711.942/472: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Grew)
21. In reply to your 22, January 16, 5 p.m.,6 there is quoted below the pertinent extract from radio bulletin no. 12, January 15, in reference to my January 15 press conference:
“A correspondent referred to press reports from Tokyo to the effect that Japan had submitted to this Government proposals for a trade arrangement to follow the termination on January 26 of the Japanese-American commercial treaty of 1911. In reply, the Secretary said that he believed he had told the correspondents previously that for some time all the matters in which the two governments were interested had been under discussion between Ambassador Grew and the Japanese Foreign Office. The Secretary said that this included the commercial treaty situation as well as other matters, and that there were no such developments at this time as would enable him to give the correspondents anything especially new on the subject.”
No further statement was made concerning relations with Japan, and the Department has no knowledge of the basis of the Domei report.
- Not printed; it reported Domei despatch as saying, among other things, that the Secretary of State had admitted in a press interview January 15 that discussions to negotiate a new commercial treaty with Japan were being carried on in Tokyo by the Foreign Office and the American Embassy.↩