Office of the Historian

894.10/1–3052

No. 532
John Foster Dulles, Consultant to the Secretary of State, to the Prime Minister of Japan (Yoshida)1

[Washington,] February 28, 1952.

My Dear Mr. Yoshida: I have taken very seriously your letter of December 22, 1951,2 as well as our prior conversation in Tokyo with respect to a loan by the United States to Japan. I understand and sympathize with your motives in addressing me as you have, and appreciate the difficulties which you are courageously facing in the enterprise in which we are both engaged. With your request in mind, I have referred to the possibility of loans to Japan in my opening statement to the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate on January 21, and amplified this statement in reaplying to questions by Senator Smith and Senator Green on January 22. I hope that these expressions will have been of some service to you.

I have deferred a reply to your letter in order that I might discuss the problem adequately with the officers of the United States Government who are concerned with United States financial policy. I am now enclosing a letter covering the points discussed.

You are free to use the enclosed letter as you may see fit. However, neither the Export-Import Bank nor the International Bank looks with favor upon the public discussion of matters which are still in an exploratory state, and I would suggest that in your own interest as well you do not permit publicity to be given which would arouse concrete expectations of immediate results that might not be borne out by events.

Sincerely yours,

John Foster Dulles

  1. Attached to a memorandum from Burnita O’Day, of the Office of the Secretary, to Hemmendinger dated Feb. 29. Also covered by a note dated Feb. 28 from Dulles to Sebald, which reads as follows: “I enclose two letters to Yoshida. The longer letter results from interdepartmental conferences and the result is rather sterile. You may think that it is not worth delivering. If so use your judgement.” Department of State files do not indicate whether or not the longer letter was delivered.

    The longer letter is attached. In it Dulles indicated that both the IBRD and the Export-Import Bank had procedures which required direct application for loans.

    ↩
  2. For text, see Foreign Relations, 1951, vol. vi, Part 1, p. 1466.↩