Office of the Historian

793.94/15221: Telegram

The Ambassador in China (Johnson) to the Secretary of State

Chungking, July 17, 1939—noon.
[Received July 17—8:10 a.m.]

For Tokyo. Department’s 202, July 15, 6 p.m.16 On re-reading my July 13, noon,17 I feel that unless you have already read my statement to the Foreign Minister and did not omit assertion that no objects of military character nor military forces were damaged, it would be preferable to omit those statements. They could by forced reasoning be construed as warranting the inference that such objects and forces are in Chungking in spite of my opinion expressed earlier that the city is unarmed in any offensive sense.

Sent to Tokyo through Shanghai, repeated to Peiping.

Johnson
  1. Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 662.↩
  2. Telegram No. 438, Ibid., p. 661.↩