Cairo Conference

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill at the Cairo Conference, 25 November 1943.

The Cairo Conference (codenamed Sextant^[1]) of November 22–26, 1943, held in Cairo, Egypt, outlined the Allied position against Japan during World War II and made decisions about postwar Asia. The meeting was attended by President of the United States Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin did not attend the conference because his meeting with Chiang could have caused friction between the Soviet Union and Japan. (The Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact of 1941 was a five-year agreement of neutrality between the two nations; in 1943 the Soviet Union was not at war with Japan, whereas China, the U.K. and the U.S. were.)

The Cairo meeting was held at a residence of the American Ambassador to Egypt, Alexander Kirk, near the Pyramids.^[2]

Two days later Stalin met with Roosevelt and Churchill in Tehran, Iran for the Tehran Conference.

The Cairo Declaration was issued on 27 November 1943 and released in a Cairo Communiqué through radio on 1 December 1943,^[3] stating the Allies' intentions to continue deploying military force until Japan's unconditional surrender. The main clauses of the Cairo Declaration are that the three great allies are fighting this war to restrain and punish the aggression of Japan, they covet no gain for themselves and won't involve themselves in territorial expansion wars after the conflict, "Japan be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the First World War in 1914", "all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, including Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China", Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed and that "in due course Korea shall become free and independent".

See also

• Second Cairo Conference
• Second Sino-Japanese War
• List of World War II conferences

References

1. Churchill, Winston Spencer (1951). The Second World War: Closing the Ring. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. p. 642.
2. Life: Noel F. Busch, "Alexander Kirk," August 13, 1945, accessed January 23, 2011
3. "Cairo Communique, December 1, 1943". Japan National Diet Library. December 1, 1943.

Further reading

• Heiferman, Ronald Ian (2011). The Cairo Conference of 1943: Roosevelt, Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
• Sainsbury, Keith (1986). The Turning Point: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-Shek, 1943: The Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran Conferences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Leighton, Richard M. (1960). "Chapter 10: Overlord Versus the Mediterranean at the Cairo-Tehran Conferences". In Kent Roberts Greenfield. Command Decisions. United States Army Center of Military History. CMH Pub 70-7.

External links

• United States Department of State Foreign relations of the United States diplomatic papers, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943
• The Cairo Conference, 1943