811D.0144/4: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Grew)
344. 1. The Department has been informed by the Navy Department in substance as follows:
The Governor of Guam reported on May 27, 1941, an airplane sighted at 8:30 p.m. local time at an altitude of about 1000 feet over Guam which before proceeding in the direction of Saipan extinguished its lights. The Navy Department was informed by the Naval Attaché at Tokyo that this was acknowledged by the Japanese Admiralty to be a naval plane en route from Palau to Saipan which had mistaken Guam for Saipan. Regret was expressed by the Japanese Admiralty that the incident had taken place. Two separate cases of unidentitied [Page 183] aircraft flying over the Island were reported by the Governor of Guam on June 14: there was observed over the Island on June 12 about 11 a.m. local time at an altitude of approximately 15,000 feet an unidentified twin motor plane and there circled over Guam for about an hour from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. [a.m.] local time on June 14 one twin motor plane at an altitude of approximately 15,000 feet and that while these two planes were not identified they were doubtless Japanese. Also, it was reported by the Governor of Guam that a twin motor plane passed over Guam at high altitude heading south at 9:20 a.m. local time on June 19 and passed over the Island again at 9:40 a.m. heading north.
2. Please bring the foregoing to the attention of the Japanese Foreign Office as soon as practicable and request urgently and emphatically that appropriate steps be taken to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.53
- Ambassador Grew made such representations by a signed first-person note on the morning of June 22.↩