793.94/3066
Press Release Issued by the Department of State on November 28, 1931
When asked by representatives of the press to comment on press reports of a statement issued by the Japanese Foreign Office today,6a the Secretary of State said:
“All I have to say about that is that you gentlemen have the record of what I said at my press conference yesterday. From that record you can see for yourselves that the Foreign Office has been entirely misinformed of something I not only did not say yesterday, but never said.”
The record of the press conference of Friday, November 27, shows that the Secretary of State spoke to the correspondents as follows:
“On the 23d of November I asked my Ambassador in Tokyo to tell Baron Shidehara, the Foreign Minister of Japan, that I had seen with great apprehension press reports giving the impression that the Army commanders of Japan were planning military expeditions against the forces of China in the neighborhood of Chinchow and that I sincerely trusted that there was no basis for that report. The following day, November 24, I was assured by Baron Shidehara, the Foreign Minister of Japan, through Ambassador Forbes that he and the Secretary of War and the Chief of Staff were all of them agreed that there should be no hostile operations toward Chinchow and that military orders to that effect had been issued. In view of that, it is difficult for me to understand the press reports about the advance of General Honjo’s Army.”
- See telegram No. 239, November 28, 8 p.m., from the Ambassador in Japan, Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 51.↩