The Cairo Conference

On 22 November 1943 the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, flew into Cairo. Waiting for him there were the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek with his wife, Soong Mei-ling. That same day a conference code-named Sextant opened – the only wartime meeting between the leaders of the Western powers and the leader of China. Its main theme was how to defeat Japan: how to recapture Burma, reopen an overland supply route to China and organise joint operations in South-East Asia. The talks with the Chinese lasted until 26 November. On that day the text of a joint statement, known as the Cairo Declaration, was agreed; it announced that Japan would be stripped of all its conquests since 1914, that China would recover Manchuria, Taiwan and the Pescadores, and that Korea would “in due course” become free and independent.

The meeting took place in two parts. The first, with Chiang Kai-shek taking part, fell on 22–26 November. Roosevelt and Churchill then flew to Tehran for talks with Stalin and, on their return, resumed their discussions in Cairo on 2–7 December, this time without the Chinese. The code name Sextant covered both parts. The statement found in chronologies that the conference ended on 26 November and that the participants completed the Cairo Declaration is therefore true of the Chinese part: on that day the talks with Chiang ended and the text of the declaration was ready. It was not published, however, until 1 December, once Stalin had given his consent.

Why Cairo, and not a single meeting of four

The idea of a leaders’ meeting took shape in the summer and autumn of 1943. At the foreign ministers’ conference in Moscow the Americans had insisted, against British and Soviet scepticism, that the declaration on general security should also be signed by the Chinese ambassador. For Secretary of State Cordell Hull and for Roosevelt himself, China was to be one of the “Four Policemen” after the war – the powers responsible for world peace. Roosevelt therefore wanted to talk to Chiang Kai-shek as an equal partner.

It was impossible, however, to seat Chiang at the same table as Stalin. The Soviet Union was not at war with Japan, to which it had been bound since April 1941 by a neutrality pact, and Stalin had no intention of provoking Tokyo by meeting the leader of a China that was fighting it. Chiang, for his part, distrusted Moscow, which supported Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communists. The solution was to separate the meetings: first Cairo with the Chinese, then Tehran with Stalin. According to most accounts, Stalin at first announced that Vyacheslav Molotov would come to Cairo, but withdrew when he learned that Chiang would be there.

Churchill, who feared that Roosevelt would promise the Chinese too much at Europe’s expense, pressed for a preliminary bilateral Anglo-American meeting to agree a common position before the talks with Stalin. Roosevelt refused, not wanting the Russians and the Chinese to gain the impression that the Western Allies were making deals behind their backs. The choice of Cairo raised security concerns, since the venue quickly ceased to be a secret. The British, however, surrounded the area of the Giza pyramids with strong anti-aircraft defences and troops.

The participants and the venue

Churchill sailed to Alexandria aboard the battlecruiser HMS Renown and was in Cairo by 21 November. Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling flew in the same day; throughout the conference she acted as her husband’s interpreter and, in practice, as one of the chief negotiators on the Chinese side. Roosevelt crossed the Atlantic aboard the battleship USS Iowa to Oran, visited General Dwight Eisenhower in Tunis, and landed in Cairo on the morning of 22 November. He stayed at the villa of the American minister in Egypt, Alexander Kirk, and Churchill at the villa of the British Minister Resident in the Middle East, Richard Casey. The talks were held at the Mena House hotel at the foot of the pyramids.

The leaders were accompanied by large delegations. With Roosevelt came his closest adviser Harry Hopkins, the President’s chief of staff Admiral William Leahy, the Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall, the commander of the fleet Admiral Ernest King, and the commander of the Army Air Forces General Henry Arnold. The British delegation included the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Charles Portal, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, and the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden. From Asia came the Supreme Allied Commander in South-East Asia, Admiral Louis Mountbatten; General Joseph Stilwell, Chiang’s chief of staff and commander of American forces in China, Burma and India; and the commander of the Fourteenth Air Force in China, General Claire Chennault. The Chinese side was represented, besides Chiang and his wife, by the secretary-general of the Supreme National Defence Council, Wang Chonghui, and by Generals Shang Zhen, Lin Wei and Zhou Zhirou.

Only a few weeks earlier Chiang Kai-shek had become Chairman of the National Government, and the journey to Cairo was his first appearance on the stage of the great powers. For China, which had been at war with Japan since 1937 – alone, and from December 1941 as part of a coalition – and which as recently as January 1943 had still had to press for the abolition of Western extraterritorial rights, it was a symbolic promotion into the ranks of the “great”.

