INDO-CHINA MOVES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 134, 3 December 1941, Page 10

INDO-CHINA MOVES

EXPLANATION ASKED

DIRECTION OF PRESIDENT

(Rec. 2 p.m.) WASHINGTON, December 2. A State Department official announced that President Roosevelt had directed Mr. Sumner Welles, the Under-Secretary of State, to ask the Japanese Government for an explanation of military moves into Indo-China and towards Thailand. Mr. Kurusu and Admiral Nomura, after an hour's conference with Mr. Sumner Welles, were asked for a statement. Admiral Nomura said: "We aren't in a position to disclose anything. He talked, we listened." A Tokio message says that the Washington correspondent of the "Asahi Shimbun" asserted that the closing of the Japanese consulates in the United States was imminent/ This is the first public reference to such an action, although . wellinformed foreign circles have predicted the step. BOMBING BURMA ROAD. The United Press reports from Shanghai that Colonel Akiyama, the Japanese military spokesman, declared that Japan would continue to bomb the Burma Road whenever the weather conditions permitted. The, recent bombing was in accordance with longstanding policy, and was not made because of a change in the Pacific situation. Colonel Akiyama said that the Japanese were taking precautions on the Indo-China side of the Thailand border because the frontier was not clearly delineated. Japan had not considered taking over Shanghai, he said. Japan is commandeering all private shipping for the transport of military supplies and troops.