793.94/3850½
Memorandum of Trans-Atlantic Telephone Conversation32
Secretary: Good morning, Sir John, I wanted to talk with you about something which came up about the situation so that we will not get, by any possibilities, at cross purposes.
Sir John: We are very anxious to keep in step with you.
Secretary: We are very anxious to keep in step with you too. I have received word from our Ambassador in Tokyo of the conference which your Ambassador and he had with Yoshizawa this morning33 and I consider that it is a pretty favorable situation up to date, I mean so far as the Government is concerned.
Sir John: We have a report; would you like to know what it is? Our report is that your Ambassador, the French Ambassador and our man handed a note to the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs said that the first four points seemed to him personally acceptable and that he would consult his colleagues, but that the fifth point was not acceptable at all.
Secretary: Yes, I got the same report. I want to go on from that point. We consider the fifth point is very important in that it wipes up the possibility of future trouble. Without it, the President feels that there would be an immediate recrudescence of trouble in some other point, but the situation will probably develop itself automatically so that we will know better further on how to treat it. We agree with you that the first four points are very important.
Sir John: Yes.
Secretary: Let me give my idea of what they seem to me to accomplish if they are carried out. I think they would control the situation in China proper apart from Manchuria and it would seem to mop up the situation there. The agreement not to have any further mobilization [Page 180] or preparation for any further hostilities is a promise which we could probably check up on.
Sir John: What did you say about that agreement. That is point two.
Secretary: I think that is a good covenant because I think we could watch it and it could not be easily evaded.
Sir John: No, not evaded, but our information is that it is feared that the Japanese troops may be on the move.
Secretary: Well now, I wanted to give you my views about that. Yesterday, after I had talked to you, the Japanese Ambassador in Washington came to me and repeated the request for good offices which had been made in Tokyo. He came under instructions of his Government and that seemed to me to confirm what I had believed to be the fact before, although it depended only upon a single interview that the Government was seriously considering the situation which it had been placed in by an unwise naval movement and that the Government probably did not want to proceed with an expeditionary force. At any rate here was a repetition of an appeal for good offices.
Sir John: Well, they came and made a similar appeal to us about five or six hours ago through the Japanese Embassy here. Before we gave our good offices, I said what is this I hear about the possibility of Japanese troops being embarked and sent across to Shanghai and he replied that his Government was complaining that the Chinese were continuing to fire and that they were calling out forces and bringing down airplanes. If this went on they would have to transfer troops from Japan to China in order to deal with this situation and I said that America and ourselves and I thought the other Powers were all taking this step because Japan had asked for our good offices and there most certainly ought not be any sending of troops from Japan when we were—
Secretary: I said the same thing when the matter came up here. I agree with you. There is another point. Of course it is very confusing and conflicting evidence. I am trying to make my best inference from that mass of tangled facts. Another fact which indicates conservatism on the part of the Japanese Government is the appointment of Nomura, the Admiral in command at Shanghai now. Our Navy here have a very high opinion of Nomura as a liberal man.
Sir John: When was he appointed?
Secretary: He has just been appointed; just announced today. He is very well known as an Admiral there and our Navy have great confidence in him and our State Department knows his reputation well as one of the most liberal minded men in the Navy and he will have, they believe, a very restraining and conservative influence.
Sir John: What is he appointed to do?
[Page 181]Secretary: Command at Shanghai.
Sir John: To take the place of the Admiral now there?
Secretary: Yes. They have also reorganized the general staff of the Navy by appointing Prince Fushimi to take the place of [Taniguchi?].
Sir John: What has he been appointed as?
Secretary: He has been appointed Chief of the General Staff of the Navy.
Sir John: Is that just special for Shanghai?
Secretary: No, that is a special reorganization. This new man is the cousin of the Emperor and it is supposed here to be a step to take better control of the naval situation. It is all supposed to work in the direction of aiding people out in the Far East.
Sir John: The Japanese Admiral who has been in command is most unwilling himself to have a neutral zone or to give up any of his military operations and this may mean that there is going to be more cooperation.
Secretary: Our people here think there is going to be a very beneficial change. That confirms another point that has been my inference from my cables. I think that a great deal of the so-called fighting which has taken place, such as the recent shooting at Nanking and the shooting of the various naval vessels comes from the lack of self-control of the individual commanders of vessels and of small groups. It does not indicate the same concerted plan that we have found existed in certain army movements that we dealt with in Manchuria. I have conservative evidence which I shall not try to go into on the telephone, but that is my impression now. For instance, there has been a great deal of fighting in Shanghai reported by the press as outbreaks of fighting, but which my Consul General reports to me is the action entirely of uncontrollable civilians who have been armed and cannot be controlled. Mr. Cunningham, our Consul General, reports that the truce, so far as the regular forces on both sides is concerned, is still in operation.
Sir John: Oh, he does. I am very glad about that.
Secretary: We are very glad about that too.
Sir John: That is very interesting because we have not had such a favorable report about that.
Secretary: I may be wrong, of course, I am judging at long distance but I am giving you the inference I get from the general drift of cables I have received. I wanted to make clear our position that we do regard that point five as very important.
