711.94/25409/35
Memorandum of a Conversation
Mr. Wakasugi called at his request. Mr. Wakasugi referred to the President’s statement to the Ambassador that the President would be glad to receive Mr. Kurusu and stated that the Embassy had received a telegram from Mr. Kurusu dispatched from Midway stating that he was arriving in Washington Saturday afternoon.54
Mr. Wakasugi referred to his statement yesterday to the Secretary that there had been a misunderstanding on our part as to what Wakasugi had said to the Under Secretary on October 13 to which reference was made in the oral statement handed the Japanese Ambassador [Page 730] yesterday. He said that what he had said to Mr. Welles was: “There may be some unfortunate phraseology in the English translation of our instructions as we are not very sure of our English. If there are such phrases the wording might be adjusted.” He said that he had the September 25 document in mind and not the document of August 28 which was delivered while he was away in Japan. He said that the Japanese Embassy had referred the contents of that memorandum to the Japanese Government, deleting therefrom the last four lines on page 3 and the first sentence beginning on page 4 through the word “office” and the last two words in line 4 and all of line 5.
The Minister tried to impress upon Mr. Ballantine the pressing nature of the situation in Japan as the public is becoming impatient and almost desperate. The parliament is meeting Saturday and they hope for some concrete understanding with the United States at once. He said he understood yesterday that we were to give them an answer tomorrow. Mr. Ballantine said that the Secretary had not said this, that what he had said was that we hoped to be in a position to have ready to take up with them some further matters tomorrow. Mr. Wakasugi said he hoped that the Secretary could give the Ambassador tomorrow a clear-cut answer in black and white as to whether the United States Government will accept or not the Japanese proposal of September 25 as modified by their proposals of November 7 and November 10 or whether we want to have some points changed therein or whether our June 21 proposal is our final proposal. He said that time is so pressing that the Japanese wanted to avoid any further interchange of comments on their proposals. Mr. Ballantine said, what are we going to do if we need further clarification as to the intent of your proposals? He referred to the fact that the Secretary had said yesterday that he did not understand what was meant by the latter part of the Japanese proposal in regard to commercial policy. Mr. Wakasugi said that what the Japanese Government meant by saying that they would agree to non-discrimination as applied to China provided that it will be made applicable to all the world was that the principle would be applied by the United States and by Japan and did not refer to the universal application of those principles by all countries. Mr. Ballantine asked whether this was not a very important point to be brought out clearly and authoritatively.
Mr. Wakasugi then said that in all of our documents we had stated that we were still in a stage of informal exploratory discussions whereas the Japanese Government considered that we had now entered formal negotiations especially since, on November 10, the [Page 731] Ambassador had formally presented as under instruction a statement to the President. Mr. Ballantine said that Mr. Wakasugi was fully aware of our position as mentioned again by the Secretary yesterday, that we felt that when our talks had reached a stage where we had something of substance to discuss with China and the other governments concerned we expected to talk with them and then come back to the Japanese, and that then only would a stage of negotiations be reached. Mr. Wakasugi did not seem to be disposed to argue any of these points with Mr. Ballantine but simply asked that they be referred to the Secretary.
- November 15, 1941.↩