Office of the Historian

500.A15A4/1764: Telegram

The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Secretary of State

Tokyo, March 14, 1933—5 p.m.
[Received March 14—11:10 a.m.]

60. Referring to the Department’s No. 24, March 10, 5 p.m.; and my 58, March 11, 7 p.m.,71 the Military Attaché submits the following estimate of the situation in regard to the Japanese land forces.

1.
Under the provisions of the Manchukuo-Japanese Protocol of September 193272 Japan obliged herself (a) to assist Manchukuo in maintaining peace and order within her borders and (b) to assist Manchukuo in defending her territory and sovereignty against outside aggression.
2.
To date fulfillment of the first part of this obligation alone has necessitated the presence in Manchuria of 4 Japanese combat divisions, 2 cavalry brigades, 9 air squadrons, and certain other troops, a force of whose total strength today is about 47,000 officers and men.
3.
These units are all part of the peacetime standing army of Japan and are in consequence a component part of the force Japan considered necessary to insure the national defense of the empire prior to the Manchurian incident.
4.
The War Office and the General Staff have both stated that the complete pacification of Manchukuo will require a force of 150.000 officers and men over a period of from 5 to 10 years. Manchukuo has announced its intention to raise and maintain a standing army of 100,000, and while no public announcement to that effect has yet been made, it is unquestionably the intention of Japan to add to this force some 50,000 of her own men. This latter force will probably be known as a pacification force or special constabulary but it will nevertheless be a part of Japan’s standing army. The mission of this Manchukuo Japanese army will be to subjugate the various opposition forces in Manchukuo itself; to defend Manchukuo against efforts of China to recover the territory; and to meet any action of Russia growing out of the railroad situation in Manchuria.
5.
Japan considers that she needs her present standing army for her own defense. Having assumed the obligations of assisting the pacification and defense of Manchukuo, she considers herself confronted with the necessity not of reducing her land forces but of materially increasing them. However, if Japan should withdraw from the Arms Limitation Conference and should then increase the size of her army, she would have started another race in armaments in which she knows she cannot successfully compete.
6.
Japan therefore has not withdrawn from the Arms Conference nor will she do so until she accomplishes or definitely fails in her present purpose thereat, viz, to secure the acquiescence, express or understood, by the participating powers, in her plan to augment her land forces by the addition of the strength deemed necessary for the maintenance of peace in Manchuria.
7.
The Military Attaché is of the opinion that in the Conference Japan will probably work for an army augmented above the present strength by 50,000 men but will compromise on 35,000 men.
Grew
  1. Neither printed.↩
  2. For text, see Foreign Relations, 1932, vol. iv, p. 253.↩