Korean War Looms

CANADIAN LIASON MISSION

TOKYO April 26, 1950.
SECRET

Mr. Arthur Menzies,
Head of the
American and Far Eastern Division,
Department of External Affairs,
OTTAWA, Canada.

Dear Mr. Menzies:

In reply to the request you made in your letter of April 11, regarding the interest of our Joint Intelligence Bureau in China’s three-year economic plan, I have just seen Mr. Gordon Walker of the Christian Science Monitor this morning and asked him about the article in question.

2. Mr. Walker told me that he would like very much to inform me of the source but that, in this case, he was strictly enjoined not to reveal it. [...] However, he was very willing to discuss other matters which I think are of interest both to the Department and the J.I.B., so I shall take this opportunity to put down the substance of his information.

3. Mr. Walker said that General Wu Te-chen, accompanied by General Chu Shih-ming, head of the Chinese Mission in Tokyo, had recently been in Korea attempting again to secure from President Rhee the use of air bases in South Korea, and especially on the island of Chejudo, for the bombing of Northern China and Manchuria. This has long been a pet scheme of Generalissimo Chiang and Mr. Rhee would be only too glad to cooperate. However, the [U.S.] State Department, as represented by Ambassador Muccio in Seoul, is opposed to this and regards it as much too explosive. Rhee, in his last visit to Tokyo, attempted to get some support for it from GHQ here but was turned down on the highest level. In his press interview, he made what might have been a deliberate indiscretion when he admitted that he would welcome the outbreak of hostilities with North Korea as he was quite sure that he was strong enough to defeat them. It is this rather trigger-happy attitude of Mr. Rhee which is causing considerable alarm in the State Department. [...] However, [...] the recent talks between Kuomintang leaders and Mr. Rhee may have given rise to rumours that some kind of military agreement was finally reached. Because these rumours were becoming quite strong, Mr. Rhee found it necessary to issue a denial, which appeared in this morning’s Nippon Times (clipping enclosed), giving assurance that no military alliance with China was being contemplated.

It is against this background of tension between President Rhee and the State Department that we must appraise the coming elections in Korea scheduled for May 30. Mr. Walker informs me that the State Department would like to see Rhee and his party defeated and replaced by the present leader of the opposition in the Assembly, Mr. Kim Sung-soo. [...] As in the last election, Mr. Walker anticipates that there will be much violence and terror in the coming one.

The Chinese Mission here has been under considerable criticism from the Nationalist leaders in Taipei. Recently Mr. Fang Chi of the C.C. clique, at one time head of the Kuomintang in Chungking and later in Shanghai, and regarded as one of the Generalissimo’s [Chiang Kai-shek] chief trouble-shooters, with the nom de guerre of “the Bullet”, arrived briefly in Japan, against every effort of General Chu Shih-ming to block his entry, in order to deliver some rather strong rebukes to General Chu. General Chu, the head of the Chinese Mission, has apparently been in the Generalissimo’s bad books for some time, probably from the bungling of the matter of securing Japanese pilots for the Nationalist air force [...]

General Chu, however, is a former pupil of General Willoughby, G-2 of GHQ, and, for that reason, has some considerable “face” in Tokyo. [...]

Yours sincerely,

[signed E. H. Norman]
E. H. Norman,
Head of Canadian Liaison Mission
in Japan.