Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1940, The Far East, Volume IV

711.942/584: Telegram

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

Tokyo, March 12, 1940—4 p.m.
[Received March 12—7:57 a.m.]

169. Our 165, March 11, 6 p.m.

1. Suma’s²³ optimistic comment concerning Soviet-Japanese relations given out in his conference with foreign press correspondents yesterday was banned from publication in Japan as is all comment on that subject. It was therefore obviously propaganda for foreign, especially American, consumption.

2. Local foreign correspondents interpret Suma’s purpose to have been to influence the United States against apparently expected measures, such for instance as the calling of a conference of the Nine Power Treaty²⁴ powers or other forms of pressure, as a result of the intended early setting up of the Wang Ching-wei regime.²⁵

This appears to have been merely another instance of the use of possible Soviet-Japanese rapprochement as a bogey to intimidate the United States. I have in private expressed the opinion and shall take occasion to repeat that opinion in talking with Japanese that Suma’s statement, especially considering the nature of its reported phraseology concerning American-Japanese relations, is likely to exert on American public opinion an effect precisely the reverse of that apparently desired and intended by Suma.

Cipher text by air mail Shanghai and Peiping and Chungking.

Grew

23. Yakichiro Suma, Director of the Bureau of Information, Japanese Foreign Office.
24. Signed at Washington, February 6, 1922, Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. i, p. 276.
25. See pp. 251 ff.