Office of the Historian

740.00119 Control (Japan)/6–746: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Political Adviser in Japan (Atcheson)

restricted
Washington, June 7, 1946—6 p.m.

346. For Political Adviser News item in Washington Post dated Tokyo, June 4, and supplied by Chicago Sun Foreign Service states that a Japanese Govt land reform plan submitted to SCAP and Allied Council with your endorsement was disapproved by “Chief of Staff” as “sham reform” on advice of SCAP experts. Article further states that “well placed group within headquarters have come to feel that wide transfer of land of big landholders to landless ‘smacks of communism’”

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Nothing is known in Washington of reported action and inquiries have been made in Far Eastern Commission. Your comments would be appreciated.13

Byrnes
  1. Telegram 258, June 10, 1946, from Tokyo, replied: “There is no truth whatsoever in the quotations. I myself had no part in the matter except to preside as Chairman of the Allied Council … on May 19.” (740.00119 Control (Japan)/6–1046)↩