8621.01/298
Memorandum by the Assistant Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs (Hamilton)
During the course of a call the Japanese Ambassador referred to a conversation which he had had with Mr. Hornbeck shortly before the Ambassador’s departure for Japan,66 wherein Mr. Hornbeck had suggested that the Ambassador might care while in Japan to take up with the appropriate authorities of the Japanese Government the question of making less difficult the visits of American citizens to the Pacific islands under Japanese mandate. The Ambassador said that he had discussed this question with the appropriate authorities of the Japanese Government; that they were quite willing that American nationals should make such visits; that there had been an occasion when one individual (the Ambassador remarked that he thought that it had been a British subject) had gone to the Mandate Islands ostensibly as a civilian, although it later developed that he was there for espionage [Page 682] purposes; that such incidents as this made some of the Japanese authorities reluctant to have foreign nationals visit the Islands; but that when the authorities were assured that the visits were for no improper purposes no obstacle would be placed in the way of American nationals making such visits.