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• UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

The following information and suggestions are furnished in response to your telephone request this morning.

1.

I would suggest adding to the present draft, Article 2, paragraph (f), quoted below, the words which are underscored:


 * (f) Japan renounces all right, title and claim to Spratly Island and the Paracel Islands,

As you will recall, there has been confusion regarding the islands to which the name "Paracel Islands" applies. The ones in question comprise two small groups, and outliers, roughly 120 to 200 nautical miles southeast of Hainan Island (Kwangtung province, China). The two groups are the Amphitrite Group and the Crescent Group. The Paracels have sometimes been confused with the Shonan Islands, to which Spratly (Storm) Island belongs, near the large area known as "Dangerous Ground"—west of Palawan, in the Philippines—and also with "Rasa" or Okino Daito, in the Daito Islands, east of the southern Ryukyus (see Article 3 of the present draft treaty). All of these except "Rasa" are in the South China Sea.

The Paracel Islands in question are reported to have been claimed by China in 1909, by France in 1932, and by Japan in 1933. For convenient reference there is attached a copy of an article by Dr. J. Kunst, which appeared in the Japan Times, Tokyo, August 27, 1933 (here copied from an earlier typewritten copy, with an unexplained attribution of the last two paragraphs to the at the very end).

Amt____ Rev_____ Cat_____ 2.

The Liancourt Rocks (Takeshima) were among the islands to which, in a 1949 draft treaty, Japan would have renounced claim to Korea. In a Japanese Foreign Office publication, entitled "Minor Islands Adjacent to Japan Proper", Part IV, June 1947, Liancourt Rocks are included. It may therefore be advisable to name them specifically in the draft treaty, in some such form as the following (Article 2):


 * (a) Japan, recognizing the independence of Korea, renounces all right, title and claim to Korea, including the islands of Quelpart, Port Hamilton and, Dagelet,.

RG 59, Records of the State, Decimal File 1950-54, 694.001 Series