756.94/170: Telegram
The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 29—9:55 a.m.]
762. My 761, August 28, 9 p.m. My Netherlands colleague believes that the principal efforts of the Kobayashi Mission will be to obtain control of oil fields either through exploitation of new sources (which are not believed to exist) or through cooperative development of existing fields in which the Japanese would propose furnishing the “white collar men” and the machinery while the Dutch furnish the labor and the credits. The Minister regards significant the inclusion of two naval officers on the mission and believes that acceptance of any scheme in line with the foregoing hypothetical plan would rapidly lead to full de facto control by the Japanese Navy and naval police of the district to be exploited. The Minister characterizes as utterly impossible his Government’s acceptance of any such plan.
- 2.
- Although the memorandum of the Japanese Government, communicated to the Department in my telegram under reference, characterizes the purpose of the Japanese mission as exclusively economic, it is significant that only a few days earlier an official of the Foreign Office observed to General Pabst that nowadays economic and political considerations are closely bound up together.
- 3.
- The Netherlands Minister has informed the Foreign Office that while the Netherlands Indies Government will not resort to dilatory tactics, nevertheless it will be out of the question to conduct autonomous negotiations with the Japanese Mission without constant reference to the home Government in London.
- 4.
- The Mission is scheduled to arrive at Batavia September 16.