711.94/2273
Memorandum by the Acting Secretary of State
Mr. Wakasugi, Minister of the Japanese Embassy, called to see me at his request.
Mr. Wakasugi commenced the conversation by stating that as I had been informed by his Ambassador, he was leaving Washington tonight in order to report by instruction of his Government. He stated that he would report personally and directly to Prince Konoye, and likewise personally and directly to the Foreign Minister, Mr. Toyoda. He stated categorically that he represented the Prime Minister’s personal establishment here in the United States; and that owing to his intimate association with Admiral Toyoda from the time they were both stationed in the Japanese Embassy, London in 1922 and 1923, he was in direct communication with the Foreign Minister like wise. He said that what he wished to ask me to be good enough to give him was my analysis of the present state of relations between the United States and Japan.
He said that he felt it was necessary for his Government without a moment’s delay to realize what the policies of the Government of the United States actually were and what the feeling of the people of the United States actually was, since he felt that nothing was more needed in Tokyo today than a clear vision on the part of the responsible leaders of the Japanese Government of the two points he had asked me to discuss with him.
[Page 541]I said that I would be glad to respond to his request because I shared his point of view in one regard, at least, completely. I said I was sure, of course, that the Japanese Ambassador and he himself had been reporting accurately and fully to their Government, but that I wondered whether perhaps from other sources the Japanese Government might not have obtained a partial and prejudiced or distorted point of view with regard to public opinion in the United States and with regard to the policy which this Government was intending to carry out in its relations with the nations of the Pacific.
I said that perhaps Mr. Wakasugi was not aware of the fact that I had had the privilege myself of living three years in Japan in the old days74a and that I had then had the opportunity of knowing well at least some of the Japanese statesmen and intellectual leaders of an earlier period, and that I had throughout the intervening years always remembered with keen appreciation the personal benefits I had derived from those friendships. I said that for this reason I had always personally stood for the maintenance of very friendly relations between our two countries, not only because of my own knowledge and appreciation of Japan and the Japanese people, but also because of my conviction that there was no real fundamental reason, in so far as the best interests and desirable objectives of the two countries were concerned, for the two nations ever to be involved in conflict. I said that as I now looked back it seemed to me incredible that the relations which existed in those happier days between Japan and the United States could have degenerated into the relations which unfortunately existed between our two countries today. I stated that I had felt warranted in making this personal digression because I wished Mr. Wakasugi to appreciate that what I had to say was being said in a friendly spirit and because of my belief that at this late moment the truest evidence of friendship on my part was complete and unmitigated frankness in speech.
Mr. Wakasugi then said that he himself had been educated in this country and had spent, off and on, the better part of 30 years in the United States. He said that he felt very much about this country as I said I felt about his own nation, and that he felt bound to say in response to my frankness that in all of the 30 years of his experience, relations between the two nations had never at any time approached the critical point to which they had now unfortunately come.
I then resumed the conversation and said that Mr. Wakasugi had asked me what the policies of this Government might be. I said that the policies of my Government had been made clear time and again in our interchanges with and in our communications to the Government of Japan since the spring of 1933. I referred to letters exchanged between the Secretary of State and the Foreign Minister, to [Page 542] public statements made by the Secretary of State and by the President and other officials, and by innumerable other clear-cut and detailed analyses of our position with regard to the Pacific and more specifically, vis-à-vis Japan. I said that in addition to all of this, the policy of this Government had been made completely clear in the most painstaking way by the Secretary of State himself in the conversations which he had held during the past five months with the Japanese Ambassador. Finally, I said, the policy of this Government was clarified and summarized to the fullest extent possible by the proposal which the President himself had made to the Japanese Ambassador on July 24 and to which this Government had not as yet received any reply.
I said that I doubted whether in the history of the past 50 years any great power in its dealings with another great power had consistently shown such utter and complete patience as had the Government of the United States in its dealings with Japan.
At this point Mr. Wakasugi nodded his head.
