Office of the Historian

393.115/347: Telegram

The Consul General at Shanghai (Lockhart) to the Secretary of State

Shanghai, June 24, 1938—10 a.m.
[Received June 24—8:50 a.m.]

893. Tokyo’s 385, June 16, 6 p.m., relayed to Hankow and Nanking as our June 17, 3 p.m. Return of American businessmen to Nanking.

1.
The British Consul General has informed me that the six British subjects who some time ago went to Nanking without Japanese passes and are now in the compound of International Export Company [Page 374] which fronts on the river are having difficulties with the Japanese and are practically confined to the compound.
2.
The Standard Vacuum Oil Company had made arrangements with the naval authorities to send an American to Nanking today on the U. S. S. Isabel but refrained from doing so when there was reported to its managers the substance of a conversation yesterday between Consul General Okazaki of the Japanese Consulate General and member of my staff.
3.
The member of my staff informed Okazaki that we had been trying for a long time unsuccessfully to get Japanese passes for American businessmen who wished to return to Nanking and that the American Ambassador and the State Department were becoming increasingly concerned over the failure of the Japanese to permit them to return; [and that?] the Standard Vacuum Oil Company was understood to have made arrangements for its Nanking district manager to proceed on the U. S. S. Isabel on June 23 and Okazaki was urged to expedite the issuance of the necessary pass for him and the other American businessmen desiring to go to Nanking. Okazaki stated that he hoped no American would go to Nanking without a pass as some British subjects had done, as the Japanese would then have to refuse the issuance of all passes for Americans desiring to proceed to the interior. He said that the Japanese had planted sentries around the International Export Company premises in Nanking, thus confining the British subjects to the premises, and that the Japanese intended to require them to return to Shanghai and obtain passes before they would be given access to Nanking, or any other British subjects would be given passes for Nanking. He said that if we refrained from sending Americans to Nanking without passes he could assure this office that passes for American businessmen would be issued in “a week or 2 weeks”. He requested that this be brought to my attention. Later Okazaki telephoned the Consulate General and was informed that in view of his assurances that passes would be granted for American businessmen to return to Nanking within a week or 2 weeks, the Standard Vacuum Oil Company was not sending its representative to Nanking at this time.
4.
Thus far the Consulate General has only received applications from three American businessmen to proceed to Nanking and unless instructed to the contrary it will be my continued position that Americans should not proceed to Nanking or elsewhere, where the Japanese are known to be requiring passes, without such passes.

Repeated to Hankow, Nanking, Peiping and Tokyo.

Lockhart