894.85/10–2546
The Department of State to the British Embassy
Memorandum
The Department of State acknowledges the receipt of the memorandum from the British Embassy, dated 25 October 1946,52 with respect to the adoption of the formula used by the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency for Germany, in the allocation as reparations of Japanese shipping tonnage.
The United States Government has not decided its position on this point. It does wish to call to the attention of the British Government the fact that, in the course of the discussion on this subject by the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency for Germany, the United States Representative incorporated in the minutes, with unanimous approval, the reservation that this basis of settlement was accepted by the United States solely because it was statistically desirable in the present instance and that it did not constitute a precedent for the United States [Page 598] in the distribution of Japanese shipping. Hence, the United States Government feels entirely free to approach this problem on the basis of its merits in connection with the over-all problems involved in the Japanese Reparations Settlement.