KURUSU SENSITIVE

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 59, 7 September 1945, Page 8

KURUSU SENSITIVE

HURT AT BEING CALLED A DOUBLE-CROSSER

Rec. noon. TOKIO, September 6. Mr. Kurusu, the Japanese envoy who was conferring with the Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, told correspondents that he knew nothing about the Pearl Harbour attack before he left Tokio for the Washington negotiations. "The Foreign Minister, Mr. Togo, was more optimistic than I was about the chances of peace," he said. "I told him I thought things were very precarious in the Pacific, and I told Mr. Roosevelt the same thing. Admiral Nomura (Mr. Kurusu's fellow-delegate to Washington) was also ignorant of the Pearl Harbour plans." Asked if he and Admiral Nomura were not used by Mr. Togo to present a peace front, Mr. Kurusu said that Mr. Togo wanted peace, but of course the Japanese Government had many plans to coyer many possibilities, just as the American Government had. Japan decided to put the Pearl Harbour plan into effect, but could probably have called it off had he been successful in maintaining peace. "I worked hard for peace," he declared. "It hurts me to be called a treacherous double-crosser by the Americans. I have lost everything— my reputation, my home, and my son, who was shot down over Tokio. Let nobody think I like war." He added that he had not spoken to Mr. Togo since he had been repatriated. Mr. Kurusu is now spending his time in retirement, a short distance from Tokio, chopping wood and reading English Nineteenth Century history in French.