THE ＧＬＯＢＡＬＩＺＡＴＩＯＮ ＆ ＧＯVＥＲＮＡＮＣＥ ＰＲＯＪＥCＴ， ＨＯＫＫＡＩＤＯ ＵＮＩＶＥＲＳＩＴＹＷＯＲＫＩＮＧ ＰＡＰＥＲ ＳＥＲＩＥＳ

From the Mandates System to the Trusteeship System:
Legal and Political Case of the Japanese Mandated Islands
1944-1947
Ⅲ−０２Haruo Tohmatsu, Tamagawa University＊Paper for the Symposium, The Role of the United Nations in International

Politic - A Historical Re-examination from the Member States’ Perspectives-,
20-21 December 2003.
＊None of these papers should be cited without the author’s permission.

summary
From the Mandates System to theTrusteeship System
Legal and Political Case of the Japanese Mandated Islands 1944-1947
Haruo Tohmatsu (Tamagawa University)

In the period of transition from the League of Nations to the United Nations,many of the territories under the mandates system of the former were transferred tothe trusteeship system of the latter. The case of Japanese mandated islands ofMicronesia is of much academic interest, as it clearly revealed the interaction between
the idea of international accountability of colonial rule and power politics aspect of thepost Second World War international relations.
One may see a parallel between the Allies’ postwar planning for the colonialquestion, and the post-war settlement of the First World War regarding the dispositionof the colonies of the defeated. The mandates system was a compromise between theWilsonian idealism and conventional imperialism of the day. It saved the face ofWilson’s new diplomacy, while to some extent satisfying the victorious Powers’
territorial ambitions. In the disposition of the Japanese mandated islands, however,the compromise was made not between the confronting states, but rather between twodifferent schools of thought within the same country, the United States.
Pro-trusteeship opinion represented by the State Department and pro-annexation
advocates led by the US Navy and War Departments fought over the drawing up of
post-war arrangements for the captured mandated islands.
Under the initiative of the State Department, the post-war trusteeship wasoriginally supposed to become a scheme of a universal nature under the proposed
United Nations Organization, applicable to all the colonial possessions. Nevertheless,in the need for wartime cooperation between the Allies, the US had to makeconcessions to the friendly colonial Powers, excluding some of their colonial
possessions from the application of the trusteeship scheme. Also, with the experienceof hard-won battles in the Pacific islands, and seeing the omen of the Cold War in the
final stages of the war, the US official policy gradually shifted to the conventional styleof ‘balance of power’ politics. The former Japanese mandated islands were regarded asa territory vital to American interests and security in the post-war world, on which theUS was determined to put an exclusive control.
Through the continuous studies of the history of the mandated islands and theexamination of legal and political problem of problems it entailed, the US elaborated
the concept of strategic trusteeship during the war. The lesson from Japan’s struggle
for the retention of the mandate after its announcement of withdrawal from theLeague in 1933 was fully made use of in the drafting of the UN Charter regarding thestrategic trusteeship. One of the chief legal arguments that had emerged at the time ofJapan’s announcement of withdrawal from the League of Nations had been whether
Japan could retain the mandate without League membership. Although in the event it
was generally accepted that the League membership was not an indispensable part ofthe conditions to be a mandatory, the ambiguity concerning the two left a room for
dispute in the future. What if the US as a member of the UN held a trusteeship but
later decided to leave the organization for some reason? If UN membership was made anecessary condition of being trustee, might the US be obliged to surrender its trust
territory? This situation was something that the US was determined to avoid. While
Japan in 1933 endeavored to justify its mandatory status by the concept of ‘non-League
member state in collaborative relations with the League’, in 1945 the US tried to fix amore fundamental solution: the separation of trustee qualification and UNmembership.
In this connection, an interesting discussion took place in a UN committee during
the Allied San Francisco Conference of 1945. Two month before the termination of war
in the Pacific, on 15 June 1945, in the Committee II/4 (Trusteeship System) theEgyptian delegate proposed that provisions for the termination of trusteeship should
be made, suggesting that the UN Council should be provided with a power to remove
the trusteeship from a state withdrawing or being expelled from the UN. In thisargument the Egyptian referred to the Japanese case saying that ‘When Japanwithdrew from the League it not merely retained the mandate assigned to it, butdisregarded the obligation in respect to the mandate which it has assumed.’ This
proposal, however, was turned down, presumably by a pressure from the US delegate
on the ground that ‘the termination or transfer of a trusteeship without the consent of
the trustee power would be contrary to the voluntary basis upon which the trusteeshipproposal had been built.’ It was also mentioned that ‘[S]ome states might withdrew
from the [UN] Organization for respectable reasons, such as inability to accept someamendments to the Charter…’ As a result, in Chapter XII (International TrusteeshipSystem) and XIII (The Trusteeship Council) of the UN Charter, no word was inserted
that made UN membership a necessary condition of being a trustee state. The US wasthus successful in separating the UN membership and trustee qualification.
