740.0011 European War 1939/12849
The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 5.]
Sir: As a chapter in not quite orthodox diplomacy I have the honor to present to the Department herewith copies of certain memoranda of conversations and letters, as well as copies or paraphrases of certain telegrams,8 many or all of which are already separately on the files of the Department, setting forth the expressed attitude of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Matsuoka, toward the Tripartite Pact of September 27, 1940, and its bearing on the question of war between Japan and the United States in case war should occur between the United States and Germany. It is my thought that these surprising documents may be of greater value to the Department, and to history, when thus presented in assembled form.
[Page 235]Witness the circumstances which gave rise to my oral and written exchanges with Mr. Matsuoka. After an absence of some six weeks in Europe the Japanese Foreign Minister returns to Tokyo; I immediately write requesting an appointment at the Minister’s convenience; he keeps me (and other foreign Ambassadors) waiting for some three weeks and finally receives me officially at the Foreign Office. In the course of the conversation the Minister expresses the opinion that the “manly, decent and reasonable” thing for the United States to do would be to declare war openly on Germany since our attitude toward Germany is provocative, adding that Hitler has been very patient and generous in not declaring war on the United States but that his patience and restraint cannot be expected to endure indefinitely. On my taking exception to the Minister’s remarks he withdraws the implication that the United States is guilty of unmanly, indecent and unreasonable conduct, and he later writes me that owing to his inadequate knowledge of English he inadvertently used the word “decent” whereas he meant “discreet”.
The Minister thereupon makes perfectly clear his interpretation of the Tripartite Pact to the effect that if the United States should convoy its ships to England and if Germany should sink such ships, and if war with Germany should result, he, Mr. Matsuoka, would regard the United States as an aggressor in the sense of Article 3 of the pact, and it is his belief that war would thereupon ensue between Japan and the United States. He adds that this is only his own opinion and that there would have to be deliberation not only with his colleagues in the Japanese Government but with Japan’s allies, in which deliberation Japan would have but one out of three votes. (In this connection it is interesting to note that when Germany attacked Greece this spring, Mr. Matsuoka, according to the Greek Minister here, informed Mr. Politis that Japan herself would determine her obligations under the Tripartite Pact, that her decision would be guided by common sense, and that Mr. Matsuoka thought that it was quite clear what the decision would be. Nothing was then said of Japan having but one out of three votes.) I express my surprise at the Minister’s interpretation of Japan’s obligations under Article 3 of the pact which provides for mutual assistance between the allies only if one of them is attacked by another Power, and my astonishment that Japan could thus surrender her future freedom of action and could entrust her future destiny to deliberations in which she would enjoy but one out of three votes. I set forth the attitude of the United States toward the freedom of the seas and the determination of the United States to sail those seas at will and to take all necessary measures of self-defense.
[Page 236]In reply to Mr. Matsuoka’s first letter of May 14 I write on May 15 to thank him while at the same time expressing regret at the “grave and far-reaching implications” of his remarks in our conversation on the previous day. On the 17th Mr. Matsuoka writes me a long letter, marked “Entirely Private”, emphasizing the fact that while he knows how to be “correct” as Foreign Minister such an attitude on his part would not be conducive to better understanding between us, and that he often forgets that he is a Foreign Minister and is seldom conscious of that position. He expresses his honest hate of the so-called correct attitudes taken by many diplomats which “hardly get us anywhere”; he acknowledges that he often indulges in thoughts in terms of one thousand or two or even three thousand years, and if this strikes me as a sign of insanity, he cannot help it as he is made that way. The expressions which he had used in our talk on May 14, he says, would not have been uttered as Foreign Minister and those words have no place in our official relations; he had confided them to me as a world citizen and he had always regarded me as something more than an Ambassador, namely a human being to whom he might reveal his deeper thoughts and ideas. He, however, still writes of Germany’s patience in the face of American provocation and of the terrible Armageddon with which civilization will be faced if the United States is drawn into the European war by attacking or being attacked, and he regards that latter point as “rather immaterial”. He furthermore does not know what I mean by the phrase in my letter “grave and far-reaching implications” and believes that there must have been some misunderstanding because he cannot recall any remarks of his own upon which I could have placed such an interpretation. He suggests a further meeting in a day or two.
