FOREIGN RELATIONS: Secret of the Kurils

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State Secretary James F. Byrnes finally confirmed an old rumor. Meeting at Yalta. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had secretly agreed to pay Russia's asking price for eventually fighting Japan—outright annexation of the Kuril Islands and southern Sakhalin.

Not even Jimmy Byrnes, who had been at Yalta, could tell the full story of the deal. He had not been told about it until after Japan's surrender. Somewhat shamefacedly he conceded that he still did not know the specific terms of the agreement, had yet to see a copy,' did not even know where the U.S. copy was kept. Had the U.S. got something in return? Jimmy Byrnes said he knew of no Soviet concessions on territory the U.S. might want.

Next day Harry Truman added a little more information—the agreement was locked up with other Roosevelt documents in the President's private files. But when newsmen asked whether any other secret bargains had been made at Yalta, the President said only that he could not answer—that there were always agreements made at such meetings.

Wait & Speculate. While the U.S. public waited for the final truth about the Yalta conference, it could speculate on the import of the Kurils deal. In the Kurils are 6,140 square miles of islands shrouded by fog and volcanic smoke, bleak and thinly populated, without important natural resources. But the islands have great strategic importance. By their acquisition, Russia had pushed farther east into the North Pacific, was now smack astride the short Alaskan air route from the U.S. to the Far East. Paramu-shiro, a Japanese air and naval outpost in the northern Kurils, was frequently bombed by U.S. planes based in the Aleutians.

The Kurils deal gave added ammunition to U.S. proponents of outright U.S. annexation—as against administration under UNO trusteeship—of such wartime Pacific bases as the Marshalls, Marianas, Carolines and Okinawa (which occupies roughly the same strategic position to the south of Japan as the Kurils do to the north).

Virginia's Senator Harry F. Byrd promptly took occasion to call the trusteeship idea "absurd"—if Russia can claim and take strategic lands, why shouldn't the U.S.?