840.51 Frozen Credits/3253: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Grew)
565. Reference your 1326, 1327, 1328 and 1329, August 28,38 in regard to reciprocal allowances for official establishments and personnel. It is desired that you call at the Japanese Foreign Office and leave an aide-mémoire along lines as follows:
“The Government of the United States refers to the Japanese Government’s aide-mémoire of August 26 with accompanying addendum and oral statement, and, with regard to the Japanese Government’s proposals, offers comment as follows:
The procedure suggested in this Government’s aide-mémoire of August 939 for making available funds for Japanese official establishments and personnel in the United States is similar to that which has been provided with respect to the official establishments and personnel of other countries whose funds have been blocked in the [Page 871] United States under similar circumstances and conditions. This procedure has been in general accepted by the other countries concerned. This Government would prefer, therefore, to proceed in the matter of reciprocal allowances along the general lines suggested in its aide-mémoire of August 9.
With reference to the numbered amendments suggested in the addendum to the Japanese Government’s aide-mémoire, reply is made as follows:
- 1.
- The practice already established by this Government in connection with allowances for official establishments and personnel and in force on a reciprocal basis with other countries under similar circumstances provides that estimates in regard to desired payments from official accounts be broken down on a monthly basis rather than on a quarterly basis. It is a matter of considerable convenience to this Government, therefore, that the monthly basis for such estimates be maintained in so far as Japan is concerned. However, this Government agrees that payments from official accounts should include all normal expenses, including items such as communication charges, wages for employees, rent, entertainment and other running expenses, and that the various items may be combined in a total monthly estimate for which permission may be requested.
- 2.
- In as much as funds to replenish the official accounts of Japanese official establishments would in all probability be transferred from time to time from various blocked accounts to official accounts, it would not be possible to grant general license covering such monthly transfers. However, this Government is prepared to license promptly appropriate monthly replenishments for official accounts.
- 3.
- This Government is agreeable to the suggestion that permission should be granted reciprocally for the remittances described in paragraph 3 provided the remittances in question are made by credit of the dollar amount of such remittances to a blocked account.
- 4.
- The Japanese Government’s specific suggestions with regard to the maximum amounts which may be allowed American officials in Japan and Japanese officials in the United States without specific license are acceptable to this Government. Those maximum amounts are as follows: for ambassadors, 2,000 dollars per month or its equivalent; for counselors and military and naval attachés, 1,500 dollars per month or its equivalent; for finance commissioners or first secretaries, 1,000 dollars per month or its equivalent; for officials of the rank of consul or second secretary, 750 dollars per month or its equivalent; for all other official personnel 1,500 yen per month for American officials in Japan and 500 dollars per month for Japanese official personnel in the United States. It is assumed that by the term ‘or its equivalent’ is meant the equivalent in yen at the official rate of exchange of the dollar sums referred to above. If sums in excess of the foregoing are needed specific applications may be made in each case.
- 5.
- No objection is perceived by this Government to the direct remittance by the Japanese Foreign Office through the Yokohama Specie Bank of the salaries of the officials of the Japanese Embassy and consulates above the rank of ‘Chancellor’. A blanket monthly license may be issued to the Yokohama Specie Bank for such a purpose upon [Page 872] the receipt from the Japanese Embassy in Washington of a list of Japanese officials above the rank of ‘Chancellor’ in the United States.”
At the same time that you leave the foregoing aide-mémoire, the Department desires that you make an oral statement, leaving a written record thereof at the Foreign Office, substantially as follows:
“As between the inclusion of Manchuria and the areas of China occupied by Japanese forces in any agreement which may be reached between my Government and the Government of Japan in regard to the matter of reciprocal allowances for official establishments and official personnel, and ‘mediation’ on this subject by the Japanese Government with the regimes in Manchuria and the occupied areas of China, the Government of the United States has no preference so long as the desired result is accomplished without delay, namely the extension of any arrangements which may be arrived at for the treatment of official American establishments and personnel in Japan to official American establishments and personnel in Manchuria and occupied areas of China. The Government of the United States would appreciate receiving from the Japanese Government assurances that the treatment of official American establishments and personnel which the Japanese Government may agree upon shall in fact be so extended.
The Government of the United States cannot undertake to ‘approve the settlement in dollar exchange at New York of remittances from the Imperial Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Japanese governmental establishments in Central and South America and in the several countries of Europe’ or to endeavor to take any active steps, as the Japanese Government suggests, ‘to prevent the creation of a situation which would hinder the use of the funds of those establishments and their personnel’.
Immediately following the blocking of Japanese balances in the United States the Government of the United States took prompt action to avoid embarrassment of Japanese nationals in the United States, including official personnel, and in a further endeavor to relieve official establishments and personnel from embarrassment drew up a suggested procedure which was contained in this Government’s aide-mémoire of August 9. Meanwhile, the Japanese Government has applied exceedingly onerous regulations to all American nationals, including American official personnel and official establishments, and these onerous regulations are maintained in full force today. No American Government official in the Japanese Empire has been able either to draw upon his yen balances from any bank in the Empire or to cash and convert any dollar or foreign checks since July 26. Under the circumstances therefore this Government is not prepared or disposed to carry on protracted negotiations in regard to the details of the procedure for making reciprocal allowances. American official personnel and establishments in Japan are in exceedingly straitened circumstances as a result of their inability to obtain funds for carrying on their functions and unless some provision is made for their needs in the immediate future the Government of the United States will have no alternative but to accord to Japanese official establishments and personnel in the United States treatment which will be not more [Page 873] favorable than that now being accorded American official establishments and personnel in Japan and in areas under Japanese control.”