793.94/2950: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Forbes)
250. Your 240, November 29, noon. You stated in your 239, November 28, 8 p.m.,21 that Baron Shidehara, in informing you of the agreement between the Minister of War, the Chief of Staff, and himself, requested that this be kept as confidential. In your 234, November 24, 10 p.m.,22 your mere initial preface that it was “confidential” for me was not regarded as meaning that all the facts mentioned should be kept secret. This direction indicated that the telegram should have my personal attention and, under the Department’s practice, does not carry the intimation that the other Government had requested privacy in regard to certain special facts. Therefore, you are correct in feeling that for such a case there should be specific mention that part of the communication is secret, so that no misunderstanding might arise.
To communicate to me the impressive fact that the important step had been taken by the Japanese Government, represented by both its civil and military branches, to direct that there should be no occupation of Chinchow was, under the circumstances, not the sort of information this Government would naturally expect to have received or been given in confidence. Neither my advisers nor I had accordingly any idea that to announce this step would embarrass Shidehara. The statement I made was, on the contrary, intended to answer and calm the disquieting reports in the press that the Japanese Army had begun a general movement against Chinchow.
I notified Shidehara through Debuchi as long ago as November 19,23 immediately following the news of Tsitsihar’s occupation by the Japanese, that this had rendered the situation so serious that I must reserve the right of informing the American public in full respecting the efforts being made by this Government under the treaties to which it is a party to preserve peace in Manchuria and that it might become necessary in this connection to make public all the notes, memoranda, and other steps taken for this purpose. Should the efforts at conciliation and settlement being made at present in Paris finally fail, it will probably be necessary for this Government to make public a record of its patient and long efforts to prevent a failure of this kind. You will realize in the light of such a possibility the special importance of [Page 596] indicating specifically any communications which have been made to you, either wholly or in part, as strictly confidential.
I have had investigated the Japanese Rengo agency press statement which was published in Japan and reported by you in your 239; it is found that Rengo misattributed to me some opinions expressed personally by the Associated Press writer whose report formed the basis of the Rengo despatch. As I have informed you already, such opinions have never been expressed by me either in public or in private. However, it is only fair that you know these opinions do fairly represent widely current criticisms prevalent in the United States since the bombing of Chinchow and the occupation of Tsitsihar. This feeling it is which has caused me, for the sake of good relations between Japan and the United States, to be so anxious for the Japanese Army to make no further military advance in Manchuria.
- Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 51.↩
- Ibid., p. 50.↩
- See memorandum of conversation, ibid., p. 44.↩