I said that if Mr. Wakasugi nevertheless desired me once more to summarize the policy of this Government, I should define it succinctly as a policy which contained, as its fundamental premise, the maintenance of peace in the Pacific; the renunciation by all of the powers interested in the Pacific of force and of conquest as their national policy; the recognition of the rights of independent and autonomous peoples of the Pacific to independence and integrity; and equal opportunity and fair treatment for all, and exclusive preference or privilege for none. I added that it seemed to me that the policy of the United States made it fully clear to the Government of Japan that the American Government and people desired in no way to impede or to limit the equal rights of the Japanese people to economic and commercial opportunity, either in the Pacific or, for that matter, throughout the world, or the enjoyment of equal opportunity in obtaining free access to raw materials and food supplies required in the national economy of Japan; and afforded Japan complete assurance that so long as Japan adopted similar policies the United States could never remotely be regarded as endangering by military or naval force the national security of the Japanese Empire.
I said that I wished to emphasize by repeating the fact that American policy, if Japan followed an identical course, afforded Japan the fullest measure of security both physical and material. However, I said, at the same time that this policy had been enunciated over and over again to Japan, Japan had been following more and more openly a completely diametrical tendency.
The result was that during these recent years our national policies, instead of converging, had been moving steadily apart and the result [Page 543] was that today this Government was forced to the conclusion that the policy finally and definitely adopted by Japan was a policy of expansion through the use of force and by conquest. I said that I wished, therefore, to make it very clear to Mr. Wakasugi that in my considered judgment, if Japan continued on an aggressive policy of force and undertook moves of expansion which would result in acts of aggression upon additional peoples in the Far East, in the south or in other regions of the Pacific, the aim of Japan could only be regarded by the United States as the creation of a military overlordship of the Japanese Empire imposed over all of the peoples of the Far East, the Southern Pacific, and perhaps over other areas as well. If this were in reality the objective of the Japanese Government, I thought it necessary at this stage to say that in my judgment such a situation as that would inevitably be regarded as intolerable by the United States and by other peace-minded nations having direct interests in the Pacific, and that, consequently, whether it came tomorrow, or next month, or next year, or even later, the pursuit of such an objective by Japan would inevitably result in armed hostilities in the Pacific.
At this point Mr. Wakasugi interjected to say that what I had stated confirmed his own fears that the situation would now reach an exceedingly critical stage. He said that there were certain underlying factors which the Japanese people could never explain to themselves. He said that when Japan first awoke in the middle of the last century from her long sleep of isolation, she found herself completely surrounded by the imperialistic encroachments which occidental nations had made, not only in China, but in all the Pacific region as well. He said that the United States had been a rapidly expanding and growing country but that Japan was likewise a rapidly expanding country, obviously not on the same scale as the United States, but nevertheless on the same general trend. He said that the Japanese people could not indefinitely be confined to their own poor land and that they had to find, in view of their ever increasing birth rate and their rapidly rising power as a great nation in the world, some means of expanding outside of their own territories. At the very moment that the Japanese people were beginning to realize their situation along these lines, he said, the other great powers of the world had been undertaking exactly the same kind of action, by acquiring colonies and dominating other less advanced peoples, which we, the United States, were now reproaching the Japanese people for undertaking.
I said it would be ludicrous for me to attempt to argue with regard to the policies and measures undertaken by the great powers of the world ill the last century but that I was certain that in the years when I had first known Japan, Japan and the United States both [Page 544] agreed that a new and better era in the world was possible and that while, unfortunately enough, a better era had not been realized, I saw no reason for a retrogression in international policy which Mr. Wakasugi seemed to be recommending as a justification for the policy of conquest upon which his country now seemed to be embarked. I said that if it came to a question of expansion, I could quite understand the need for an energetic, able, and rapidly growing race like the Japanese to undertake in their own national interest certain forms of expansion outside of their own national boundaries, but I said that in the considered judgment of this Government the people of Japan would be infinitely more benefited and rendered infinitely more secure by the kind of expansion for which this Government stood than by the policy of expansion for which the present Government of Japan stood. I said that the kind of expansion which I had in mind was the kind of peaceful and productive expansion which resulted in the expansion of Japanese commercial activities in other countries along the lines of equality and non-discrimination which had been for so many years now upheld by the United States. I said I could conceive of no way in which greater prosperity, and contentment and security could come to the Japanese people than by utilizing their great gifts for commercial enterprise and thereby enjoy the great markets which China and other nations of the Far East as well as other nations in other sections of the world offered for peaceful commercial enterprise of this character. I asked him to compare the situation of Japan today, bled as she had been by the militaristic efforts she had been making in one form or another since 1931, with the position which Japan would occupy today if she had embarked upon the other course which I had indicated. I said surely there was great accuracy in what the Japanese Ambassador himself had stated a few days ago when he said that by the occupation of China, Japan had been putting everything into China and getting nothing out. I said that almost inevitably that was the sole result which Japan could gain from her present militaristic course and that the eventual outcome would be, I felt, economic prostration, and possibly social and financial collapse.
