Office of the Historian

693.001/433: Telegram

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

Tokyo, December 20, 1938—7 p.m.
[Received December 20—11:25 a.m.]

794. 1. The Foreign Minister’s statement yesterday43 to the correspondents, which has undoubtedly been reported in the press, was a mimeographed release in English, copy of which was supplied today to the Embassy by the Foreign Office. The statement is in general a summation of the position taken by Arita in his talks with Dooman and with me as reported in the Embassy’s despatch 3455, November 2545 and in his talks with Craigie as reported in various of our telegrams, with some refinements of phraseology, worth noting. [Here follows a report on the statement.]

2. The Foreign Minister’s statement is of very little value in forecasting the specific decisions which must affect particular rights and interests in China. It is our opinion that the confining of the statement [Page 107] to generalities and the scrupulous avoidance of commitment on specific foreign rights and interests in China, which might be regarded as falling outside the Japanese economic defense program, is a matter of deliberate policy, a primary motive of which is to keep a free hand for any subsequent discussions or negotiations which may occur. Even if the contemplated system of control is envisaged in some detail the Japanese Government would obviously be in a stronger negotiating position later if such decisions were not already divulged.

3. The statement’s careful avoidance of the formulas which have previously defined principles applicable to the relations of foreign countries with China undoubtedly reflects a calculated determination on the part of the Japanese. The statement is in no respect substantially new. It represents a trial, on the press, of ideas which the Japanese Government has already presented in only slightly different forms.

4. Comment by Arita at the same press conference provoked by questions with regard to the recent credit to China was characterized in telegram 793, December 19, 6 p.m.46

Cipher text by mail to Shanghai.

Grew
  1. Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 816.↩
  2. Despatch not printed; for memoranda of November 19 and 21, see Foreign Relations, Japan 1931–1941, vol. i, pp. 801, 806, and 808.↩
  3. Vol. iii, p. 589.↩