Office of the Historian

740.0011 P. W./425

Memorandum by Mr. Cecil W. Gray, Assistant to the Secretary of State

[Washington,] July 30, 1941.

In a telephone conversation today between Acting Secretary Welles and Secretary Hull at White Sulphur Springs there was some discussion about the Tutuila bombing70 and our general program of retaliatory action against Japan generally.71 The Secretary indicated that he [Page 353] was quite content to leave the forming of such a program to the judgment of those on the ground here in Washington. His own position was summed up as being one of formulating a comprehensive program of action short of war to be placed into effect as rapidly as circumstances permitted.

  1. See vol. v, pp. 873 ff., and Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 719.↩
  2. See pp. 774 ff.↩