Burma and the Bay of Bengal

The first plenary session with the three leaders took place on the morning of 23 November. Mountbatten, who since October had headed the new SEAC command, presented plans for the campaign in the 1944 dry season. The land offensive in northern Burma, code-named Tarzan, envisaged an advance by the British IV Corps from the Imphal area, a march by Stilwell’s Chinese divisions from Ledo towards Myitkyina, the insertion of Orde Wingate’s long-range penetration units behind the Japanese lines, and a thrust by Chinese forces from Yunnan across the Salween river. The aim was to reopen the overland link between India and China, lost in 1942 together with the Burma Road. At the same time Mountbatten was preparing an amphibious landing on the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, code-named Buccaneer.

Chiang made his position clear from the outset: Burma was the key to the whole campaign in Asia, and a land offensive made sense only if it was accompanied by a strong naval operation that would tie down Japanese aircraft and ships. His troops would not advance from Yunnan without such a guarantee. Churchill was reluctant. He saw no connection between the fighting in the jungles of northern Burma and a landing on islands hundreds of kilometres away; the British fleet was still committed in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic; and landing craft were needed for the invasion of France and for the operations the Prime Minister was planning in the Aegean. He himself preferred a future strike at Sumatra, as a step towards recovering Singapore.

Over the following days the Chinese position changed several times. Chiang would agree to the Tarzan plan, then withdraw his agreement, set new conditions and demand that airlifted supplies over the Himalayas – “the Hump” – be raised to 10,000 tons a month. The American staff officers explained to him that it was impossible both to pump more supplies through by air and to build a road from India. Brooke wrote in his diary with evident irritation about the talks with the Chinese, while Marshall and Stilwell – who had wrestled with Chiang for years and in September had very nearly been recalled at his demand – left Cairo unconvinced that the Chinese forces in Yunnan would really move. Guided by political considerations, however, Roosevelt promised Chiang that within the next few months the Allies would carry out a major amphibious operation in the Bay of Bengal. The British accepted this without enthusiasm, and no written commitment was made.

Anglo-American disputes

Cairo was also the scene of difficult talks between the Western Allies themselves. Chinese affairs took up more of the Chiefs of Staff’s time than the British wished and pushed aside the European questions that Churchill wanted to settle with Roosevelt before meeting Stalin. The Prime Minister argued that the opportunity in the Mediterranean must be seized: keep up the pressure in Italy, take Rhodes and open the way into the Aegean in order to bring Turkey into the war. The failure of the Dodecanese expedition, sealed by the fall of Leros on 16 November, only strengthened American suspicions that the British were looking for pretexts to postpone the invasion of France. Marshall and King defended the date for Operation Overlord fixed at the Quebec Conference and looked askance at any operation that might take landing craft away from it. These disputes were not resolved in Cairo; they were deferred to the talks with Stalin.

Admiral King also pointed out that Japan would be defeated above all in the Pacific, not on the Asian mainland. In those very days the American offensive in the central Pacific was entering a new phase: on 20 November the Marines landed on Tarawa, and in the Solomons fighting had been going on since the beginning of the month for the beachhead on Bougainville. In the eyes of American planners China’s importance as a base for the final assault on Japan was beginning to diminish, although Roosevelt never stopped working to keep it in the war, and B-29 bombers were to begin raiding Japan in 1944 from airfields in Sichuan.

Roosevelt’s talks with Chiang

The most important political talks took place in private. On the evening of 23 November Roosevelt gave a dinner for Chiang and Soong Mei-ling at his villa. The Americans kept no record of the conversation; its course is known mainly from a Chinese summary, published later. According to this, the two leaders agreed that Manchuria, Taiwan and the Pescadores should be returned to China and that Korea should gain independence. Roosevelt asked whether China would like to take over the Ryukyu Islands; Chiang is said to have replied that a joint Sino-American occupation and trusteeship would suffice. They discussed China’s part in the occupation of Japan, reparations, and the future of the Japanese monarchy, whose fate Chiang preferred to leave to the Japanese themselves. Both agreed that French Indochina should not be returned to France as a colony. Roosevelt also urged Chiang to come to terms with the Communists and to form a broader government while the war was still on, and Chiang wanted the President to obtain an assurance from Stalin that China’s sovereignty in Manchuria would be respected.

On 25 November, the American Thanksgiving Day, Roosevelt gave a dinner for Churchill and his daughter Sarah and carved the turkey himself. That same day, in the garden of the President’s villa, the famous photograph was taken of Chiang, Roosevelt, Churchill and Soong Mei-ling sitting side by side.

The Cairo Declaration

The first draft of the joint statement was prepared on 24 November by Harry Hopkins. The text was revised by Roosevelt, by the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Alexander Cadogan, and by Churchill himself, while on the Chinese side Wang Chonghui was consulted. The passage on Korea provoked the most discussion. The American draft spoke of its independence “at the earliest possible moment”; after amendment the final text contained the phrase “in due course”. Historians explain the change by the British, mindful of the future of their own empire, not wanting commitments that might serve as a precedent in the matter of colonies. The text was ready on 26 November, the last day of the talks with the Chinese. It was not signed: it took the form of a press communiqué.

