393.115/672: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in Japan (Dooman)
168. Your 283, June 19, 7 p.m. The Department is withholding, at least until tomorrow, publication of the American notes of March 30 and May 22 and of the record of Ambassador Grew’s oral statement to the Foreign Office of May 11 in the hope that it may be possible to publish simultaneously the Japanese note of May 17.
In view of press reports from Tokyo, I told the correspondents at my press conference this morning that the Department had today received two cables from the American Chargé d’Affaires at Tokyo; that the first cable reported that the Chargé had called on the head of the American section of the Japanese Foreign Office and had discussed with him phases of the situation at Amoy99 and that this was in line with the usual contacts which the Chargé maintains with the Japanese Foreign Office.
I told them that a later cablegram from the American Chargé reports that he called, under instruction from the Department, upon the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs and made representations against the continued bombings of American properties which have been occurring at various points in China during recent weeks; and that the Chargé also discussed with the Foreign Minister the question of making public the text of previous representations which the American Embassy had made on this general subject as well as the [Page 344] text of the Japanese Government’s reply. I said that it is customary of course to obtain the assent of a foreign government to publication of one of its documents and that in this instance this assent has not as yet been obtained.
Repeated to Chungking and Peiping.