Office of the Historian

811.0145/367

Memorandum by the Secretary of State to President Roosevelt

[Washington,] June 10, 1943.

I find that there has already been formed within this Department a committee1 to study various angles of this very problem.

The setting up of a Board such as the Secretary of the Interior suggests would be entirely agreeable to me. I raise the question whether it might not be appropriate and advantageous to have represented on such a board not only the agencies mentioned in Mr. Ickes’ letter and your memorandum but also the Department of the Navy.

C[ordell] H[hull]
  1. A Departmental Committee to study the problems of protection and utilization of, and jurisdiction over, coastal fisheries and other marine resources, was appointed in May, 1943. Under the general supervision of the Assistant Secretary of State, Breckinridge Long, the Committee was composed of Leo D. Sturgeon, Department Representative on the Fisheries Commission, War Production Board, as Chairman; Selden Chapin, Executive Secretary of the Committee on Political Planning; Eugene H. Dooman, Division of Far Eastern Affairs; John D. Hickerson, Division of European Affairs; Joseph F. McGurk, Division of the American Republics; and William W. Bishop, Jr., Assistant to the Legal Adviser (Hackworth).↩