761.94114/12–2249: Telegram
The Acting Political Adviser in Japan (Sebald) to the Secretary of State
582. Following is text of statement issued by General MacArthur to press at 3 p. m. today, Tokyo time:
“I have accepted the wise recommendation of the British Commonwealth member, made at yesterday’s meeting of the Allied Council, to seek the help of a neutral nation such as Switzerland, or of the International Red Cross, to gather the fullest possible details of the tragic fate of the 376,000 missing Japanese prisoners. To this end I am requesting the United States Govt to attempt to negotiate the necessary arrangements. I can well understand the reluctance of the Soviet member yesterday to listen to so gruesome and savage a story in all its harrowing barbarity. It could well chill and sicken even a hardened old soldier.
[Page 921]“The Soviet member has now given to the press a letter containing charges of oppression by the Japanese Govt. These moth-eaten charges have been so often made by the Soviets and so often irrefutably shown to be completely prejudiced, if not actually false, that their continued repetition could well be ignored under normal circumstances as merely blatant propaganda. But when, as at this moment, they are again taken from the shelf and freshly dusted off to act as a smoke screen to distract attention from the investigation of the dreadful fate of hundreds of thousands of Japanese prisoners probably dead on Soviet soil, they represent a callousness of hypocrisy I cannot fail to denounce.”