740.0011 P. W./422
Memorandum by Mr. Cecil W. Gray, Assistant to the Secretary of State
In a telephone conversation today between Acting Secretary Welles and Mr. Hull at White Sulphur Springs, Mr. Welles read to the Secretary the latest and most important telegrams from Mr. Grew at Tokyo. Following this Mr. Welles said that he was seeing Admiral Nomura this afternoon64 and in connection with what Mr. Welles should say to the Ambassador, Secretary Hull commented somewhat as follows:
I don’t know whether I said this to the President or to you or Hamilton the other day when we were talking about what we should and could say to the Japs as a last resort. We would be willing, if they would take the right course, to utilize our navy to help the Japs, in a way satisfactory to them, to protect themselves from Indochina. And I said, as we remarked a dozen times to Nomura, we would try to get Britain and the Netherlands and other interested countries to sign an agreement similar to the one we were talking about. I mentioned those things and our position of cooperation. The only thing we talked about for several months has included all kinds of protection to them locally and generally as well.
My view is that Nomura sent them the President’s proposal and the Ministers there have held it up. I think myself that about ten days ago the military crowd got the upper hand and pushed the others into this Indochina venture, which is a movement towards conquest and force and away from the one course which we have been discussing. These other things, if true, are just by-plays on their part. Can they now seriously turn to us and talk about an agreement to help them out, as though they don’t know they need no protection from Indochina. We are making a mistake if we don’t look out for other developments instead of clinging too much to our discussions looking toward a settlement. The Japanese situation needs to be watched very closely. I would remind Nomura first, that the conversations we have had and the proposals that we have made have covered every imaginable kind of possibility of danger to Japan, especially from Indochina; that there were no possibilities to start with and it would be a great injustice for a Government like Japan seriously to profess that she is in danger from anyone in the Indochina area.
- See memorandum by the Acting Secretary of State, July 28, 1941, Foreign Relations, Japan. 1931–1941, vol. ii, p. 537.↩