The following is a translation of a Top Secret cipher telegram dated 19 November 1941 from Tokyo about the Japanese intention to occupy Thailand if negotiations with the United States do not lead to the results desired by Japan. Many redactions were made during the declassification process, most notably approximately the first two thirds of the telegram text. In addition, the source of the information was redacted during the declassification process, as was the pseudonym of the Soviet agent who filed the cable itself.
TOP SECRET
CIPHER TELEGRAM No. 8163
Received 20 November 1941 at 10:00 Deciphered 21 November 1941 at 00:10
TO ████████████
███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ from reliable Japanese sources we know that, should the discussions between Japan and the US do not provide desirable results, Japan will occupy Thailand. All of the military preparations for this action have already been completed. The new Japanese supreme commander has been sent to Indochina. They will not delay the resolution of this issue. The Japanese feel that no one will threaten them now from the north, and the US is hardly likely to start a war in the Pacific because of Thailand. According to the Japanese sources ██████████ is known that Japan will finally decide to create “spheres of co-prosperity” this year, but will launch from the south instead of the north. Even with the most unexpected turns, Japan will not act against the USSR before spring. Touching on [his] mission, Kurusu expressed the same point of view ███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
17 November 1941 No. 173
Translation © 2025 by Michael Estes and TranslatingHistory.org
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