793.94/6729
The Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs (Hornbeck) to the Under Secretary of State (Phillips)
Letter, Saito to Phillips, April 25, and End’s
The first enclosure to Mr. Saito’s letter is not the text of the statement made on April 17th by the spokesman of the Japanese Foreign Office, Mr. Amau; it is a statement made by that spokesman three days later on April 20th, that statement being one of several made by him subsequent to and in amplification or modification of his statement of April 17th.
[Page 231]There is not in this dossier, nor has Mr. Saito given us elsewhere, a text of the statement made by Mr. Amau on April 17.
The text of Mr. Amau’s statement of April 17th as printed in the New York Herald Tribune of April 19th, which text purported to be a text telegraphed by the Herald Tribune’s correspondent in Tokyo, Mr. Fleisher, differs considerably as to wording and order from the text now supplied, in this dossier, by Mr. Saito, of the instruction given by the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs (date not supplied) to the Japanese Minister to China. But, the contents of these two documents, as regards substance, resemble each other in all important respects.
It may be accepted that the statement made to the press by Mr. Amau on April 17th was, as Mr. Saito informed you, in your conversation with him of Wednesday, April 25th, based upon the text of Hirota’s instruction of earlier date to the Japanese Minister to China. Amau therefore simply disclosed the China policy of the Japanese Government. It is believed that the copy now supplied by Saito of Hirota’s instruction to the Japanese Minister to China gives us a basic document which may be regarded as an official “indicator”, supplied by the Japanese Foreign Office, of Japan’s policy vis-à-vis China.