SECRET UK EYES ONLY
18. The Chinese Government immediately protested against the 1933 annexation (see para 29). The British Government pursued a tortuous policy on the question because of their connexions with Spratly Island and Amboyna Cay, since the Law Officers had stated in 1932 that the British claim to sovereignty "was of so doubtful a nature that it could only be laid before the Permanent Court of International Justice with a faint prospect of success" (see paras 39-47). Both the French and British Governments however, protested against Japanese annexation in March 1939 (see para 22). France had made a proposal for mediation on the question in February. This was refused, although the Japanese Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs said that the annexation did not imply interference with French nationals on the islands. French nationals have not, it appears, lived on the islands since the 1930's (and the extent to which they did then is not known here one diplomatic agent at least was landed on the islands).
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19. The French Government has not abandoned the French claim to the islands. They informed the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs in June 1956 that France claimed the Spratly Islands by right of occupation in 1932-1933. She had ceded the Paracel group of islands to the Republic of Vietnam but not the Spratlys. The British Ambassador reported from Paris in September that year that the French legal advisers were studying the question of whether the islands were technically French property or only under French protection (it was assumed that the islands came under French jurisdiction). When the subject was discussed between the British and French at the Quai d'Orsay in November 1971, the French Sous Directeur stated it was unlikely that France would abandon her claim because of the trouble this would cause amongst other claimants.
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20. Japan. Since Japan signed the peace treaty of 1951 in which she renounced "all right, title and claim to the Spratly Islands it would appear that she has no present claim to the islands.
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21. The main history of Japan's physical occupation of the islands to the end of the 1930's is given in para 8. In the report submitted from HMS Dampier following a visit to Itu Aba in 1951 it was stated that few traces of Japanese occupation could be found: "It seems doubtful that they occupied the island for long".
22. The only way the Japanese might claim the islands is by their stating that the Spratly Islands referred to in the 1951 treaty were not precisely equivalent to the area of Shinnan Gunto as laid down by them on 30 March 1939 in the official gazette (see map 1 and also paras 32, 35, 37, 48), which included all islands enclosed within a line joining the following points:
Lat 12°N
D
Long 117°E
9030'N
10 1170E
6
SECRET UK EYES ONLY
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