Cairo Conference

Cairo Conference, meeting held November 22-26, 1943, during World War II, in Cairo, Egypt, to define the war aims of the Allied governments with respect to Japan. The major participants were President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of China, with their highest-ranking advisers. Because the Soviet Union was not then at war with Japan, it was not represented at the Cairo Conference.

On December 1, 1943, the U.S. government released a joint communiqué, drafted in Cairo and signed by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek, in which they declared the determination of their governments to prosecute the war until Japan surrendered unconditionally. The signatories stated that their governments sought neither territorial aggrandizement nor other gain. They also declared the intention of their governments to strip Japan of all the territory that country had gained since the beginning of World War I; to restore to China all territories taken by Japan, such as Manchuria and Taiwan; and to help Korea achieve independence “in due course.”