Word: matsuoka
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...years when he used to confuse fellow delegates to the late League of Nations with such phrases as "China is not a nation," talkative, persuasive Yosuke Matsuoka shuttled comfortably back & forth between Japan and Europe by boat. Last week there was little comfort to be had traveling anywhere in the Eastern Hemisphere, and a boat trip from Japan to Europe was hazardous and well-nigh impossible. For his much-publicized trip to Berlin, Japan's Foreign Minister chose the creaky, dirty, uncomfortable Trans-Siberian Railroad, and he let it be assumed that he would stop en route in Moscow...
This narrowed the speculation about the Foreign Minister's trip to the question of what was being planned for Berlin. In Berlin and in Rome the newspapers were full of vague portents as to Japan's part in the coming grand offensive (see col. 2). Yosuke Matsuoka chose to treat his trip more as a holiday. On his first day out of Tokyo, at Yamada, he walked down the street to a barbershop and had his hair trimmed around the neck and ears. Later he met reporters and told them that he had given up wearing his hair...
Rattling on, Yosuke Matsuoka told the reporters everything about his trip except the things they wanted to know. "I have been through a whirlwind of official duties. Now I have some leisure and I am taking this trip to Europe. . . . Hitler must be desiring to see this face of mine, though it is an uninteresting one. ... I must return as soon as possible, as the Japanese nation seems to be looking forward to what presents I will bring back...
With Great Britain and Greece, as well as pro-British Turkey and wavering Yugoslavia, taking heart from the passage of the Lend-Lease Bill, it looked as if Yosuke Matsuoka's trip would be a race between German power politics and time. If Germany could outmaneuver Britain and prevent the formation of a four-power front in the Balkans, then the demands on Japan might be limited to expressions of amity. But if things went badly for Germany in Europe, Japan might be called on to create a diversion for the U. S. in the Pacific. And that...
Stubborn Greece and friendly Spain still remain between Hitler and the united Europe he wants. In the Hitlerian timetable their fate was probably due to be settled before Yosuke Matsuoka gets back to Tokyo. His round trip will take at least a month. Last week Germans were told to make no railway trips which are not urgent during April, and Labor Minister Dr. Robert Ley ordered factories to give no holidays between April...