The Minister receives me at his private residence on May 19, we have tea and then stroll in his garden, both smoking pipes in entire informality, and chatting freely. He at once expresses his astonishment that Mr. Hull had sent for Admiral Nomura, the Japanese Ambassador in Washington, and had told him that Mr. Matsuoka had sought to “intimidate” me in our conversation on the 14th. The Minister denies that he had any intention of intimidating me or that he had intimidated me, and he furthermore expresses surprise that I had reported our conversation to my Government because he was speaking to me as Mr. Grew and not as the American Ambassador. I tell the Minister that in my report I had used the term “bellicose” as applying to the tone and substance of what he had said to me and I thereupon repeat the pertinent remarks which he had made to me which I had been led to characterize as having “grave and far-reaching implications”. The Minister does not question the accuracy of my report but [Page 237] says smilingly that while his words may have been bellicose, his heart and thoughts are peaceful.
I make clear to the Minister the fact that one of my primary duties in Japan is to ascertain correctly and to report to my Government the policy of the Japanese Government, just as Admiral Nomura is doing the same thing in Washington with respect to the policy of the American Government, and that he, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, is the only official channel through which I can learn that policy. When therefore he discusses policy with me even as Mr. Grew and not as the American Ambassador, I am still in duty bound to report his views to my Government because he speaks for the Japanese Government. The Minister disagrees on this subject of reporting but he still confirms his views as expressed to me on May 14. In the course of the two-hour conversation I speak of America’s inalienable right of self-defense and of the applications of international law to the freedom of the seas and I express the view that if Japan really desires peace with the United States our own measures of self-defense could not possibly be interpreted as acts of aggression. I also read to the Minister the entire text of Mr. Hull’s address of April 24 before the American Society of International Law. Mr. Matsuoka listens carefully, nodding his head in comprehension of each point; he calls it a very fine and clear presentation of the American point of view but observes that there are other viewpoints and that it seems to him that we Americans are unable to put ourselves in the place of the other parties concerned. I reply that we must be guided by facts and actions which have rendered the position and attitudes of the other parties perfectly clear.
The foregoing is merely a discursive account of some of the principal points which emerged in the two conversations and exchange of letters with Mr. Matsuoka. While reluctant to take advantage of remarks and private letters addressed to me as an American friend rather than as the American Ambassador, I am firmly of the opinion that all of these exchanges, however unorthodox, which arose from my first interview with the Foreign Minister at the Foreign Office after his long absence from Japan, can only be regarded in an official light and must be placed on the official record and regarded by our Government in that light. The question as to whether the expressed views of Mr. Matsuoka represent the views of the Japanese Government as a whole has been and will continue to be dealt with in other communications to the Department.
In this general connection it may not be out of place to add that my personal relations with Mr. Matsuoka are of the best, that I rate him among my personal friends in Japan, that I enjoy his directness, or at least his ostensible directness, in our contacts, and that our discussions, even when unduly strong expressions are used and sometimes [Page 238] expressions of a nature which require me to take emphatic official exception, are conducted with a minimum of heat with sometimes a freedom of give and take surprising in exchanges between a Foreign Minister and an Ambassador. Expressions which might be interpreted as openly insulting to one’s own country, such for instance as his use of the phrase “The manly, decent and reasonable thing to do”, are uttered with an unstudied naiveté and a willingness to withdraw such utterances if challenged that leave no rancor afterwards. On the point of Mr. Matsuoka’s intellectual and political honesty I am reluctant to express a doubt. In the political manoeuvring that constantly goes on in Tokyo he is sometimes quoted as saying one thing in one quarter while making a totally divergent statement in another quarter. He talks so flowingly and freely, by the hour if time affords, that it is inconceivable that he should never make conflicting statements. I however incline to the opinion that in his talks with me he follows the carefully studied policy of painting the darkest picture of what will happen if the United States gets into war against Germany, probably in the mistaken belief that such tactics may serve to exert a restraining influence on American policy.
Soon after Mr. Matsuoka took office he indicated that his platform would be that the United States could and should be intimidated into adopting an attitude of complete isolation with regard to both the Far East and Europe. That platform was implemented by the Three Power Alliance, which action not only failed to have the desired effect but was one of the major factors in stimulating the trend of American opinion away from isolationism. It would seem that, despite the egregious failure of that attempt, Mr. Matsuoka would prefer to persist in a course fraught with the gravest dangers than to chart a new course which would constitute admission on his part that he had completely misread the character and temper of the American people, and which would inevitably make his position as Foreign Minister untenable.
Respectfully yours,