893.00/15343

The Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs ( Soong ) to the American Ambassador in China ( Gauss )25

[Translation]

Excellency: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of Your Excellency’s note of March 426 stating that an American truck convoy was attacked on February 19 in an area under the jurisdiction of the Kaiyuan Magistrate, Yunnan, and requesting that the Chinese Government take immediate and still more effective measures in order to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.

Immediately after the occurrence of the Kaiyuan incident the Chinese Government telegraphically instructed the Yunnan Provincial Government to cause a rigid and thorough investigation to be made into the officers responsible for the attack and to exterminate thoroughly all the bandits in that region within the shortest period.

In supplementing my note of February 26, 1944,26 setting forth the measures which had been taken in the Iliang and Milo incidents, I have the honor to state that I am now in receipt of a further telegram from the Yunnan Provincial Government reporting that two of the bandits named Shang Hsia-chien and Wang Kuan-yu who were involved in the bandit attack on American armed forces on the border of Lunan and Iliang have been apprehended and sentenced to death and that the Magistrate of Lunan Hsien has been removed from office.27

I avail myself [etc.]

T. V. Soong
  1. Copy transmitted to the Department by the Ambassador in his despatch No. 2371, March 29; received April 13.
  2. Not printed.
  3. Not printed.
  4. The Ambassador in China subsequently reported further action taken by the Chinese authorities to suppress banditry in the Kaiyuan area; this included recovery of stolen articles and capture or killing of some 50 bandits.