793.94/2513: Telegram
Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the Japanese Ambassador (Debuchi), November 4, 1931
I sent for the Japanese Ambassador yesterday but he was out driving and was unable to come but came in this morning and excused himself for not coming yesterday by telling me that it was a great Japanese holiday.
I told him that I wished to see him in respect to representations which I was making to Tokyo in respect to the Manchurian situation.53 These represented long and careful and independent thought on the part of this Government and then I explained to him the position taken in the memorandum which we have drawn up for the Ambassador at Tokyo to give to Baron Shidehara. I told him that in our conclusions we did not enter into any of the minor questions involved in the action of the League but were bringing to the attention of the Japanese Government points which seemed to us to be the nub of the situation arising out of the position which Mr. Yoshizawa seemed to have taken at Geneva; that was that Japan would refuse to evacuate until she had concluded negotiations with China on certain longstanding controversies which did not relate, at least many of them, to the present situation in Manchuria. I said that if Japan took this position, in our opinion, she would place herself in the wrong before the opinion of the whole world because she would be apparently using military force to secure the settlement of these controversies and she would be continuing the disrupted administrative condition of China for the same purpose. I told him that some way should be found to avoid this; that we did not suggest any method but we felt that Japan, with the aid of Monsieur Briand, should be able to find a method.
[Page 368]The Ambassador assured me that the Japanese Government recognized what you might call the friendly attitude of this Government in this matter; at one time there had been a misunderstanding in Japan and Japanese opinion had been excited but that was over and Japanese opinion, as well as the Government, recognized how fair we had been.
He asked me whether I had heard about his talk with Mr. Castle the other day and I told him that I had carefully read the aide-mémoire of that talk and also the five or six papers which Mr. Debuchi had left with Mr. Castle.54 He said that he thought the League had acted hastily in certain matters. I said that in our present representations we did not go into those matters at all and that I expressed no opinion on them but confined myself solely to the one point which I thought was the most important and I did not wish to have Japan get into a wrong position.
He then asked whether he could take three or four minutes to tell me about the situation in Northern Manchuria in regard to the alleged issue between Russia and Japan and the reports which had come about Japanese occupation of Tsitsihar. He told me that the report that there had ever been any occupation of Tsitsihar was entirely erroneous. He told me that the Chinese General Ma, who had been fighting with another Chinese General Chang, had destroyed three bridges on the railway about thirty miles Southwest of Tsitsihar and that the Japanese had sent a small force of men to repair these bridges.
He said that this railway had been built with Japanese money and was very important as a means of transportation of the Manchurian crops which were being harvested and that this Japanese force had been sent up on the request of the authorities of this Chinese railway plus the authorities of the Southern Manchurian Railway; that they would take about three weeks to repair these bridges and would then be withdrawn. The Russians had become alarmed because these bridges were owned by the Chinese Eastern Railway, which was being operated by Russians, but that there was no truth in the report that the forces were there for any other purpose than as he described.