793.94/16334
The American Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs (Matsuoka)
Excellency: I have the honor to inform Your Excellency that, according to information received from the American Embassy at Chungking, the 26 heavy Japanese bombers which bombed Chungking on October 25, last, followed a course immediately over the premises of the American Embassy and the U. S. S. Tutuila and that bombs fell north, west, and east of them, the nearest dropping about 300 yards north of the Embassy and the ship. The Embassy reported further in this connection that 11 bombs fell on the south bank of the Yangtze River, within the zone designated by Your Excellency’s predecessor, Mr. Hachiro Arita, in the penultimate paragraph of his note, Asia I, 8/Go, of June 14, 1940, as a safety zone. The Embassy added that an ice plant belonging to the Chungking Ice Company, an American firm, was damaged during the raid.
I have the honor to point out to Your Excellency again the serious danger to the lives and property of American citizens involved in these indiscriminate attacks, to protest emphatically against the renewed bombing of the property of the American firm above mentioned and to express once more the seriousness of the endangering by planes of a friendly power of the American Government’s establishment in Chungking and the lives of the American Ambassador and the American personnel, who are carrying on the legitimate duties entrusted to them by my Government.
I take this occasion again to request Your Excellency to cause the most stringent orders to be issued by the appropriate authorities of the Japanese Government to prevent the recurrence of incidents of this nature.
I avail myself [etc.]