711.94/2440: Telegram
The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 13—2:06 p.m.]
1796. The following is the substance of a telegram sent to the Foreign Office in London by the British Ambassador in Tokyo reporting his conversation on November 11 with the Minister for Foreign Affairs:
“I spoke to Minister for Foreign Affairs today in the terms of your telegram handing him a note of what I had said to avoid misunderstanding. Minister for Foreign Affairs began by referring to Mr. Churchill’s references to Japan in his speech on Monday,92 observing that this constituted a ‘rather strong warning’ to his country in connection with the American-Japanese negotiations. His Excellency could not but regard this statement as unfortunate, particularly as the Prime Minister admittedly did not know the details of the negotiations or the stage which they had now reached. The statement appeared to simplify the matter too much and in any case if the Prime Minister’s desire was to facilitate an agreement there were surely other and better ways of doing this. I replied that the Prime Minister had evidently felt that the moment had come when the Japanese Government and people must be left in no doubt as to where we stood. Wars had in the past occurred through misunderstanding and miscalculation and from this point of view there was advantage in clarifying the issues, particularly in view of the threatening language of the Japanese press. Judging from the fragmentary reports of the speech which had reached me, I gathered that the general tone of the references to Japan had been friendly.
- 2.
- Turning to the negotiations themselves, the Minister for Foreign Affairs stated that the situation was, for the reasons given me in our last interview, now one of urgency and must ‘materialize speedily’. He did not agree that, after nearly seven months of discussion, it was correct to speak of the conversations as still being in the exploratory stage. On the contrary, the Japanese Government regarded them as having assumed the form of negotiations and so informed the United States Government though they had not yet heard their views on this point. The two parties were no longer discussing the meeting but were considering in detail the points for inclusion in instruments which would cover the whole field. The Japanese Government had recently put forward proposals in which they had made their maximum concessions and he earnestly hoped that these would be acceptable to [Page 588] the United States Government. If so the conclusion of an agreement should be possible in a week or ten days—indeed not only possible but necessary. There were only three points now outstanding. Realizing the extent to which British were involved in these discussions, the Japanese Government had expressed the opinion to the United States Government that an agreement with Great Britain should be reached and signed simultaneously with the Japanese-American agreement but had not yet received the United States Government’s answer on this point. Clearly the question of the appropriate moment for His Majesty’s Government to participate in the discussions was one which primarily concerned the united States and British Governments and it was not for him to make any definite proposal on a point which affected Anglo-American relations. Nevertheless he felt it right that you should realize that the negotiations were no longer in the exploratory stage and that things might hereafter move quickly, particularly in view of the forthcoming session of the Diet.
- 3.
- Before leaving I urged upon His Excellency the advantage of a supreme effort being made to bring about an agreement with the United States and added that I could not myself see anything in the situation which demanded so hasty a conclusion of an important negotiation. His Excellency stated no reason for the impatience of the Japanese people but speaking off the record I suggested that the impatience of the Japanese Army would be a more appropriate explanation. The heavy-handed tactics dear to the military mind were not the best suited to a delicate diplomatic situation such as the present and I hoped that His Excellency would do everything in his power to counsel prudence in these quarters which were now seeking to precipitate a crisis.”
The text of the note referred to in the first paragraph of the above quoted substance of telegram and the text of the oral urging referred to in the first sentence of the last paragraph thereof are being transmitted to the Department in my immediately following telegram.93