893.6363 Manchuria/194
The American Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs (Hirota)
Excellency: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of the aide-mémoire No. 29, dated April 10, 1935, in regard to the petroleum monopoly in Manchuria.
The contents of the aide-mémoire having been duly communicated to my Government, I have now been instructed by the Secretary of State of the United States to inform Your Excellency that the American Government is unable to accept as valid the contentions advanced in the aide-mémoire to which reference is made. The American Government greatly regrets that the Japanese Government has not seen its way clear to use the influence which it possesses through its close and peculiar relations with the present regime in Manchuria to uphold in practise the principle of the Open Door and the fulfillment of the treaty obligations which both the Japanese Government and the authorities in Manchuria have on numerous occasions declared that they would maintain.
[Page 149]I am also instructed to state that the American Government is constrained to express its considered view that upon the Japanese Government must rest the ultimate responsibility for injury to American interests resulting from the creation and operation of the petroleum monopoly in Manchuria.
I avail myself [etc.]