BEFORE PEARL HARBOUR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 277, 23 November 1943, Page 5

BEFORE PEARL HARBOUR

JAP FORTIFICATIONS IN MANDATED ISLANDS (Recd. 9 p.m.) Washington, Nov. 21. How the United States five years before Pearl Harbour unsuccessfully tried to learn whether Japan had fortified mandated islands was revealed by a State Department publication dealing with American and Japanese relations in 1931/32. The United States had long permitted two Japanese ships to enter closed ports in Alaska and the Aleutians to allay any Japanese suspicion that tne ports might have been fortified, in violation of the Washington Naval Treaty. When Ambassador Grew in 1936 requested permission far American destroyers to visit closed Japanese mandated ports the Japanese Foreign Office did not answer this or subsequent requests. Finally the State Department dropped the effort, informing Japan that the Japanese training ship Shinoto Komaru, ihr-n cruising in American waters, would bo forbidden to enter any Hawaiian port not listed as a nort of entry.