794.5/12–552
No. 619
Memorandum of Conversation, by John Foster Dulles1
Memorandum of Conversation With Jiru Shirasu at the Shoreham Hotel, December 4, 1952, 9 a.m.
I saw Mr. Shirasu pursuant to a personal request from Prime Minister Yoshida. Mr. Shirasu said that the Prime Minister was particularly concerned over the pressures to which the Japanese Government was being subjected in relation to rearmament. He said that the Japanese people had been educated throughout the Occupation to the belief that it was wrong to have a military establishment; this was in the Japanese Constitution, and it would not be possible to develop any large armament without first re-educating the Japanese people. Mr. Shirasu said that the Prime Minister realized that this would probably be necessary but he urged that time be given to avoid a political upheaval which might put the Socialists in power on a “neutrality” platform.
I said that I could not speak for the incoming Administration; that I had never discussed the subject with General Eisenhower; and that I did not know what the views of the Defense Department were or would be.
I recalled that I myself, in my public utterances, had never urged the Japanese to rearm, believing that Japanese policy in this respect should come from the Japanese themselves and not seem to be imposed by outsiders. I stated that I believed that the Japanese people must realize that they would not be a fully sovereign nation so long as they were wholly dependent upon another nation for their protection in a world of danger; that they must realize that as a matter of their own self-respect they would have to bear some responsibility and fair share of the common burden of defense of the free world. I said I was confident that the Japanese people would come to realize this.
I said that I did not know what was the present estimate of the imminence of peril or the urgency of Japanese rearmament because I had not recently had access to this type of security information. I said that information of this character which might come to me later might lead me to feel that there was a great urgency but that, if the information made me feel this way probably the same [Page 1365] information would lead the Japanese Government and people to feel the same way.
I concluded by re-emphasizing that the views I expressed were merely views that I had held over the past and that the views of the incoming Administration were yet to be formulated and many of the elements which would determine that formulation could not be brought together until after the Administration was actually in power.
Mr. Shirasu thanked me and said that the point of view I had expressed would, he knew, be reassuring to the Prime Minister.
- Attached to a covering note dated Dec. 5 from Allison to Matthews, Bohlen, and Nitze. (794.5/12–552)↩