711.945/1051
The Japanese Ambassador (Hanihara) to the Secretary of State
My Dear Mr. Secretary: In reading the Congressional Record of April 14, 1924, I find that the letter I addressed to you on April 10, a copy of which you sent to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Immigration, was made a subject of discussion in the Senate. In the Record it is reported that some of the Senators expressed the opinion, which was apparently accepted by many other members of that body, that my letter contained “a veiled threat.” As it appears from the Record that it is the phrase “grave consequences”, which I used in the concluding part of my letter that some of the Senators construed as “a veiled threat”, I may be permitted to quote here full text of the sentence which contained the words in question.
“Relying upon the confidence you have been good enough to show me at all times, I have stated or rather repeated all this to you very candidly and in a most friendly spirit, for I realize, as I believe you do, the grave consequences which the enactment of the measure retaining that particular provision would inevitably bring upon the otherwise happy and mutually advantageous relations between our two countries.”
Frankly, I must say I am unable to understand how the two words, read in their context, could be construed as meaning anything like a threat. I simply tried to emphasize the most unfortunate and deplorable effect upon our traditional friendship which might result from the adoption of a particular clause in the proposed measure. It would seriously impair the good and mutually helpful relationship and disturb the spirit of mutual regard and confidence, which characterizes our intercourse of the last three quarters of a century and which was considerably strengthened by the Washington Conference as well as by the most magnanimous sympathy shown by your people in the recent calamity in my country. Whereas there is otherwise every promise of hearty cooperation between Japan and the United States, which is believed to be essential to the welfare not only of themselves, but of the rest of the world, it would create, or at least tend to create, an unhappy atmosphere of ill-feeling and misgiving over the relations between our two countries.
As the representative of my country, whose supreme duty is to maintain and if possible to draw still closer the bond of friendship so happily existing between our two peoples, I honestly believe such effects, as I have described, to be “grave consequences.” In using [Page 382] these words, which I did quite ingenuously, I had no thought of being in any way disagreeable or discourteous, and still less of conveying “a veiled threat.” On the contrary it was in a spirit of the most sincere respect, confidence, and candor that I used these words, which spirit I hope is manifest throughout my entire letter, for it was in that spirit that I wrote you. I never suspected that these words, used as I used them, would ever afford an occasion for such comment or interpretation as have been given them.
You know, I am sure, that nothing could be further from my thought than to give cause for offence to your people or their Government, and I have not the slightest doubt that you have no such misunderstanding as to either the spirit in which I wrote the letter in question to you or the meaning I intended for the phrase that I used therein.
In view, however, of what has transpired in the course of the public discussion in the Senate, I feel constrained to write you, as a matter of record, that I did not use the phrase in question in such a sense as has been attributed to it.
I am [etc.]