Office of the Historian

894a.628/2

The Governor General of the Philippine Islands (Roosevelt) to the Chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, War Department (Parker)54

Manila, October 4, 1932.

My Dear General Parker: I am enclosing a copy of a letter of August 19, 1932, from the American Consulate, Taihoku, Taiwan, Japan,55 reporting certain provisions of “Taiwan Government General Order No. 33, July 2, 1932.” It will be noted that this order is applicable [Page 744] to waters south of 21° North Latitude, and the inference is that this parallel is the northern boundary of the Philippine Islands.

This is an error. Art. III of the Treaty of Peace, of December 10, 1898,56 describes the boundary as “a line running from West to East along or near the twentieth parallel of North Latitude, and through the middle of the navigable channel of Bachi …” “The United States Coast Pilot, Philippine Islands, Part I”, page 1, gives the northern limit (the middle of the navigable channel of Bashi) as 21° 25′ N. This includes Y’ami and North Islands, both belonging to the Batanes group, which is a separate province of the Philippine Islands.

It is requested that steps be taken to have the Taiwan Order corrected so it is made applicable to waters south of 21° 25′ North Latitude, the northern boundary of the Philippine Islands.

Very sincerely,

Theodore Roosevelt
  1. Copy transmitted to the Department by the Acting Secretary of War in his letter of November 7, 1932, which stated: “Your attention is especially invited to paragraph three of the above-mentioned letter from the Governor General, of October 4th.”↩
  2. Supra.↩
  3. Foreign Relations, 1898, p. 831.↩