Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, China and Japan, Volume XIV, Part 2

794.5/11–454

No. 821
The Chargé in Japan (Parsons) to the Acting Director of the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs (McClurkin)

secret
official–informal

Tokyo, November 4, 1954.

Dear Bob: I had occasion to see General Hull in his office on October 27 and thought I might record briefly several parts of the conversation.

(1) Referring to the “New Look” papers, General Hull said that he did not think that Japan was necessarily indefensible despite the number of fighter and light bomber fields ringing the Japanese islands. He was by no means sure that we could not prevent saturation of the islands by enemy atomic attack. The critical problem for us was the time factor in delivering our weapons over the target. This, of course, is a most sensitive subject.

(2) Further on the “New Look” paper, the General said that he did not think that the Command and the Embassy were very far apart. I said that my own feeling was that we were primarily interested in exploring a change of emphasis and timing rather than a change of basic objective, that we now thought we should accord priority to strong government, economic reconstruction and Japanese defense forces in that order. General Hull said that he was concerned that if he withdrew our forces, Japan would be placed under intolerable pressure from the Soviet Union and forced into a neutralist position. In this connection, he spoke of recent airfield construction in Saghalin and of the quantity of MIGs located on the fields within sight of Hokkaido. He said that whereas we do not use our military might to force political concessions, he was certain that the Russians would endeavor to do so. I said that I thought the biggest deterrent to attack and the biggest encouragement to Japan in standing up to Russian intimidation was the Japanese knowledge of our basic interest in Japan’s independence.

(3) Regarding support costs under Article 25, 2 (b),¹ General Hull said that if the Japanese would really spend the money for developing the military establishment, he was not in the least adverse to reducing support costs very substantially. He said that he thought we would get more for our money here spending it for Japanese soldiers than for American soldiers. He was concerned as to whether they would actually spend the money, however, and in that connection, expresses his endorsement of our note reserving the position of the Japanese 4 1/2 billion yen defense budget cut.²

Best regards, as always,

Yours sincerely,

Jeff

1. Of the Administrative Agreement.
2. Note No. 808, Nov. 1, not printed.