Office of the Historian

35. Memorandum From the Under Secretary of State (Hoover) to the Secretary of State1

Washington, July 19, 1955.

On July 16 the Defense Department announced at the Quantico conference2 that they planned to pull one division of U.S. troops out of Japan. Newspaper clippings are attached.3

I called Secretary Wilson July 18 and advised him that Secretary Anderson and Admiral Radford had talked with me about it; that State had agreed to the move in principle; but it would have to be handled with extreme delicacy in Japan. We all recognized that the reduction should be kept in complete confidence at the present time. Our Embassy and military in Tokyo were being consulted on the best method of handling it with the Japanese.

I pointed out that the publicity out of Washington, before we had had a chance to advise the Japanese Government, would make the task more difficult. I also stated that there might be repercussions in [Page 76] Formosa, the Philippines, Korea and Indochina if those countries got the wrong idea, as a result of Chicom propaganda, that we were reducing our support in the Far East.

Secretary Wilson said that he had been guided primarily by budgetary considerations in making the announcement.

I promised to keep him advised of progress in our conversations with the Japanese, and hoped that no further announcements or amplification would be forthcoming until we reached a later stage.

H.
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 794.0221/7–1955. Confidential.↩
  2. A 3-day Department of Defense conference on military policy was held at Quantico, Virginia, in mid-July.↩
  3. Newspaper clippings from The New York Times, July 16, 1955; not printed.↩