[Secret]
From: Washington (Nomura)
To: Tokyo
15 October 1941
(Purple)
#950
Chief
of Office routing.
Regarding
your #667*.
Tomorrow
afternoon (16th) Wakasugi is expected to confer with Welles. Yesterday (14th)
"O" is said to have conferred with the President and also with the
heads of the Far Eastern Affairs. (For your information).
The
Military Attaché here has been instructed by the headquarters in Tokyo to
advise us not to yield an inch in our stand regarding the question of the
evacuation of troops. They are apprehensive that we have not emphasized enough
our stand regarding it and urge us to lay special stress on this point.
It
goes without saying that we fully understand our country's stand regarding this
question and both Colonel Iwasa and I have repeatedly informed the other side
of this.
However,
when Wakasugi conferred with Welles on the 13th, he purposely did not go deeply
into the subject of the evacuation of troops because it happens to be one of
the three major questions which have been gone over many times before and the
purpose of the above conference was to clarify certain points in the United
States proposal in order to ascertain their intentions. You may be assured that
we do not intend to minimize the importance of this question nor to effect any
compromise.
At
tomorrow's conference we intend to bring up this question for discussion once
again.
Should
you have any inquiry from the Military regarding this matter please explain the
above in order to avoid any misunderstanding. I have already explained the
situation as stated above to Our Military Attaché.
23708
JD-1: 5935 (A) Navy Trans. 10-20-41 (7)
*JD-1: 5933 (S.I.S. #23706).
(EXHIBITS
OF JOINT COMMITTEE , EXHIBIT NO. 1 INTERCEPTED DIPLOMATIC MESSAGES SENT BY THE
JAPANESE GOVERNMENT BETWEEN JULY l AND DECEMBER 8, 1941)