Cablegram ACJ16 TOKYO, 30 May 1946, 3.30 p.m.
SECRET IMMEDIATE
Yesterday’s Council meeting showed marked progress on [previous meeting in so far as it was first occasion on which] [1] MacArthur had asked the Council’s advice. Atcheson indicated a number of new questions on which MacArthur intends to ask the Council’s advice in future. He also listed a number of staff studies now being made as preliminaries to projected directives. These gestures may be regarded as a general satisfactory response by S.C.A.P. to the request made at the fourth meeting by other members that S.C.A.P.
should take them more fully into his confidence and give earlier information about projected directives.
On the other hand, Derevyanko showed strong dissatisfaction at yesterday’s meeting particularly with the Council’s refusal to support his project to establish a joint Council of S.C.A.P. to investigate charges in the May Day manifesto. [2]
I feel that there are good grounds for Derevyanko’s scepticism about some of S.C.A.P. claims to success in occupation policy. Yet he tends to make charges in such nebulous forms and to advocate their investigation by such impracticable methods that it is rarely possible to support his criticisms or recommendations in the form in which he makes them.
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1 Material in square brackets has been inserted from the Tokyo version on file AA:A5104/2, 1/3/2.
2 See Document 248.
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[AA:A1067, P46/10/33/17]