Monday, 7 June

Today was the Duanwu Festival of the Lunar calendar. I remember two years ago today my daughter Jintu was born in Dushiqiao. Lin Gengbai (林庚白)[1] did a fortune-telling for Jintu, saying that the fire element in her life was too strong. Her life would be fine but it might have a bad effect on her mother if her mother was not strong enough. I love beloved Ling and I was worried she might not be too good to Fanny, therefore I treated her just normally. In the past two years after Fanny gave birth to her, Fanny has not been as cheerful as before, also the domestic fortunes of the wet nurse have gone bad as well, so one can sense how hard fate is for this girl. I have prayed day and night that Fanny will be free from her bad influence, and what happened to me did not matter. I had a lot of feelings and I originally wanted to write a letter to Fanny asking her what was going on and also if Jintu had recovered or not. But a letter sent from here would take three months to reach Chongqing, and censors in both China and Soviet Union would open envelopes for checking. I am almost fifty, and I would feel really ashamed if I filled the letters with love words which are reserved for young men and girls. So I didn’t dare, and beloved Ling will forgive me.

Military Attaché‎ Guo went to see the Swedish Minister, asking him about Satō coming to Moscow. According to what the Swedish Minister said, on 2 June, Vice Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Lozovsky, invited Satō for a meeting. Satō went to see him in the morning of 3 June and had a long talk. Also because of the appointment with Molotov, Satō flew to Moscow in the morning of 4 June accompanied by 7 Japanese Embassy personnel. What the Swedish Minister knew was as follows. 1) The Japanese navy recently impounded some of the American commercial ships rented by the Soviet Union, The Japanese said that those were American ships falsely using the name of the Soviet Union and had hoisted its flag. They were American ships so they were in custody. The Soviet Union filed a protest to Japan with regard to this. 2) Japan said recently that Soviet merchant ships always gave the whereabouts of Japanese merchant ships to the United States, so many Japanese merchants ships were sank by American submarines, and therefore Japan protested to the Soviet Union. He supposed Satō came to Moscow regarding these two matters. Counsellor Chen then went to the American Embassy and the Australian Embassy, but none of them had any special news, so I have cabled a report back to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

[1] Lin Gengbai (1897-1941) was a poet and very good at fortune-telling. He was killed by the Japanese army during the Sino-Japanese War.