793.94/15627: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Grew)
Washington, January 30, 1940—6
p.m.
41. Your 43, January 25, 3 p.m.
- 1.
- Department has carefully examined the considerations raised in your telegram under reference and, with respect to paragraph 3, observes for your information that, in connection with the reported assertion by the French Government of right to preempt certain cargo moving over the Haiphong–Yunnan railway, the American Ambassador at Paris, under instruction from the Department, brought to the attention of the French Government, inter alia, our specific interest in keeping open channels of trade such as the Haiphong-Yunnan railway.42 With reference to paragraph 4 of your telegram, while the Department considered it inadvisable, in connection with the subject then under discussion, for the American Consul General at Shanghai to discuss with the Japanese authorities the question whether the rules of war were applicable, the Department, in the event of need therefor, would be prepared to oppose a [Page 864] claim by Japan to the rights of a belligerent in the present hostilities in China.
- 2.
- Accordingly, unless you have in mind considerations other than those set forth in your telegram under reference, the Department desires that you make an informal approach to the Japanese Foreign Office along the lines of the Department’s 25, January 19, 6 p.m.43
Please mail cipher text to Peiping and Chungking.
Hull
- Correspondence not printed. The Department’s instruction was sent in telegram No. 1540, December 20, 1939, 7 p.m., and the Embassy in France replied in telegrams Nos. 3015, December 21, 1939, noon, and 3020, December 21, 6 p.m. (851.24/109a, 110, 111).↩
- For pro memoria left at the Japanese Foreign Office on January 31 by the Ambassador in Japan, see Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, Vol. i, p. 674. For Japanese reply on March 6 and Ambassador Grew’s further pro memoria of March 11, see ibid., pp. 677 and 678.↩