393.115/1149a: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Counselor of Embassy in China (Butrick), at Peiping
132. Tsingtao’s 40, July 28; Swatow’s 17, July 28, noon; Chefoo’s 8, July 286 and other messages in regard to Japanese interference with American persons, properties and firms in China.
The Department desires to receive prompt, detailed and comprehensive reports in regard to such developments. Please instruct consuls accordingly.
In cases of Japanese occupation of American property or cases of detention of Americans or unwarranted detention of non-American employees of American organizations the consuls should, as in other cases of unwarranted interference with American rights and interests, lodge protests with the local Japanese authorities and you should make emphatic representations to the Japanese Embassy. In such representations you should, where appropriate, point out that this Government views with serious concern actions by Japanese authorities [Page 786] which constitute expansion of Japanese interference, which has already reached such extensive proportions, with American rights and interests in China.
Please repeat this telegram to Tokyo with the request, as from the Department, that the Embassy at Tokyo in such cases also make appropriate representations to the Japanese Foreign Office along lines mentioned above.7
Sent to Peiping. Repeated to Chungking and Shanghai.
- None printed.↩
- For two notes by the Embassy in Japan to the Japanese Foreign Office on August 6 and 7, see Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, Vol. i, pp. 906 and 907. For the Japanese reply, see telegram No. 1577, October 7, 10 a.m., from the Ambassador in Japan, ibid., p. 921.↩