360 ONE WORLD : TWO WARS

ADMIRAL TOYODA'S PEACE OFFER

August 18, 1941

The Foreign Minister asked me to call this afternoon and we had
the longest conversation that I have ever had with any Foreign
Minister anywhere. It lasted for two and a half hours and the boys
in the Code Room finished encoding my report at 5,35 a.m., while
I myself was on the job until long after midnight.

Apropos this conversation, it was a fearfully hot day, and as I
wrote down his remarks, it was drip, drip, drip, so after the first
hour Admiral Toyoda ordered cold drinks and cold wet towels to
swab off with. He made a gesture to take off his coat and looked
at me smilingly and questioningly. Of course I nodded, so we both
took off our coats, rolled up our sleeves, and again pitched in to the
work. The Minister speaks English moderately well and under-
stands whatever I say without interpretation but he always has
Inagaki, of the American Bureau of the Foreign Office, present to
interpret his own remarks after he gets to the " on-the-record " stage.

To-day the talk was so important that I wrote down everything
he said, about a dozen pages of foolscap, and I almost had writer's
cramp at the end. He is a sympathetic and very human type and
I think I like him more than any other Foreign Minister I have ever
d«alt with. Our personal relationship is very friendly. To-day,
while we were swabbing off with the cold towels, I said : " Admiral,
you have often stood on the bridge of a battleship and have seen
bad storms which lasted for several days, but ever since you took
over the bridge of the Foreign Office you have undergone one long,
continuous storm without any rest. You and I will have to pour
some oil on those angry waves." The Minister laughed heartily
and I guess he will relate that remark in cabinet, but he missed the
opportunity to say : "All right, but if you stop sending us the oil,
what are we going to do about it ? "

Our conversation began at four o'clock this afternoon and in an oral
statement which took two hours and a half to be delivered, inter-
preted from Japanese into English and transcribed by me, Admiral
Toyoda set forth a proposal of prime importance for solving the
present critical situation between Japan and the United States. He
pointed out the supreme importance of avoiding any leakage, especi-
ally, he said, to the Germans or Italians, and he hoped that in my
report to Washington no risk would be incurred of my telegram
being read by others. I said that the telegram would be sent in a
code which I hoped and believed was unbreakable : I said that so
far as I was concerned the only persons who would be informed
of the proposal would be Mr. Dooman and my confidential secretary,
Miss Arnold, who would transcribe the conversation. The Minister
seemed to be entirely satisfied with these assurances. . . .

Minister commenced by stating that this was to be a long