894.24/640
Memorandum by the Assistant Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs (Ballantine)
With regard to the utilization in Japan of cotton, which has been listed among the war materials for which Japan is dependent upon foreign sources of supply (see FE memorandum dated January 7, 1939, and entitled Provenance of Materials Used by Japan in the Conflict in China), there is given below a table compiled from the figures worked out in the Department of Agriculture showing Japan’s cotton imports, mill consumption, and exports of cotton goods since 1936 converted into bales of raw cotton.
Imports Into, Mill Consumption of Cotton in Japan and Exports From Japan of Cotton Converted Into Bales of Raw Cotton 1936–1938
(Thousand bales of 478 pounds)
| 1936 | 1937 | 1938 | (9 months) | |
| Imports of raw cotton | 4,221 | 3,819 | 1,889 | |
| Mill consumption | 3,491 | 3,832 | 2,118 | |
| Exports | 1,899 | 1,878 | —? |
Three tables of statistics furnished by the Department of Agriculture from which the foregoing table was prepared are attached hereto.72
It should be noted that the figures given above include consumption only by mills of the Japan Cotton Spinners Association. Some cotton is consumed in other establishments and in households.
The foregoing table shows that during the period covered an average of 95 per cent of Japanese cotton imports was consumed by mills of the Japan Cotton Spinners Association and that of the cotton consumed in 1936 and 1937 by those mills 51 per cent went into cotton manufactures exported. Thus the percentage of Japan’s imports of cotton which were used for Japanese military purposes during the period covered could not have exceeded 49 per cent of the total imports. A rough computation for the first eleven months of 1938 gives 1,340,000 bales of cotton exported in the form of cotton manufactures as compared with 2,330,000 bales of raw cotton imported. Thus, as 57 per cent of the imports of raw cotton during this period was converted [Page 506] into cotton manufactures which were exported, not more than 43 per cent of the cotton imported during the first eleven months of 1938 could have been used for military purposes.
- Not printed.↩