Office of the Historian

694.001/3–1751

Memorandum by the Consultant to the Secretary (Dulles) to the Director of the Bureau of German Affairs (Byroade)

secret
[Washington,] March 17, 1951.

Subject: Japanese Peace Treaty

I thank you for your memorandum of March 16th.1 I realize that due to different circumstances we are compelled to follow different procedures in relation to Japan and Germany and that these differences may possibly create difficulties for both of us. In the case of Germany, you are proceeding through a gradual relaxation of controls. In the case of Japan we are maintaining substantially all controls until the Peace Treaty is signed and when the Peace Treaty comes into effect they will then suddenly and totally disappear. The result is that up until the Peace Treaty becomes operative the Germans are getting freedoms greater than the Japanese, e.g., diplomatic representation. When the Japanese Peace Treaty comes into force, which will probably be nearly a year off, they may perhaps then have freedoms not yet granted to the Germans. I think we will have to accommodate ourselves to these differences as both of us are having enough difficulty without the almost insuperable added difficulty which would result if you could not do anything for the Germans unless we could do it at the same time for the Japanese, and vice versa.2

  1. Not printed. In it Mr. Byroade had outlined various difficulties which conclusion of a Japanese peace treaty might be expected to create in the U.S. relationship with Germany and with Western Europe as a whole. He had concluded: “While I am not recommending changes in the March 12 draft [not printed] of the Japanese Treaty, I want to point out that the differences between the approach to the problem of Japan and that to the problem of Germany will require careful treatment by the Department.” (694.001/3–1651) A copy of the March 12 draft is in Lot 54 D 423.↩
  2. The source text, which is both the original and the Department’s record copy, bears an unsigned, handwritten marginal note: “Mr. Byroade’s notation on a copy of this memo ‘This is fair enough B.’”↩