793.94/16622: Telegram
The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 16—8 p.m.]
684. Embassy’s 663, May 10, 5 p.m. The arrival of Ambassador Honda in Tokyo yesterday and the conference he is to hold in the next few days with high government officials may well determine the beginning of a new phase in Japan’s policy toward the China incident. It may be of value to examine the reasons for this policy and the direction it may take.
The increasingly onerous restrictions on China [the?] life of the people might be cheerfully borne as patriotic sacrifices could the man in the street see that Japan’s great strength was overpowering her enemies, or that the enunciated objectives of the China incident were nearing achievement. However, for many months there has been no news from China. Matsuoka’s diplomatic successes have been encouraging, but they have not blinded the nation to the fact that Japan’s war remains unsettled. The nation had been prepared by delicate changes in the expression of war aims for a possible peace with Chungking. Ambassador Honda now refers with contempt to “the German brokers” motivated only by prospects of personal profit who he states made efforts in Shanghai to arrange peace with Chungking. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that when negotiations with Chungking and a resultant settlement of the China incident were found to be impossible some new step in the formation of policy toward China was inevitable. The morale of the nation required the administration of a powerful drug in the form of a plan for settlement of the incident.
Public statements reiterating the thesis that the Nanking government must be strengthened and military operations against Chungking intensified appear therefore designed to prepare the nation for [Page 504] this new policy. Following the statements of Ambassador Honda and General Hata, previously reported, War Minister Tojo and Colonel Mabuchi, Chief of the Information Department of Imperial Headquarters, have issued statements urging the nation to support continued military operations in China. Tojo stated to a conference of army chiefs of staff that the fighting power of the army must be increased, that Japan’s only hope in solving the current situation lay in an invincible army. Mabuchi reminded the nation that Chiang Kai-shek was far from defeat, that renewed activity to crush the enemy was required. He urged the nations to be aware of the great enterprise in which Japan was engaged. We are informed that the press has been instructed to play up news of military operations in China and leading articles on the front pages of the vernaculars have recently been [extended?] accounts of the exploits of the Japanese forces in China.
Therefore if the authorities in Tokyo are in accord with the plan which Ambassador Honda has suggested in his interviews, Japanese policy toward China may be directed toward an attempt to create a condition in areas under the control of the Nanking government which can be characterized to the people of the nation as a “settlement” of the China incident.
The wide publicity given to Ambassador Honda’s views on his return from China and his public recommendation with regard to a new trend in Japan’s China policy which one would suppose should more properly issue from the Prime Minister89 or the Minister for Foreign Affairs have given rise to much discussion in foreign diplomatic circles which see therein a significant indication of divided counsels within Japanese officialdom.
Sent to the Department via Shanghai. Repeated to Chungking.
- Prince Fumimaro Konoye.↩