740.00119 Control (Japan)/4–1248
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Division of Northeast Asian Affairs (Allison)
Mr. Graves called this afternoon and stating that he acted under instructions inquired concerning the status of the message addressed by the Supreme Commander on January 18 to the United States Secretary of the Army and released in Tokyo on March 31.1 He left with me a copy of this statement, attached hereto, which had not hitherto come to my attention, and stated that the British Mission in Tokyo understood that the message was also to be released in Washington.
Mr. Graves said that no one could take exception to the United States Commander’s sending a message to the United States Secretary of the Army, and including in it any recommendations considered desirable. However, when this message was later released by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Tokyo it did seem to suggest a confusion of functions between capacity as United States Commander and as SCAP. In connection with other statements which have been made in the past few weeks by various officials, Mr. Graves said that the release of this message inclined the Foreign Office to wonder whether or not a radical change was to be made in United States policy toward Japan and he referred specifically to the statement in the message that “we should while progress toward the restoration of formal peace is stalemated unilaterally, or with other Allied Governments similarly inclined, release as far as possible” existing restrictions on trade and commerce and the right of Japanese to go abroad. Mr. Graves mentioned particularly the problem of Japanese businessmen going abroad and expressed the strong hope that the United States would not take [Page 737] unilateral action in this regard without first having attempted to gain FEC approval. He specifically mentioned the difficulties facing foreign businessmen in Japan and pointed out that such difficulties did not face Japanese businessmen going abroad at the present time. When it was pointed out to Mr. Graves that the dispatch of Japanese businessmen abroad might have a favorable effect upon the Japanese economy and thereby bring about sooner favorable conditions for foreign businessmen in Japan, Mr. Graves said that that was an aspect of the matter which had not been sufficiently put forward. He said that what the British Government feared was unilateral action based only on the opinion of SCAP and that if the traveling of Japanese businessmen abroad would be of assistance in the early rehabilitation of the Japanese economy and that if such an argument was presented to the FEC, which he claims has not yet been done, the British Government would be willing to consider the matter from that point of view. Mr. Graves concluded by re-emphasizing that his Government did not wish to question the right of the Supreme Commander’s capacity as CINCFE to make any recommendations he saw fit to the United States Government, but only to point out that when such recommendations are issued in a public release from SCAP Headquarters in Tokyo it does create the definite impression of being a statement of unilateral American policy which would seem to ignore the FEC which had been established to consider just such matters of policy.2
Mr. Graves was told that as far as I knew this message had not been officially released in Washington as a statement of American policy, that from a quick reading of the message it appeared to me to be merely recommendations from the Commander in the field to the Department of the Army for use in budgetary hearings and that my personal opinion was that little exception could be taken to most of the substantive recommendations in the message. I stated that I would pass on Mr. Graves’ remarks to the appropriate authorities in the Department.
In departing Mr. Graves informed me that Ambassador Gascoigne had been instructed to take up the matter personally with the Supreme Commander.