By the time of termination of conflict in the Pacific on 15 August 1945, the US
Navy controlled the key islands of the Japanese mandated islands. In the same monthPresident Truman designated the Secretary of the Navy as interim administrator ofthe islands. In October a high level committee was created which consisted of theSecretaries of State, War, and Interior in order to study the problems of futureadministration of the former Japanese mandated islands. On 15 January, during thefirst session of the UN General Assembly in London, James Byrnes, US Secretary ofState, made a statement that the US would place the mandated islands either underordinary trusteeship arrangements or as strategic areas. The US, needless to say,preferred the latter.
The basic difference between such strategic areas and other trusteeship areas iscontained in Article 83(1) of the UN Charter: ‘All functions of the United Nations
relating to strategic areas, including the approval of the terms of the trusteeshipagreements and of their alteration or amendment, shall be exercised by the Security
Council.’ On this Council, then consisting of eleven members, the US was permanently
represented with the power of veto. This was a firm guarantee for protecting Americaninterests in the mandated islands.
Still, as strategic areas would be under the aegis of the Security Council, it wasfeared that the US plans for the disposition of the mandated islands would beprevented from other Council members. The next step for the US therefore was to gain
approval of the member states including the Soviet Union. It was not so difficult for theUS to gain approval from Great Britain, France, and Nationalist China who were after
all heavily reliant on American economic aid after the war.
The Soviet Union, however, was a different matter. It has been opposing the US
on many occasions in formulating the terms of the trusteeship system in the UN
Charter. A different type of deal was necessary to appease the Soviets. Judging fromcircumstantial evidence, it was highly likely that Soviet acceptance of the US proposal
to place the former Japanese mandated islands under its strategic trusteeship was theresult of the secret agreement between US Secretary of State Byrnes and Soviet
Foreign Minister Molotov, in the Council of Foreign Ministers at Moscow in December
1945. In the talk Molotov insisted that each trusteeship agreement must be acceptable
to the ‘states directly concerned’, and that the Soviet Union, as one of the five
permanent members of the Security Council, should be regarded as such a state. Toavoid possible Soviet intervention in the trusteeship issue in the Pacific, Byrnes
suggested that in exchange for Soviet support for making the US-occupied Japanesemandated islands a US strategic trusteeship, the Soviets might keep for themselves
the Kuriles, as well as South Sakhalin. These Japanese territories had been seized bySoviet forces at the final stage of the war and were under Soviet occupation. Byrnes
was well aware of Soviet eagerness to get American endorsement of the ‘handing over’of the Kuriles to the Soviet Union at the future peace conference. Molotov, according toByrnes memoir, ‘quickly grasped the implication of [his] remark.’
As a result, in February 1946 it was publicly announced that Southern Sakhalin
and the Kuriles would be awarded to the Soviet Union as a part of the Yalta
Agreements. Thereafter the US proposal for putting the former Japanese mandated
islands under American strategic trusteeship did not meet any substantial oppositionin the Security Council, and only a few minor amendments were made. On 2 April 1947
the Security Council voted unanimously for approval and on 18 July of the same year
the US Congress approved it by joint resolution.
Various provisions were devised in the ‘Trust Agreement for the Former Japanese
Mandated Islands’ which would safeguard American strategic interests in the area.
For the first time the maintenance of ‘international peace and security’ wasincorporated in the general aims of the international trusteeship scheme. The Trust
Agreement enabled the US to take full advantage of the military exploitation of theterritory. And, above all, placing strategic trusteeship not under the jurisdiction of theGeneral Assembly of the UN, but under the Security Council, enabled the US to vetounfavourable decisions made against American rule of the trust territories. One may
see a parallel between the Security Council and the PAAP (Principal Allied andAssociated Powers), the residual concept of the Supreme Council of the victorious
Powers at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. However, as regards trusteeship, it wasdevised that ‘states directly concerned’ were to have the final say in the matter ofadministration of the territories, excluding the intervention from other Powers in theSecurity Council.
American maneuvers regarding the control of the Japanese mandated islands atthat time were often criticized as an act of ‘Security Imperialism’. However, the factthat the conquered Pacific islands had been under the League of Nations mandatessystem, not proper territory of Japan, together with the Allied principles declared in
the Atlantic Charter and the Cairo Declaration, deterred the US from annexing theJapanese mandated islands outright. In that sense, it may be argued that the idea of
mandate/trusteeship did play a certain role in denying the concept of the ‘right ofconquest’, although this may be too idealist a point of view. In the Cold War context theKuriles, counterpart of the mandated islands in terms of wartime Allied conquest ofJapanese territories, remained, and still remains in the hands of a conqueror, theSoviet Union and its successor state the Russian Republic.