Office of the Historian

740.0011 P. W./307: Telegram

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

Tokyo, July 25, 1941—6 p.m.
[Received 6:25 p.m.]

1080. The presentation of the American position by you to the Minister Counselor of the Japanese Embassy as set forth in your 418, July 22, 6 p.m.56 was wholly admirable. It seemed to me that an attitude on the one hand of firmness and on the other of tact, patience and sympathetic understanding of the difficulties which would confront the Japanese Government in setting a course diametrically opposite to the one it has been following is an attitude best calculated to evoke from the Japanese the response which we desire. It occurred to me that Mr. Wakasugi whose inquiry with regard to the possible effects of Japanese occupation of Indo-China was peculiarly inept might fail to reflect in his report to Tokyo the spirit of your presentation and thus allow to escape an opportunity to press in on Tokyo the importance of avoiding action which would compromise the success of the Washington conversations. I therefore prepared a paraphrase of your telegram under reference (omitting the antepenultimate and final paragraphs) and handed it to the Minister for Foreign Affairs during the course of our first interview today.

Grew
  1. Not printed, but see memorandum by the Acting Secretary of State, July 21, 1941, Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. ii, p. 520.↩