Office of the Historian

394.1121 Young, James/8: Telegram

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

Tokyo, January 31, 1940—7 p.m.
[Received January 31—9:20 a.m.]

68. Embassy’s 63, January 29, 6 p.m.53

1. The Embassy has received from the Foreign Office a written statement of which the following is a translation:

“During the present China incident Mr. James Young, representative for the Far East of the International News Service and special representative of the King Features Syndicate, departed from Nagasaki for China on the Nagasaki Maru on October 16th. He visited [Page 996] Shanghai, Nanking, Hong Kong, Chungking, Kunming, Hanoi, Tsingtao, Tsinan, Tientsin, Peiping, Hsinking and Mukden and returned to Tokyo on January 6.

(1)
During above mentioned journey he despatched from Shanghai and other places in China about 38 news reports containing extremely disparaging and defamatory items concerning the Japanese troops engaged in military operations in various places in China. These despatches he sent to his several home offices and to newspapers and magazines, et cetera, in Japan.
(2)
From January 6 to January 19 at the Imperial Hotel and in other places he made false statements and circulated misleading reports in the presence of many Japanese and foreign residents concerning the activities of the Japanese military. The provisions of Articles 2, 3 and 99 of the military criminal code are applicable in this case.”

2. Article 99 provides that “those who have circulated false statements and groundless rumors regarding military affairs in time of war or incident shall be sentenced to imprisonment of less than 3 years.”

Article 2 makes the law applicable to non-military persons and article 3 makes it applicable to crimes committed outside of Japanese territory.

3. The Foreign Office informed us orally that it is endeavoring to make arrangements for a member of the Embassy staff to visit Young.

Grew
  1. Not printed.↩