793.94/5925
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
The Japanese Ambassador came to tell me on the instruction of his Government that the State of Manchukuo was determined to suppress the irregular forces in the Province of Jehol; that under the Treaty between Manchukuo and Japan, Japan was obliged to support Manchukuo and therefore the Japanese forces were cooperating in this movement in Jehol. He said, however, that his Government instructed him to say they did not intend that the Japanese forces should cross the Great Wall or enter into the Peiping-Tientsin district, unless some action by Chang Hsueh-liang made it necessary for them to do so. I reminded him that on his last visit, at the time when Japan had seized Shanhaikwan, he had told me he thought that that action would be localized and that he regarded the success of its localization as a test of whether the civil or the military powers of the Japanese Government were in control, and I asked him how his views as to that test were now affected by this movement of the Japanese forces into Jehol. He was a little embarrassed, but he said that the seizure by the Japanese forces of Shanhaikwan was an entry into North China south of the Wall, and that what he referred to when he spoke of the “test” was any further incursions into the Peiping-Tientsin area. He said that the military command of Japan recognized the various interests which were concentrated in the Peiping-Tientsin area and the consequent danger of an incursion into that area, and they did not want to go. I said, “Then you indicate by that remark that it is not a question of the civilian portion of the Japanese Government controlling the military, but of the military controlling themselves.” He replied that this incursion into Jehol which was north of the Wall, they did not regard as an incursion into China proper; that Jehol had always belonged to Manchukuo; that the last Governor of the Province of Jehol had been appointed by Marshal Chang Tso-lin, the father, and not by the Chinese National Government; and that Jehol was therefore a part of Manchukuo and Manchukuo was resolved to exterminate the irregulars in that Province, and in this case the civilian authorities of Japan were acting in collaboration with the military, and it was not their intention to go into the Peiping area. He asked me to take this last fact as a confidence, lest otherwise the Chang Hsueh-liang forces might trade upon that fact. I reminded him that it had already been made public in the press and he said he remembered that, but nevertheless his Government had asked that it not be published by me. I told him I would not.