793.003/903
Memorandum by the Counselor of the American Embassy in Japan (Dooman) of a Conversation With the Director of the American Bureau of the Japanese Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Yoshizawa)
I asked Mr. Yoshizawa whether he had had an opportunity to study the statement issued on June 25 by the spokesman at Shanghai of the Japanese Embassy, affirming in effect that foreign nationals in areas in China under Japanese military occupation did not enjoy extraterritorial rights. Mr. Yoshizawa said that the first intimation that the Foreign Office had received of the issuance of any such statement came from a telegram received over the week-end from Mr. Saito11a at Washington, who reported that the statement of the Japanese official in Shanghai was prominently displayed in the American press and had shocked the American public. Mr. Yoshizawa went on to say that careful search had been made of telegrams received during the past few days, but that nothing had been reported from Shanghai indicating that the spokesman of the Japanese Embassy had made any such statement. He understood that a telegram had been despatched to Shanghai directing that the text of the statement be telegraphed to Tokyo.
I then showed Mr. Yoshizawa Shanghai’s 902 of June 25, noon, in which the statement of the spokesman was quoted. After Mr. Yoshizawa had read it, he remarked that, as I knew from the discussions which we had with regard to the question of the return of American citizens to cities occupied by the Japanese along the Yangtze River, it was not the desire or the intention of the Japanese Government to raise any question of principle, but that he did not wish to make any specific comment on the question of extraterritorial rights until the expected report from Shanghai was received. I reminded Mr. Yoshizawa that this was not a new question: that on December 27, the Japanese military authorities at Shanghai had announced that foreigners would be subject to Japanese military law in China, and on January 10 the Ambassador had informed Mr. Hirota that the American Government could not recognize or countenance any attempt on the part of the Japanese to assert jurisdiction over American nationals. I was instructed to remind Mr. Yoshizawa of the Ambassador’s statement of January 10 and to add that we would not [Page 770] countenance or recognize any declaration on the part of the Japanese denying that American nationals enjoy extraterritorial rights in those parts of China now under Japanese military occupation.
In view of the fact that the Japanese Government would shortly proceed to examine the statement made by the spokesman at Shanghai on June 25, I felt that I should lay before Mr. Yoshizawa my personal thoughts on the matter. I wondered whether it had occurred to Mr. Yoshizawa during the course of our conversation that, if the Japanese Government were to confirm and adopt the statement as reported by our Consul General in Shanghai, the position of the Japanese Government would be open to serious implications. I recalled the fact that, on the occasion of the annexation by Japan of Korea in 1910, the Japanese Government declared that all treaties hitherto existing between Korea and foreign countries were terminated by the act of annexation.11b This action of the Japanese Government was based on the view that the sovereign who had executed the treaties ceased to exist. If the Japanese Government were to maintain that it could, by virtue of military occupation of parts of China, modify the terms of any treaties entered into by the United States with China, such a claim would be inseparable from a claim to sovereignty over the occupied areas, which would, of course, be wholly inconsistent with the provisions of the Nine-Power Treaty and with various declarations of the Japanese Government undertaking to respect the territorial integrity of China.
Mr. Yoshizawa made no comment. He stated merely that he hoped to be in a position to discuss the matter more fully in the course of the next day or two.
- Hirosi Saito, Japanese Ambassador.↩
- See enclosure No. 1 to the note of August 24, 1910, from the Japanese Ambassador, Foreign Relations, 1910, p. 681.↩