The declaration stated that the military missions of the three countries had agreed upon future operations against Japan and that the three great allies intended to bring “relentless pressure” to bear on her by sea, land and air. They were fighting to restrain and punish Japanese aggression, coveted no gain for themselves and had no thought of territorial expansion. Their purpose was to strip Japan of all the islands in the Pacific that she had seized since the beginning of the First World War in 1914 – chiefly the former German islands that had passed to Japan after that war as a League of Nations mandate – and to restore to the Republic of China all the territories Japan had “stolen from the Chinese”, such as Manchuria, Formosa and the Pescadores. Japan was also to be expelled from all other territories taken “by violence and greed”. The three powers, “mindful of the enslavement of the people of Korea”, were determined that in due course Korea should become free and independent. These aims were to be achieved through “serious and prolonged operations” leading to the unconditional surrender of Japan – the principle Roosevelt had announced at Casablanca in January 1943.

Each of the territories named had its own history. China had lost Taiwan and the Pescadores in 1895 under the Treaty of Shimonoseki; Korea had been annexed to the Empire of Japan in 1910; and Manchuria had been seized by Japan’s Kwantung Army after the Mukden Incident in 1931 and turned into the puppet state of Manchukuo. The declaration did not, however, mention the Ryukyus, nor Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, whose fate was to be settled in the talks with Stalin.

Roosevelt and Churchill took the text with them to Tehran. Stalin, with whom it was discussed on 30 November, raised no objections, although the Soviet Union did not formally become a party to the statement. The communiqué was made public on the evening of 1 December 1943 (at 7.30 p.m. in Washington), while the Western leaders were still in Tehran. For security reasons it referred only to a conference “in North Africa”.

Departure for Tehran and the second round of talks

Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling left Cairo on 27 November. That same day Roosevelt and Churchill flew to Tehran. There Stalin promised that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan once Germany had been defeated, and the three leaders confirmed the invasion of France in the spring of 1944, supplemented by a landing in southern France. This last decision sealed the fate of the promise made to Chiang: there were not enough landing craft for everything.

When Roosevelt and Churchill returned to Cairo on 2 December, the British pressed for Operation Buccaneer to be abandoned. On 5 December Roosevelt gave way and the operation was cancelled; Chiang, informed by a telegram from the President, reacted with bitterness, demanding a large loan and additional supplies in return. The second round of talks, on 4–6 December, was attended by the President of Turkey, İsmet İnönü, whom the Allies tried in vain to persuade to enter the war. The Chiefs of Staff approved an overall plan for the defeat of Japan in which the main role was assigned to two Pacific offensives – through the islands of the central Pacific, and through New Guinea towards the Philippines. On 7 December, on his way home, Roosevelt told Eisenhower that he would command the invasion of Europe.

Place in the war

In military terms the Cairo Conference achieved little. The great offensive in Burma that had been discussed did not take place in the form announced: instead, the spring of 1944 saw limited operations by Stilwell in the north and the second Chindit expedition, while the Japanese seized the initiative by striking at Imphal and Kohima. The Chinese forces in Yunnan crossed the Salween only in May 1944, under heavy American pressure. At the same time the Japanese Operation Ichi-Go inflicted heavy defeats on Chiang’s army, and his relations with Stilwell and Washington deteriorated until Stilwell was recalled in the autumn of 1944. The Cairo meeting, which was meant to confirm China’s standing as a great power, turned out to be the peak of Chiang Kai-shek’s wartime prestige.

The declaration had far more lasting consequences. It was announced less than a month after the Tokyo conference of 5–6 November 1943, at which Japan and the governments dependent on it had presented the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as the liberation of Asia from Western rule. For Koreans and Chinese, the Cairo document was the first public commitment by the great powers regarding their future. In July 1945 the Potsdam Declaration, issued during the Potsdam Conference, stated that the terms of the Cairo Declaration “shall be carried out”, and Japan accepted it in the instrument of surrender. After the war Manchuria and Taiwan returned to the rule of the Republic of China, but Korea was divided along the 38th parallel into Soviet and American occupation zones, and the mandated islands passed under American administration.

The Cairo Declaration later became the subject of legal disputes. After Chiang’s government withdrew to Taiwan in 1949, both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China invoked it as the basis of Chinese sovereignty over the island. Opponents of this view pointed out that it was an unsigned press communiqué, and that the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco spoke only of Japan renouncing its rights to Taiwan, without naming a new sovereign. In 1955 Churchill himself described the declaration in the House of Commons as a collection of general statements, and Eden as a statement of intention. The dispute over its meaning continues to this day.