Japan Expresses Regret

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 212, 23 September 1937, Page 5

Japan Expresses Regret

(British Official Wireless.)

NOTE TO BRITAIN Attack on Ambassador to China INCIDENT NOW CLOSED

(Received 23, 12.45 p.m.) RUGBY, Sept. 22. The texts are issued of the Note from the Japanese Government on . the wounding of the British Ambassador to China, Sir Hughe KnatchbullHugessen, and of the British reply. The Japanese Note admits that on the afternoon of August 26 two Japanese planes machine-gunned and bombed two motor-cars which, it is stated, they believed to be military buses or trucks carrying officers or soldiers of the Chinese army at a certain point southeast of Kaiting, between Shanghai and Nanking. This point, the Note says, differs from the one at which the attack on the British party took place according to the evidence of those accompahying th.e Ambassador, but the Note points out the discrepancy in the variou3 reports as to the position at which the iiicident occurred and says: "In the light of all theso circumstances tho Japanese Government considers that the incident may have been caused by Japanese planes which mistook the Ambassador 's motor for a military bus or truck. As the- wounding of the Ambassador may thus have been due to the action, however involuntary, of Japanese aircraft, the Japanese Government desires to convey to His Brittanic Majesty's Government a formal ' expression of deep regret. "As stated in the interim Note of September 6, instructions have been sent again to the Japanese forces in China to exercise the greatest care in safeguarding non-combatants, it being the desire and policy of tho Japanese Government to limit as far as possible the dangers to non-com-batants resulting from the existenco of hostilities in China." The British reply, which has been handed to the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, says that the Government received the Japanese Note with satisfaction and regards the incident as closed.