740.0011 PW (Peace)/3–2447
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Chief of the Division of Northeast Asian Affairs (Allison)
While calling on another matter Mr. Graves80 referred to General MacArthur’s recent interview and the statements of Mr. Acheson at his press conference on March 18th. He then said his Government would be interested in knowing how far along we were in preparation for a Japanese treaty and whether or not the time had come when profitable formal discussions between our two Governments could take place. I told him that as Mr. Acheson had stated in his press conference, the interested divisions in the Department had been working for some time on the preparatory work necessary prior to consideration of the peace treaty with Japan, but that at the present time there was no accepted U.S. draft treaty which could profitably be discussed with anyone. Mr. Graves said he assumed that was the case but expressed personal hope that it would not be too long before at least informal discussions could take place. He referred to Drew Pearson’s prediction on the radio the night of March 23rd that the Japanese peace conference would be held in San Francisco in October and that General MacArthur would be a delegate and said he presumed that was merely an intelligent guess on Mr. Pearson’s part. I stated that as far as I knew no thought had been given in the Department as to locale of a Japanese peace conference or to the composition of the American delegation.
- Hubert A. Graves, Counselor of the British Embassy.↩