Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, The Far East, Volume VI

811.24596/1–1047: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Embassy in the Philippines

top secret

Washington, January 14, 1947—noon.

54. Urtel 58 Jan 10.³ President sent following memo to SecWar⁶ Jan 9:

“I enclose a copy of a memo dated Dec 24, 1946⁷ which I have received from the Secretary of State regarding the policy of this Govt with respect to the withdrawal of our forces from the Phils.

In my opinion the information received from Ambassador McNutt should be accepted as an expression of the wishes of the PhilGovt and the Filipino people. It is desired therefore that the WarDept adopt as our settled policy a program of withdrawing as rapidly as possible the major part of our forces in the Phils, in particular from the metropolitan area in and around the city of Manila, but that the limited forces contemplated in paragraph 5 of the memorandum of the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army dated Nov 23, 1946⁸ be retained in the Phils on such bases as will be available to this Govt under the military base agreement now being considered by the two governments.”

Dept memo referred to was résumé Roxas’ position as stated urtel 994 Dec 23.⁹

Byrnes

3. Not printed.
6. Robert P. Patterson.
7. Not printed, but see footnote 22, Foreign Relations, 1946, vol. viii, p. 940.
8. See letter from the Secretary of War to the Secretary of State, November 29, 1946, and footnote 16, Foreign Relations, 1946, vol. viii, p. 934. General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower was Chief of Staff.
9. Ibid., p. 939.