711.00 Pres. Speech, Oct. 5, 1937/10: Telegram
The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 7—9:39 a.m.]
455. Department’s 253, October 6, 6 p.m.95
Yesterday the Foreign Office spokesman released to the correspondents a statement on the President’s address of October 5 at Chicago. Byas states that he has telegraphed the completed text to the New York Times. The spokesman asserted a right of all honest and industrious people to live anywhere in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, referred to the doubling of the population of Japan in the past 50 years, and that the American Japanese exclusion law of 1924 is against the natural law of mankind and is greatly deplored by the Japanese. He said that if the “haves” refused to concede to the rightful demands of the “have nots” peace will be very difficult to maintain. He stated that in the present affair China has refused by force of arms the peaceful cooperation which Japan wants.
At the same time the spokesman released a statement referring to an editorial of the New York Times of October 4. Byas says that he has also telegraphed this statement in full. The statement aims at showing that on the night of August 14 the lives of 30,000 Japanese in Shanghai were imminently threatened by Chinese forces and that [Page 585] military action of Japan taken thereupon in Shanghai was consequently defensive.
Dooman96 was told at the Foreign Office this morning, and the statement is repeated in this afternoon’s Japanese press, that the releases of the spokesman yesterday were made in the capacity of the Chief of the Press Section, not as official statements by the Foreign Office. He was also told that the Foreign Office has instructed Saito to so inform the Department.
- Not printed; for text of President Roosevelt’s address at Chicago on October 5, see Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 379.↩
- Eugene H. Dooman, Counselor of Embassy in Japan.↩