793.94/6604
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Phillips)
I asked the Japanese Ambassador to call this afternoon at 4:15 which he did. I said that I felt the need of knowing precisely what Mr. Amau had said in his recent public declaration since, while the substance of the various translations were substantially alike, nevertheless there were slight differences in context, and that I felt sure that by this time the Embassy had received the text and would be in a position to let me have a correct translation. Thereupon the Ambassador took out a sheet of telegrams in Japanese from which he read extracts. One telegram which he read to me rather naively referred to the fact that the Foreign Office had understood that some of the American papers had not received the Amau interview favorably, [Page 226] and the Foreign Office would like him to advise it which papers had held such views. It appeared that possibly a few days before the eighth of April the Foreign Office had sent certain instructions to the Japanese Minister in Nanking which outlined the position of Japan vis-a-vis China. Some days afterwards at a press conference in Tokyo Mr. Amau was asked a number of questions which he attempted to answer orally and in framing his answers he merely had in mind the communication which had already been forwarded to the Japanese Minister in Nanking. The Ambassador felt confident that there was no record made of Amau’s press interview and he intimated that in certain particulars he may have gone too far in his language. The Ambassador referred to the use of the word “responsibilities” in reference to Japanese responsibilities in China, which he said was the wrong word because Japan does not assume independent responsibilities in China but only as shared with other powers. A few days after the Amau interview, on the 22nd to be exact, the Ambassador had received an explanatory communication from his government covering three points, which he at once gave to the Press; and thereupon he handed to me the clipping from the Times of April 24th2 reporting the statement which he had given out under three heads.
I told the Ambassador that this did not help me very much; that what I wanted was the Amau statement, which I understood had the approval of the Foreign Office; and that I would be grateful to him if he would provide me with a copy of it. The Ambassador did not deny the fact that it represented the Foreign Office view but again expressed doubt whether the statement was in any precise form. Again he referred to it as Amau’s attempt to answer a series of questions put to him by the correspondents. I reminded the Ambassador that he himself had given a number of interviews to the Press along the same lines, to which the Ambassador replied that he had been badly reported in these interviews and intimated that they did not represent fairly what he had intended to say in his “poor English”.
Mr. Saito then shifted the conversation to China and to the historic attitude of the Chinese in trying to play off one foreign power against another. The present was another instance of China’s attempt to use the League in order to make trouble with Japan; that instead of concentrating their efforts on bringing law and order into their own country, they proceeded on the theory that this was not necessary as long as they could keep foreigners, including the Japanese, fighting among themselves. He referred to the difficulties in Manchukuo, to the Chinese people who had many relatives south of the Wall and who had been unable to have direct communication with them because of the absence of direct mail service.
[Page 227]I brought the Ambassador back to the subject in hand by reiterating again and as strongly as I could that the declarations made by Amau, which I understood had the Foreign Office approval, were regarded by us as exceedingly important and that we were studying them carefully. I said I would offer no comment today because of those very reasons.
- Not reprinted.↩