Peace with Japan

Report Outline
Coming Conference on Japanese Treaty
Changes in Japan Under Allied Occupation
Peace Terms and Future Position of Japan
Special Focus

Coming Conference on Japanese Treaty

American Proposals for Eleven-Nation Conference

Although Moscow has taken exception to proposals advanced by the United States for drafting a peace treaty for Japan, it is indicated that a conference nevertheless will be called within a few months to start work on a final Japanese settlement. All of the other nations primarily interested are in general agreement with the procedure suggested by this country. Soviet refusal to participate would create certain problems and might have disturbing consequences, but it probably would not prevent the other powers from going ahead.

The United States made the initial move on July 11, 1947, when State Department officials presented the American proposals at a meeting in Washington of diplomatic representatives of the nations principally concerned in a Japanese settlement. This government proposed that the 11 states represented on the Far Eastern Commission convoke a conference “as soon as practicable,” outside of the Far Eastern Commission, to draft a peace treaty for submission to a general conference of all states that had declared war on Japan. In view of existing commitments of the foreign ministers, the United States proposed that the preliminary conference be composed initially of deputies and experts. It suggested Aug. 19 as a tentative date and Washington or San Francisco as a site for the meeting.

On July 22 the Soviet government accused the United States of acting “in a unilateral manner” and declared that the question of calling a Japanese peace conference must be “provisionally examined” by the American, British, Chinese, and Russian members of the Council of Foreign Ministers. Secretary of State Marshall, replying to the Soviet note on Aug. 12, denied that reference of the question to the Council of Foreign Ministers was mandatory. He held, on the contrary, that the special interest of other Pacific powers in the Japanese settlement required the members of the Council of Foreign Ministers to “recognize that a conference now to consider that settlement even provisionally should be larger in composition than the Council.”