Office of the Historian

711.94/1380: Telegram

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

Tokyo, December 11, 1939—1 p.m.
[Received December 11—8:30 a.m.]

673. Department’s 389, December 8, 5 p.m.;23 390, December 8, 6 p.m.;24 and 392, December 8, 8 p.m.25

1.
I am of the opinion that I should without much delay seek another appointment with the Foreign Minister and communicate to him the substance of the foregoing telegrams as my Government’s studied reaction to the Minister’s comments to me in our conversation of December 4,26 presenting a note in regard to claims (Department’s 389) and discussing orally the substance of Department’s 389 and of paragraph numbered 4 in Department’s 392. Such representations as under specific instructions from Washington would tend to reinforce what I have said to Admiral Nomura as on my own initiative. While the Japanese Government has already and frequently been made aware of our attitude and desiderata with regard to Japanese interference with American interests in China and the steps which the American Government considers essential to an improvement in Japanese-American relations, I believe the more is to be gained by continually impressing these facts upon the consciousness of the Japanese authorities than by leaving those authorities in the belief that their current efforts towards conciliation have done more than “touched the fringe of the problem”.
2.
If the Department approves of the foregoing procedure the important question of publicity will arise. The Foreign Office only will determine the nature and extent of the comments to be released or quietly fed to the Japanese press with regard to my representations and it is fairly certain, judging from past experience, that such comments will be neither complete nor accurate. This element of publicity I cannot control. I can, however, give to the American newspaper correspondents who keep in touch with me, or to the correspondents of the Associated Press and United Press exclusively, the [Page 614] correct story of my representations. This would at least insure accurate reporting in the United States instead of the imaginative fiction which is likely to be cabled to the United States by those press agencies in the absence of factual information from me. I have in mind especially the inaccurate United Press report of my conversation with the Foreign Minister on November 4.27 I gather that those agencies expect long reports from their correspondents whenever one of my interviews with the Foreign Minister takes place. The Department is, of course, in a better position than am I to determine the nature of the publicity now desirable in the United States.
3.
I should welcome specific guidance with regard to the procedure to be followed under both paragraphs 1 and 2 above.
Grew
  1. Vol. iv, p. 418.↩
  2. Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, Vol. i, p. 671.↩
  3. Ibid., Vol. ii, p. 46.↩
  4. See telegram No. 656, December 4, 10 p.m., from the Ambassador in Japan, ibid., p. 40.↩
  5. See the Ambassador’s memorandum of November 4, Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, Vol. ii, p. 31.↩