[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)