Japan will not give up the islands north of the equator

The British chronology of the war records under 16 December 1914 that the Japanese Foreign Minister, Katō Takaaki, declared that Japan would not give up the German islands it had occupied north of the equator. A fortnight or so earlier London had given way to Tokyo on this matter and halted the Australian expedition to the Carolines and the Marianas. Now the Japanese government set out its position publicly, before its own parliament.

The opposition’s questions

It has not been possible to establish exactly which statement the chronology has in mind. The best documented are Katō’s answers to interpellations in the lower house of the Diet on 9 and 10 December, published in the parliamentary supplement to the official gazette and translated by the American embassy in Tokyo. News of them may have reached Europe a few days late.

The opposition accused the cabinet of Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu of tying its own hands with promises made to the Allies. A deputy named Matsuda recalled that when in October the Japanese fleet occupied the Jaluit atoll in the Marshall Islands, voices were raised in the United States that Japan was breaking its pledge to limit its operations. American newspapers then wrote that the Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, had received an assurance from Tokyo that the occupation was temporary and dictated solely by strategic considerations. Matsuda called such an undertaking humiliating for the country and demanded an explanation.

The minister’s reply

Katō replied briefly that he had never given the United States any guarantee concerning the South Sea islands. He also denied that Japan had promised Britain to return Kiautschou to China or had agreed to limit the area of its operations. He added that he had refused such an undertaking even when London had cited the anxiety of its dominions.

Of the islands themselves he said that their occupation had been a military move, regarding which no diplomatic steps had been taken. The occupation of German territories, as in the case of Britain, was temporary, and their fate would be decided by the peace conference. It sounded cautious, but it meant that Japan would hand the islands to no one before the end of the war and would come to the negotiations as their possessor.

The islands under Japanese administration

The minister’s words went hand in hand with deeds. On 28 December 1914 the navy set up the Provisional South Seas Defence Force (Rinji Nan’yō Guntō Bōbitai) on the islands under the command of Rear Admiral Matsumura Tatsuo. From headquarters on the Chuuk atoll it controlled garrisons on Saipan, Palau, Pohnpei and Jaluit, and later also on Yap. The Japanese began to administer the islands as their own colony.

In February 1917 Britain undertook in a secret agreement to support Japan’s claims to the islands, and after the war they became a League of Nations mandate administered by Tokyo. Katō did not live to see this as minister. He left the government in August 1915, but in 1924–1926 he was Prime Minister of Japan.