Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, Asia and the Pacific, Volume VI, Part 1

Lot 54D423

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Deputy Director of the Office of British Commonwealth and Northern European Affairs (Satterthwaite)

confidential

[San Francisco,] September 3, 1951.

Participants:	Netherlands Foreign Minister, Mr. Stikker
	Ambassador van Roijen
	Secretary of State Dean Acheson
	Mr. Dulles
	Mr. Satterthwaite

The Secretary and Mr. Dulles asked Mr. Stikker and Ambassador Roijen to lunch to explore with them ways of overcoming Dutch difficulties which had arisen in connection with certain aspects with the reparations aspects of the Japanese Peace Treaty (Article 14b).¹

After a general discussion, the Secretary remarked that we understood some domestic problems had arisen in Holland on reparations questions and we would like to talk about them. Stikker said that his government recently—he emphasized that it was a recent development—had been under strong criticism from the large and powerful organization of Dutch civilians who had been interned in the East Indies by the Japanese. Stikker said that, unlike the case in many other countries, the Dutch civilian internees greatly outnumbered the prisoners of war, the ratio being about 100,000 civilians to some 30,000 prisoners of war. While the prisoners of war who had been interned have been taken care of, most of the civilians, except those who had been helped by some of the large companies they were working for, had lost everything and had not received any relief. Stikker said that this organized group of civilians, including families of voting age, numbered about 70,000 and that they had been criticizing the government, first for its, what they term, “soft” policy towards Indonesia and second, because the Japanese Peace Treaty draft appeared to commit the Dutch government to the abandonment of all possibility of private individual claims against the Japanese Government. In addition the treaty specifically provided that Japanese funds in neutral countries, if recovered, would be distributed by the Red Cross only to prisoners of war and not to civilians. Stikker pointed out that the main difficulty arose from the fact that the original draft did not point up these possible discriminations but that the present version did, thus calling attention to the discrimination against civilians. His government felt that not only was the emotional appeal of these people who had lost everything in Indonesia strong enough to upset the Government but that legally their charge that the government in signing the Japanese Peace Treaty was depriving them of a right which constitutionally it could not do, had validity. Stikker then said quite frankly he had instructions not to sign the Peace Treaty unless some way could be found to clarify these two points.

Mr. Dulles explained the history of the negotiations with the British and Australians and others on these points, and described the evolution of the articles dealing with the reparations and neutral funds question. Stikker agreed with him that a change to include civilians would not be acceptable to the British or Australians who were under political pressure from the prisoners of war rather than civilians, and said he had already sounded out the British and Australians with no success. Mr. Dulles pointed out that it made no difference to us since we had already compensated our citizens in other ways and in any case the amount would be so small as to be negligible. Mr. Dulles agreed to explore with our advisers the possibility of devising a formula which would make it clear that while the Japanese would in no sense be committed to recognize the claims of individuals, nothing in the Treaty would prevent them from making such adjustments as they felt it desirable to make as a matter of enlightened expediency.

The Secretary spoke briefly of the serious effect in Europe or [of?] any breach among the European countries and particularly the NATO countries, in the solid front on the Japanese Peace Treaty. Stikker agreed and seemed hopeful that a solution could be found.

1. In a memorandum of August 29 to Mr. Allison, Mr. James C. H. Bonbright, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the European Affairs, had stated in part that the Government of the Netherlands had accepted (on August 28) its invitation to the Japanese Peace Conference but had stated its acceptance did not imply signature if its desiderata could not in some way be met (Lot 54D423).