Office of the Historian

740.0011 European War 1939/12903: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Grew)27

Washington, July 10, 1941—5 p.m.

384. For the Ambassador and the Counselor only. Your 954, July 8, 5 p.m., last sentence.28

We approve the comments you made as reported in paragraph numbered 3 of your 953, July 8, 4 p.m., and desire that you inform the Minister for Foreign Affairs that those comments have your Government’s thorough concurrence and approval. In so doing please also in your discretion mention the points set forth in the Department’s [Page 1005] telegrams to Tokyo no. 280, May 17, 6 p.m., and no. 312, June 6, 6 p.m.,29 and state that the self-defense policy of the United States and the protective measures which may be adopted pursuant to and for the purpose of carrying out that policy will necessarily be shaped by the acts of aggression taken or likely to be taken by aggressor nations. You might indicate that, this being so, information from Hitler as to his future contemplated steps of aggression would assist the Japanese Government in forming an estimate as to what steps of self-defense the United States may be forced to take in order to protect its own security. Your communication to the Minister for Foreign Affairs should be an oral one.

Welles
  1. Approved by President Roosevelt on July 10.↩
  2. Telegram not printed; see last sentence of statement handed the Ambassador in Japan by the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs on July 8, Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, Vol. ii, pp. 503, 504.↩
  3. Ante, pp. 201 and 254.↩