Word: tokyo
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Ambassador to Japan Joseph Clark Grew is such a skillful diplomat that every time he criticizes the Japanese, they like him better. He has virtually all the qualities which a foreign emissary to Tokyo needs: seven years' residence in the country, tall body, grey hair, dark mustache, spectacular brows, horn-rimmed glasses, sensitivity, firmness, a gentlemanly capacity for hard work and saki (rice wine), good clothes, a beautiful house filled with Oriental antiques, and one deaf ear, which he knows how to turn at the right moment...
Whenever a U. S. Ambassador arrives in Tokyo, whether for the first time or after home leave, he is tendered a dinner of welcome by the America-Japan Society, a frequent sounding board for the two countries' relationships. Five years ago Ambassador Grew returned to Tokyo after a furlough. The America-Japan Society's welcoming speech was made by suave, old Viscount Kikujiro Ishii, one of Japan's most subtle diplomats, then Privy Councilor. Viscount Ishii amazed everyone by saying that a war between Japan and the U. S. was remote unless "the U. S. ever attempted...
Last week Ambassador Grew was again back in Tokyo after four months at home. The America-Japan Society again gave the usual dinner. This time Joseph Grew made a speech which was not only unusual: it was virtually unprecedented in ambassadorial usage. The Ambassador gave his distinguished audience an earful which made many of them wish for deafness. He used an unofficial occasion to express an official, definitely controversial, exceedingly ticklish point of view. His words, he said, "came straight from the horse's mouth . . . and mind you, I know whereof I speak...
Officials most badly wounded were General Shirakawa, who later died, Ambassador Shigemitsu who had to have his leg amputated in the succeeding weeks, the last time by the Emperor's personal surgeon sent from Tokyo, and Admiral Nomura, whose eye was peppered with steel splinters, later had to have it removed. Others on the platform came away with painful injuries and cuts, but none was permanently disabled...
Altogether it was an unrelieved week of lost face for the Japanese. A spokesman in Tokyo admitted that the fighting against Russia on the Mongolian border, terminated by a surprise truce on Sept. 16, had been climaxed by a "disastrous, bitter battle." Soviet forces both numerically and mechanically superior to the Japanese had engaged them on the barren Holumbar Plain, devoid of cover of any kind, and whipped them. Admitted casualties: 18,000 killed, wounded, sick...