt to put on record for him what I never had an opportunity to put in writing but thought I had told it verbally many times, namely, the substance of our conversations with the British during the summer.

After I had finished he expressed his disappointment on the subject of the ratio and was evidently very much troubled as to how he could explain it to his people. He will come here next week and asked for at least an hour’s conference. Incidentally he said that he had been at the Washington Conference and pointed out that Balfour87 had reserved the question of small cruisers from the 5–5–3 agreement, so far as Britain was concerned; also that the question had been brought up again at Geneva in 192788 by Japan and that he got the idea that America was friendly to 10–10–7. For these reasons he was afraid that our opposition to opening it, he thought, was unreasonable. I pointed out to him that he had not shown any change of situation from 1922 when I had understood the 5–5–3 ratio had been accepted by the Japanese representatives as a sufficiently defensive position for them. We talked at considerable length in a very frank way and it was agreed that he should come in next week.

H[enry] L. S[timson]
  1. Infra.↩
  2. Rt. Hon. Arthur James Balfour, member of the British delegation at the conference on the Limitation of Armament, Washington, November 12, 1921–February 6, 1922.↩
  3. Three-Power Conference; see Foreign Relations, 1927, vol. i, pp. 1 ff.↩