494.11 China National Aviation Corporation/20
The Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs (Matsuoka) to the American Ambassador in Japan (Grew)
Excellency: I have the honor to state that I have carefully perused the contents of the statement handed by Mr. Crocker, Secretary of the Embassy, to Mr. Terasaki, Director of the Bureau,35a and Your Excellency’s notes Nos. 1678, November 8, 1940, and 1684, November 14, 1940, stating that a commercial passenger plane belonging to the Chinese National Aviation Corporation was burned by an attack from Japanese planes during the afternoon of October 29, 1940, at Chanyi, Yunnan Province, and that an American aviator and others aboard were either killed or injured. As a result of an investigation, the actual circumstances of this case were found to be as follows:
Since the time air forces of the Japanese Army began making attacks in Kwangsi, Kweichow and Yunnan Provinces, military transport planes of the Chiang Kai-shek army have been passing frequently over the districts of Chaotung, Kunming, Chanyi, Chihchiang and Kweilin. Having discovered that six enemy military planes were lying in wait in the Kunming district, five planes of the Japanese naval air forces took off toward that district in the afternoon of October 29, 1940, in order to capture and destroy those planes. Enemy planes, however, were not seen at Kunming. But, when Japanese planes arrived over Chaotung, they perceived two enemy fighting planes landed at the enemy’s military air-port at that place. Accordingly, Japanese planes immediately fired at the enemy planes setting them on fire. [Page 706] Before the termination of the above fighting operations, a D-model plane was discovered arriving from the Kweiyang district and entering the said military air-port to land. Four Japanese naval planes, one after another, then fired at the plane from its rear at an altitude of about 100 meters. The said D-model plane landed at the air-port while being subjected to bullets, and it is said that the entire body of the plane caught fire and burned after having stopped about one minute in the central zone of the air-port.
If the victim plane was a passenger plane belonging to the Chinese National Aviation Corporation and an American aviator and others aboard encountered danger on that occasion, the Japanese Government regrets it exceedingly. However, the above investigation makes it clear that this was an accident caused by the fact that the aforementioned D-model plane, in order to land at an enemy military airport, entered an air zone in which fighting operations were in progress, and, judged to be an enemy transport plane, was attacked by the Japanese naval air force. Not only was the accident absolutely unavoidable from the standpoint of military operations but as was previously pointed out in the former Foreign Minister’s note, No. 80/American I, August 31, 1938,35b the company to which the plane in question belongs is a Chinese juridical person, in view of which fact the Imperial Japanese Government is of the opinion that the present case is not one to give rise to an issue directly with a third country.
I avail myself [etc.]