Tripartite Fisheries Conference

On October 23, 1951, it was announced that, following informal discussions regarding the North Pacific Fisheries, Canada, Japan and the United States had agreed to participate in negotiations for a North Pacific fisheries convention. The conference was held at Tokyo from November 4 to December 14, 1951. All three countries had expressed desires to conclude a fisheries convention: the United States, to safeguard its major conservation programs in the North Pacific, to provide the facilities for cooperative research and management of joint fisheries not yet covered by treaties, and to avoid friction between United States fishermen and those of other countries which threatened to increase with the expansion of Japanese fishing operations; Canada, to safeguard its conservation programs without complicating or restricting its participation in the exploitation of stocks of fish along the adjacent coasts of the United States or complicating its past fishery relations with the United States; Japan, to satisfy the terms of article 9 of the Treaty of Peace, to show its willingness to cooperate with other countries in fishery conservative programs, and to reiterate its claim to the right of Japanese fishermen to exploit stocks of fish anywhere on the high seas. The delegations, which were composed of representatives of industry in each of the three states as well as governmental representatives, spent most of the first week in explaining and answering questions with respect to certain conservation proposals which the United States had offered as a basis for the talks. The conference then turned to a consideration of the Japanese counterproposals and, on December 14, representatives of the three countries signed a document entitled “Resolutions and Request of the Tripartite Fisheries Conference” which expressed their mutual concern in the development and proper utilization of fish stocks in the North Pacific, recommended the adoption of a convention conforming to the draft agreed to by the conference, and recommended that, in negotiating with other governments in respect to problems similar to those covered by the convention, the contracting parties should give full consideration to the spirit and intent of the convention.