Sep 17, 2009 - Sale 2186

Sale 2186 - Lot 236

Price Realized: $ 3,120
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
FDR IS WARNED ABOUT THE JAPANESE (WORLD WAR II.) Diplomatic archive of Joseph C. Grew, Ambassador to Japan. 6 letters received by Grew, various sizes, no substantial condition issues. Washington, DC, 1935-48
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Joseph Clark Grew (1880-1965) served as United States Ambassador to Japan from 1932 to 1941, and later as Under Secretary of State through 1945. He was the State Department's leading Japan expert during World War II. This archive consists of 4 Letters Signed from Secretary of State Cordell Hull to Grew in the years just before the war, and two other important letters received by Grew.
On 21 January 1935, Hull responded to Grew's important memorandum, "The Importance of American Naval Preparedness in Connection with the Situation in the Far East." Hull wrote that "I have brought the despatch to the attention of the President and I expect to make discreet use of it in seeing that leaders of the Administration have a sound understanding of the situation in Japan.'" Grew's memorandum was one of the first warnings the Roosevelt administration had of the Japanese threat, almost seven years before Pearl Harbor.
Another interesting Hull letter dated 9 November 1939 thanked Grew for an important address he had just delivered to a Tokyo audience, warning Japan of possible reprisals for its aggression in China. Hull wrote to express "my entire approval and that we feel that you handled exceedingly well a task requiring the utmost delicacy." Also included are letters from Hull dated 1938 and 1940 concerning trade agreements.
On 19 September 1942, Grew received a letter from Manuel Quezon, president-in-exile of the Philippines. Quezon wrote: "When I arrived in America . . . I was strongly tempted to say what you have said, namely, that while Germany might crack, Japan never will; that Japan can be defeated but cannot be forced to surrender, and to defeat Japan she must be destroyed . . . The truth alone will arouse the American people to the point where their might will be effectively felt by Japan and save not alone the Filipinos from the invader's iron rule but the whole Asiatic world and, who knows, perhaps the American Continent."
The archive also includes one important post-war letter to Grew from Under Secretary of State Robert A. Lovett, 28 December 1948, relating to the Alger Hiss spy trial and the release of the confidential diplomatic documents during the trial. Lovett wrote "I fully agree with you that the practice is a most dangerous one and apt to restrict or shut off altogether the type of exchange of information on which so much of our foreign policy making must depend. We are, however, caught between the horns of a dilemma in that the documents themselves have become a matter of controversy between the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Department of Justice."