393.115/358: Telegram
The First Secretary of Embassy in China (Salisbury) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 29—7 a.m.]
394. Department’s 153, June 15, 3 p.m. Telegraphic reports have now been received from Amoy, Chefoo, Nanking, Shanghai, Tientsin and Tsingtao.
Japanese interference with American trade at the above named ports is great and in the interior is complete. It includes denial of free movement of Americans; refusal to permit them to return to their properties and businesses, particularly in the Shanghai and Nanking areas; restrictions on the movement of cargoes; seizures of American goods; restrictions on shipping and other means of transportation; occupation of American properties; interference with Chinese employees of American firms; manipulation of currency; prohibition of shipments to the interior; new Japanese inspired customs tariff which [Page 383] discriminates against some American imports; multifarious taxation by Japanese controlled puppet organs; long delays involved in settlement of even clear-cut cases of interference. Financial losses incurred by American business as a result of this interference cannot be estimated without obtaining reports from American firms concerned.
Outstanding instances of such interference with American trade are given below:
- 1.
- Amoy. Since the Japanese occupation the business of the Standard Vacuum Oil Company formerly about $450,000 monthly has decreased to less than 5 percent of that amount due to Japanese occupation and virtual blockade of Chinese transportation along Fukien coast; Texas Company has suffered similar percentage decrease and its representatives have not been permitted to return to Amoy.
- 2.
- Chefoo. Prohibition of shipments to the interior has reduced sales of the two American oil companies, formerly $1,400,000 local currency and deposit, to one tenth that amount, confined to sales in Chefoo. New currency regulations hamper importers of American goods and exporters of [lace] and embroidery to the United States.
- 3.
- Nanking. There is no longer any American trade in Nanking except small sales of lumber to the Japanese military. Representatives of American business firms have not been permitted to return.
- 4.
- Shanghai. Exclusion of Americans from Settlement area north of Soochow Creek and restriction in other areas in the vicinity of Shanghai; restrictions on cargo removals from above areas and difficulty in obtaining passes for such; restrictions on movement of cargoes and hindrances in connection with shipping on the Whangpoo and Yangtze Rivers and railway and highway transportation to the interior; occupation of properties; danger to shipping resulting from interference with the Whangpoo Conservancy Board; hardships resulting from new customs tariff; and long delays in settlement of cases with the Japanese authorities.
- 5.
- Tientsin. Manipulation of currency; transportation difficulties; high handed methods of fostering Japanese business, for example, this Embassy has been informed confidentially by an American insurance agent that Japanese firms with the assistance of Japanese and pro-Japanese Chinese officials are interfering to an extraordinary extent in the insurance business of Tientsin; that Japanese insurance agents are not only forcing Chinese firms under threats of physical violence to the firms’ officers to take out Japanese insurance but compelling them to pay much higher rates than those offered by other firms; the informant states that recently he made a bid for the usual insurance business of the Peiping-Mukden Railway at the rate of 75 cents per thousand dollars but a Japanese firm obtained the business at a rate of $3 per thousand.
- 6.
- Tsingtao. Numerous cases of indirect interference such as use of non-convertible currency; denial of use of wharves to other than Japanese vessels; hindrances on imports; obstacles placed in the way of an American tobacco firm in an effort to compel the company to purchase a large sum of “Federal Reserve Bank” notes with United States currency; prohibitions of shipments to the interior causing loss to American oil companies in particular; Japanese firms monopoly on freight car bookings on Tsingtao–Tsinanfu Railway.
Tientsin and Tsingtao report no interference with the shipment of supplies to American missions in the interior. Nanking and Shanghai report that such supplies can only be shipped to interior by American or British gunboats or by making special arrangements with the Japanese authorities. Chefoo reports that such shipments can only be made with consular assistance.
Copies of the six individual telegraphic reports are being mailed to Hankow and sent to Tokyo by courier leaving June 29th.94
Repeated to Hankow, Tokyo.
- Cf. telegram No. 399, June 30, 1938, 3 p.m., from the First Secretary of Embassy in China, Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 771.↩