Office of the Historian

711.94/3–2946

Draft Affidavit by the Secretary of State, April 6, 194666

April 6, 1946

United States of America

District of Columbia, to Wit:

I, James F. Byrnes, Secretary of State, being first duly sworn, do hereby, according to my best knowledge and belief, make affidavit as follows:

1.
That I am the duly designated and qualified Secretary of State of the United States of America.
2.
That the Japanese Government in 1941 approached this Government with a proposal for an agreement providing for a pacific settlement covering the whole Pacific area, and accordingly conversations were entered into.67 Various drafts and counterdrafts of proposals were exchanged, but no reconciliation of views on a number of fundamental points was reached. While the conversations were still in progress the Japanese Government on November 20 presented this Government with an extreme proposal68 which this Government could not accept. It offered the Japanese Government on November 26 as an alternative a plan of a broad but simple settlement as a basis for further conversations looking to an agreement.69 On December 7 the Japanese Government made a reply announcing its intention to break off negotiations,70 but more than an hour prior to delivery of that reply it attacked without any warning American territory in Hawaii.
3.
That Japan did not on or before December 7, 1941, so far as the Government of the United States is aware, have recourse to the good offices or mediation of any friendly power, or to arbitration of pending questions at issue with the Government of the United States prior to Japan’s making an armed attack on the United States.
4.
That the Government of Japan did not on or before the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor deliver to the Government of the United [Page 429] States any previous or explicit warning either in the form of a declaration of war or an ultimatum with a conditional declaration of war.
5.
That, except as set forth in paragraph numbered two, Japan made no effort to reach a pacific settlement in 1941 of issues on which there were differences between Japan and the United States.

Given under my hand and the official seal of the Department of State this 6th day of April, 1946.

James F. Byrnes

Secretary of State

Subscribed and sworn to before me, a Notary Public in and for the District of Columbia, this 6th day of April, 1946.

_________________

Notary Public

  1. Prepared in response to a request from Mr. Keenan and transmitted on April 9 to the War Crimes Branch, Civil Affairs Division, War Department.↩
  2. See Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. ii, pp. 325–795, and Foreign Relations, 1941, vol. iv, pp. 1–729.↩
  3. Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. ii, p. 755.↩
  4. Ibid., p. 768.↩
  5. Ibid., p. 787.↩