693.002/955: Telegram
The Consul General at Hong Kong (Southard) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 14—8:40 a.m.]
444. The Commissioner of Chinese Maritime Customs here has confidentially told me that the Japanese Consul General in Hong Kong has been endeavoring to procure his approval to a proposal to permit the Japanese to reopen and administer the approximately 14 Chinese Customs Stations in the Kowloon District which have been closed since the Japanese occupation of the hinterland. My informant states that he has refused to support the proposal but that the Consul General persistently returns to the subject presumably upon instructions from Tokyo.
[Page 867]The Commissioner says that only 2 of the former total of 16 stations in his district are now open and operating under his control and that they are regularly reconnoitered and sometimes bombed, usually by one lone Japanese plane. Direct hits are occasionally scored on buildings of light construction but with the use of dugouts and camouflage for assembled merchandise there has been little damage and no recent injury to members of the Customs staff. He says that these two stations, which are on Mirs Bay near Hong Kong, are clearing about a million Hong Kong dollars worth of merchandise per month divided more or less evenly between imports and exports. This trade is based on Hong Kong and is carried mainly by launches which run usually at night between Mirs Bay and this colony.
Repeated to Chungking, Canton and Peiping for Tokyo.
[Correspondence on the undeclared war between Japan and China is continued in volume IV.]