740.0011 Pacific War/141: Telegram
The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Secretary of State
346. Embassy’s 310, February 26, 7 p.m.23 The Minister for Foreign Affairs called me on the telephone this morning and expressed surprise and annoyance at an editorial published today in the Japan Times and Advertiser quoting him as having stated in reply to an interpellation in the Budget Committee of the Diet with regard to Japan’s policy toward Oceania that “we have a natural right to settle [Page 310] in the region. White men occupying Oceania are due to return it to the Asiatics.” The Minister said to me that the interpolator, who spoke three times as long as he himself had spoken, had used vehement and heated language and that he, Mr. Matsuoka, had endeavored to temper the exchange of views.
(Having drafted the rest of the Minister’s remarks as made to me over the telephone I took the precaution of asking Dooman23a to call on the Minister at his private residence “it being Sunday” and to ask if he desired to corrector to amplify my draft. Mr. Matsuoka said that my draft correctly reported what he had said by telephone but that he would prefer, since I had given him the opportunity, to set forth precisely what he had actually said to the Diet. The rest of this telegram is therefore in the Minister’s own handwriting.)
The Minister’s thesis was that the Japanese people as well as other Asiatics have the natural right to go and settle anywhere in the world.
As for instance, there are the United States and like countries, whose conditions, climatically and otherwise, are very favorable and we’d prefer to go and settle. However, that was only theory and as a matter of practical international politics, there is no use contending about it. We Asiatics are shut door to almost every where. Oceania, 1100 miles north to south, 1000 east to west, was about the only region left. Climatically and otherwise the region is not preferable, but it is not with us Asiatics, including Japanese, a question of obtaining a better living but a question of struggling for mere subsistence. Where may we go? Even of unfavorable tropical and semi-tropical [climate]—the region pointed out is about the only place for us left, and it should be open as field for future expansion of the Asiatics. In winding up his reply the Minister hoped that the white people would agree to his views as set forth. What he pleaded for was merely open door for Asiatics’ immigration and enterprises, and he uttered no word to imply in anyway that the white people should leave Oceania or that their possessions should be renounced. Those views represent the Minister’s studied thought over a period of 30 years and Mr. Matsuoka adds that the same views have been set forth in a book by a prominent American bishop in Shanghai,24 some 25 years ago, who was close to President Wilson. The Minister did not recollect the Bishop’s name. In many other writings by both Americans and Britishers of some note [sic].
The Minister expressed his regret that his statement in the Diet had been distorted in the foreign press and that the editorial under reference was based on a mangled report of his remarks.