Sir John: You don’t?
Secretary: We do, and we don’t want to give it up but I think the matter is a matter to watch the development as it comes along and I [Page 182] want to say that I think we should make sure of the first four points. Now I think that what will probably happen is that the Chinese will insist on the fifth point.
Sir John: We expect that China will say that she accepts them all.
Secretary: So do we.
Sir John: That will rather put Japan in the wrong. China has accepted what we proposed and Japan has refused it and Japan will probably say that, as regards the first four points, China is not stopping the fighting and is bringing up reinforcements.
When the Japanese Ambassador came to see me earlier today he came to complain that the Chinese were, he said, bringing up reinforcements from Nanking and moving airplanes from the north through Manchuria to get them down towards Shanghai and he considered this as a reason why Japan […34] to Shanghai. That was his story.
Secretary: Yes, we have had that story too, but it is an old story and I have not heard anything of it for a day or two. An agreement to this would stop it, of course, I mean if carried out would stop it and they cannot expect it to be stopped until they make the agreement.
Sir John: No, that is true, and also if a change comes on, and time itself is some gain, they will probably know that the United States and Britain are hand in hand.
Secretary: Yes, well more than that. Our report is that the French Ambassador also joined in these representations this morning.
Sir John: Yes, I have the same report—instructions are pretty thick—but they are very anxious that we should not use any threatening language.
Secretary: In giving out my statement to the press here I have put it solely on the proposition for good offices which had come to us from both sides, a similar proposition from China as well as Japan, and I put it in the most conservative and conciliatory language possible in answer to their request. There have been so many different reports on that; some of the worst of them come from Geneva.
Sir John: Yes, I am afraid that is true. The Prime Minister wants to know, Mr. Stimson, when you think you are likely to be coming to Geneva.35
Secretary: Sir John, you can imagine from what you and I are talking about that I shall not be able to get away from here for any definite time and I am already tied up here for the present and I have no plans whatever for going abroad.
Sir John: But you will appreciate how very anxious the Prime Minister is about it.
[Page 183]Secretary: All I can say is that I am tied down here indefinitely at present and, on the other hand, if in the course of the next five or six months a situation should come up abroad where I could be of real use I should endeavor to come, but at present it is impossible.
Sir John: Mr. Stimson, have you yet received the news, for which we are very sorry, that the Prime Minister has to have an operation?
Secretary: I have received it and I am sending a message today.
Sir John: We are assured that it is not really a serious operation, except all operations to the eyes are serious, and he expects to be laid up for not more than a fortnight. I shall have to tell him that you don’t have any clear prospects of getting across to Geneva.
Secretary: That is true.
Sir John: Who is going to be there for the United States?
Secretary: Ambassador Gibson.
Sir John: I suppose he will be available there.
Secretary: Gibson has represented the United States at all the preparatory conferences and is fully conversant with the situation.
Sir John: I see, he will be your man who will be there all the time.
Secretary: He is the Acting Chairman of the Delegation. Just let me make clear about any further steps in regard to these negotiations that we are talking about with regard to China and Japan. Our feeling is that for the present, at any rate, we stand pat on the five propositions. We will have to know what the situation develops, but we think the fifth point is so important and we think there is such a chance that the Japanese will accept a large part of it anyhow that we want to wait and see.
Sir John: I was a little troubled. If the United States will stand pat on the five propositions we won’t agree that four will do as well as five.
Secretary: We will take the same lines.
Sir John: If we can get any practical results on one, two, three or four it will be a very good thing.
Secretary: That is very true. I wanted you to remember one more thing that the Japanese Ambassador in London, Mr. Matsudaira, has particularly good relations with the Japanese Government.
Sir John: Yes, I am informed, with the Emperor’s family.
Secretary: Yes, that is what I mean.
Sir John: He is not here now, he is in Geneva. I think I shall have to go to Geneva. I must put in an attendance there and will see Matsudaira.
Secretary: Yes, it is very important that he should be kept in touch with these negotiations because in December he was very useful [Page 184] and very helpful and we all have confidence in him and he offers a very good channel for the medium of negotiations.
Sir John: Both Matsudaira and his second in command, Saito, are both in Geneva and their First Secretary is looking out for the Embassy here.
Secretary: I see, that is too bad. That gives us the situation as we sum it up and I am very much interested to hear you and if anything more comes up we are entirely as one in everything you said and we mean here to keep strictly in line with you and to work together.
Sir John: I am glad to hear it and we have exactly the same intentions as regards you. This afternoon I made a statement to be given to the press of that idea and the British cooperation with America was warmly received.
Secretary: I am very glad and the same feeling was prevalent here and we have the same intention so far as cooperation with you is concerned.
- Between Mr. Stimson in Washington and Sir John Simon in London, February 2, 1932, 1:05 p.m. Memorandum made in the Department of State for its own use; not an agreed record of the conversation.↩
- See telegram No. 34, February 2, 9 p.m., Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 175.↩
- Apparently poor telephone connection at this point.↩
- Mr. Stimson was chairman of the American delegation to the General Disarmament Conference at Geneva.↩