CO129-570-8 Sino-Japanese War- sinking of Chinese fishing boats by Japanese vessel 31-1-1938 - 22-12-1938 — Page 7

7

See (1) on 53838/10/37

See encl. to (97) on above.

Ve Lahmaweghe,

that come hand

See encl. 1 to (9).

A

See para. 29 of Report.

A

a submarine belonging to the Japanese Navy.

H.M. Ambassador was instructed to address

a strong protest to the Japanese Government, basing

our case on both humanitarian and legal grounds.

Their final reply to this has now been made. It

states that they regard the case as a Sino-Japanese

affair not concerning third powers, that the junks

opened fire first and that the vessel concerned

(which they allege was a minesweeper and not a

submarine) sank them in self-defence. They also

state that the vessel did the utmost to take such

steps to rescue survivors as circumstances permitted.

These statements are in flat contradiction

of the findings of the Commission and in view of the

evidence submitted to the latter they seem to me

to be quite untenable. It seems to be clear that

the junks in question were armed only with a few

cannon which, even if they were mounted at all (and

some were apparently kept in the hold!) were only

primitive cast-iron muzzle loading weapons. I can

hardly believe that armed in this way the junks would

ever attack a vessel of the Japanese navy and it seems

to me to be sheer hypocrisy to maintain that they did

So. It is also stated in the report that in one

case machine gun fire was opened on the refugees

from one of the junks after they had taken their

sampans and that women and small children were among

those killed (as well as those killed in the junks

themselves).

In these circumstances it seems to me that

we should refuse to accept the Japanese note as an

adequate