500.A15A5/67
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
The Japanese Ambassador52 called and inquired as to the significance of the various news despatches back and forth between here and London relating to proposed preliminary conversations relative to the 1935 Naval Conference. He said that he would be much interested to learn what had taken place thus far in the way of understandings or plans or individual statements. I replied that nothing whatever had occurred, except that the British Government sent us an invitation—presumably the same sort of invitation sent to the [Page 241] Japanese Government—to participate in some preliminary conversations at London at an early date with regard to the forthcoming Naval Conference in 1935; that my Government had accepted the invitation with the suggestion that any proposed conversations had better be conducted through the regular and usual diplomatic channels, and that this view had seemingly been concurred in by the British Government. I said that yesterday the State Department had given out to the press just what had occurred in this connection; that the preliminary discussions were to refer primarily to matters of procedure, but that if it should be deemed desirable also to discuss any of the technical side of existing naval questions, my government would be disposed to consider such step. This, I said, embraced the sum total of what had taken place so far as the United States Government was concerned.
I then inquired of the Ambassador whether his government had any new or additional information with respect to the proposed conversations at London, and he replied in the negative. He agreed that it would not be feasible to have conversations elsewhere, as at Washington, at the same time of the proposed conversations in London.
The Ambassador then inquired whether we had organized a committee of naval or military experts to attend the proposed London conversations. I replied that we had not had a meeting or conference of any kind with any experts here in Washington in connection with these proposed conversations. I added that one or two naval experts, who were connected with the Disarmament Conference proceedings at Geneva and who were expected to be over there, were being kept in mind by my government as suitable experts to drop back by London, if our government should so desire and decide, to furnish their services in any conversations relative to any technical naval phases, in the event conversations on that topic should be decided upon. The Ambassador then said that his government had both military and naval committees of experts in training. He seemed to have in mind the question of whether any other topics, possibly of a political nature, might be brought up for discussion.
- Hirosi Saito.↩