793.94/6500: Telegram
The Minister in China (Johnson) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 4—10:25 a.m.]
836. A Secretary of the Japanese Legation stated this morning in a conversation that the Manchukuo civil administrative office at Shanhaikwan has been abolished and that the personnel will be withdrawn within a few days but that the Manchukuo post office, telegraph office, customhouse, railway office and quarantine office at Shanhaikwan will be maintained as at present after retrocession. He further stated that Japanese troops have been withdrawn to the Great Wall with the exception of those along the Peiping-Mukden Railway which are there under the protocol of 1901; that the passes in the Great Wall will not be retroceded until next spring if then; and that negotiations are going on between Chinese officials and Manchukuo officials, not Japanese military, to establish through traffic on the above-mentioned railway.
From statements made to me on the 26[th] by the Japanese Minister I inferred that the Japanese would take steps to establish Manchukuo customs offices on the Chinese side of the Wall as there was no proper accommodation for such offices at the gates in the Wall.