793.94/2781: Telegram
The Minister in China (Johnson) to the Secretary of State
[Received 4:50 p.m.]
I have received the following manifesto from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the request that it was [be?] transmitted to the American Government.
“Since the forcible occupation of various places in the North Eastern Provinces, the Japanese military authority [authorities] have been frequently instigating or utilizing bandits, rebels and other undesirable characters to disturb local peace and order as well as organized [to organize] governments [which are] usurping administrative powers under the protection of [or] duress of Japanese troops.
It has been lately reported that, during the recent disturbance in Tientsin created by insurgent rioters who made use of the Japanese Concession as their base of operations, the defunct emperor Pu-yi of the former Manchu Dynasty was kidnapped and escorted by the Japanese from the said concession to Shenyang for the establishment of a bogus government with himself proclaimed as the emperor.
The National Government has already declared to the League of Nations and the governments of friendly powers that the Chinese Government and people will not recognize any illegitimate institution[s] established in subversion of China’s administrative integrity in those places of the North Eastern Provinces which remain under the occupation of Japanese troops. In the event that the establishment [Page 487] of Pu-yi’s bogus government is confirmed, the National Government will regard such a government as a seditionist institution and at the same time as an auxiliary organ of the Japanese Government in disguise, while all the acts of such a government which are necessarily illegal will be repudiated by the National Government and the entire responsibility therefore will be laid on the shoulders of the Japanese Government. Nanking, November 17th, 1931.”