Mr. Wakasugi did not appear to differ from the opinions I expressed but merely stated that he feared it would be very difficult for the Japanese people to comprehend the truths involved in my statements to him.
He then suddenly said “The main task of statesmanship on both sides today is for us to avoid being drawn into conflict. How far can Japan now expand without running the risk of war with the United States?”
[Page 545]I replied in as clear a statement as possible that it was quite impossible for me to answer this question categorically and precisely. I said that it was not, in my judgment a question of exactly where the line would be drawn by this country because, for that matter, the implementation already undertaken by Japan of her expansionist policy of conquest might, in my judgment, create a situation where the vital interests of this country might be directly affected. I said the problem was not what this country would agree to in the way of occupation by Japan of other independent countries, but the fact that Japan was bent upon a policy of conquest which, if pursued and persisted in, would, in my opinion, inevitably result in a situation where the vital interests of the United States and of other great powers directly interested in the Pacific would be directly involved. I stated that he was mistaken if he thought that this Government would say to the Japanese Government “You can occupy this, that, or the other country, but you can go no further.” I said that the issue was the fact that Japan appeared to be bent upon pursuing a policy which would result in the creation of a military overlordship by Japan of the Pacific area and that it was the policy itself which, in my judgment, prejudiced the security of the United States.
Mr. Wakasugi then changed the subject and said that he had been unable to understand at all from his Ambassador the proposal which the President had made. He asked if I would clarify the matter for him. I therefore repeated to him clearly and precisely exactly what the President’s proposal had been as covered in the memorandum of my conversation between the President and the Ambassador of July 24, and Mr. Wakasugi then said that he now understood for the first time clearly exactly what the President had in mind. He added of his own volition that he could not deny that what the President proposed, if consummated, would give security to his own country and to the other nations interested in the Far East.
Mr. Wakasugi then said that he had one final question to ask me and that was what the opinion of this Government might be concerning the solution of postwar problems.
He said that he had read with a great deal of interest the address which I had made which touched upon that subject75 and that since he himself had attended so many meetings of the League of Nations he wanted to express his own belief that a new league of nations, set up on the foundations utilized by the old League of Nations would not prove practical nor successful. He said he did not now want to argue about what nation or nations had been responsible for [Page 546] the failure of the old League of Nations, but he thought the time had certainly come to consider what better world order might be set up when peace again was restored.
He said as he envisaged it, the most practical solution was the creation of regional federations, one to consist of Europe and Africa, one of the Western Hemisphere, one of the Far East, and one of Russia.
I said that I had heard a similar point of view expressed by many others, but that I wondered if one took this approach as a solution for the problem how one could possibly anticipate that such matters as disarmament or equality of economic enjoyment could be solved by the creation of regional federations. I said, to be perfectly specific and conceive of a Far Eastern federation and a Western Hemisphere federation, how could the regional federation of the new world ever be satisfied that a real limitation of armament could be undertaken unless it was confident that the Fur Eastern federation was in actual practice limiting its armaments of all categories to exactly the same lines as those undertaken by the Western Hemisphere federation? In exactly the same way, I said, unless one undertook a universal approach, how could the economic difficulties from which the world had been so long suffering be solved through regional federation control. I said, however, that as he knew, I had never at any time been willing to express any opinion with regard to the precise mechanism that might be employed by the powers of the world when the appropriate opportunity was presented, but that I thought it was in fact highly desirable for all peace-minded nations to be considering these matters and exchanging views between themselves with regard thereto. I said I wanted to make it very clear, however, that of one thing I was completely confident and that was that no “new orders”, were they Hitler-inspired or Japanese-inspired, would tend to solve this problem, but rather quite the contrary.
Mr. Wakasugi then left, expressing his appreciation for the opportunity he had had of talking with me and expressing the hope that he might be back in Washington before many weeks had passed.