394.115 Panay/160a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Grew)
358. On December 17 the Japanese Ambassador called upon me at his own request88 and said that according to reports reaching his Government neither the Panay nor any of its survivors were fired upon by Japanese military boats with machine guns. He had no particular facts to cite and before he was finished I stated that there was evidently no question about the fact that the Panay had been fired upon by two of such military motor boats and had then been boarded by some of their crew and that we have incontrovertible proof of this.
I observed that if American Navy and Army officials were to act as the Japanese had acted our Government would speedily court-martial them and I inquired whether the Japanese Government would take charge and deal with this military situation or whether it would not; that I made this inquiry in the interest of all concerned.
The Ambassador then asserted that the Japanese naval authorities at Shanghai had undertaken to correct the statement made to me some days ago by the Ambassador to the effect that the whereabouts of the Panay had been notified in advance to the appropriate Japanese. [Page 510] naval and military authorities; that as a matter of fact the latter did not receive such notification on the occasion of this trip of the Panay up the river. I replied that it must have been difficult in the first place for the appropriate Japanese authorities to be ignorant of the fact that the Panay had left its position from in front of Nanking and had retired some distance up the river; in any case according to my recollection American officials on the Panay and at Nanking had at all times sought to make known the vessel’s movements to the appropriate Japanese authorities at Shanghai, Nanking and Tokyo.
I concluded by again expressing astonishment at the occurrence.
- For memorandum of conversation, see Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 529.↩