ABSTRACT
The previous chapter discussed U.S.–Japanese negotiations on exchanging
officials and how the specific terms and phrases used impacted exchanges of non-
officials. On 30 December 1941, the Japanese government issued Memorandum
42, which outlined its basic proposals for conducting future U.S.–Japanese
exchanges of government officials.1 For the first time, Tokyo also included
among those groups its list of preferred categories of Japanese non-officials. One
category was journalists. This was specifically mentioned in the 1929 Geneva
Convention. But other categories included regular citizens, among them “treaty
merchants,” “scholars,” and “students.” The very nature of these categories in late
1941 meant that they would be mainly, if not completely, educated males, and
probably from the samurai-or formerly noble-class. A high proportion of these
would be qualified either to bear arms on behalf of Japan, or to work in the
civilian sectors of the Japanese war effort. On the U.S. side, its top choices
included teachers, missionaries, women, and children, with the latter two groups
being given top priority for an earlier return; such people could have relatively
little impact on the U.S war effort.
