San Francisco Conference

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San Francisco Conference (25 April–26 June 1945). This conference drafted the United Nations Charter. Its origins lay in a 1942 “Declaration by the United Nations” issued by twenty‐six countries that had declared war against the Axis powers, and the 1943 Moscow Declaration by the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and China calling for a new international organization to replace the League of Nations. Further planning occurred at the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks conference and a draft charter was prepared at the February 1945 Yalta conference. Fifty nations attended the San Francisco Conference. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt having died two weeks earlier, President Harry S. Truman addressed the opening ceremonies. To assure bipartisan U.S. support, Truman named two prominent Republicans, Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan and lawyer John Foster Dulles, to the American delegation. The conference quickly agreed on most of the Charter's 111 articles, but in early June a dispute arose over the veto power. The draft charter approved at Yalta had granted a veto to Security Council members, but at San Francisco the Soviet delegate, Andrei Gromyko, insisted that the veto power extend even to the discussion of issues—a demand that threatened to break up the conference. The crisis was resolved only when President Truman instructed presidential aide Harry Hopkins, then in Moscow, to take the issue directly to Soviet premier Josef Stalin. Stalin agreed to modify the Soviet position, and a compromise was reached. With this hurdle passed, the delegates unanimously approved the Charter on 25 June, and signed it the following day at San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House, with Truman again in attendance. The required number of nations ratified the Charter by 24 October (United Nations Day), and the United Nations came into existence. Despite the euphoria surrounding these events, however, the United Nations soon ran afoul of Cold War conflicts, and the San Francisco Conference did not herald the new international order that many had hoped for.
See also Yalta Conference.

Bibliography

R.B. Russell , A History of the United Nations Charter: The Role of the United States, 1940–1945, 1958.
Leland M. Goodrich , The United Nations, 1959.

Norman A. Graebner

San Francisco conference, the inaugural meeting of the United Nations more formally known as the United Nations Conference on International Organization. It was held in this Californian city from 25 April to 26 June 1945 and was attended by delegates from 50 Allied nations, 45 of which had signed the United Nations Declaration of January 1942. However, the seat reserved for Poland remained vacant as the USA disagreed with the USSR's claim that the Moscow-backed Polish government (see Lublin Committee) was independent. A United Nations Security Charter based on the draft proposals of the Dumbarton Oaks conference was drawn up and signed after three main areas of disagreement between the USA and USSR were settled. These were the future of dependent populations (see refugees); regional collective security; and the use of the veto in the Security Council which comprised five permanent members (China, France, UK, USA, and USSR) and six temporary ones. The conference also created a Trusteeship Council for administering the colonies and mandates of the Axis powers, and other non-self-governing territories.

San Francisco Conference (1951) A conference held to agree a formal peace treaty between Japan and the nations against which she had fought in World War II. When the treaty came into force in April 1952, the period of occupation (JAPAN, OCCUPATION OF) was formally ended and Japanese sovereignty restored. Japan recognized the independence of Korea and renounced its rights to Taiwan, the Pescadores, the Kuriles, southern Sakhalin, and the Pacific islands mandated to it before the war by the League of Nations. The country was allowed the right of self-defence with the proviso that the USA would maintain its own forces in Japan until the Japanese were able to shoulder their own defensive responsibilities. The Soviet Union did not sign the treaty, but diplomatic relations were restored in 1956, while peace treaties with Asian nations conquered by the Japanese in the war were signed through the 1950s as individual problems with reparations were resolved.

San Francisco Conference (15 Apr.–26 June 1945) An international conference attended by representatives of the fifty countries that had declared war on Germany by 1 March 1945. It discussed and determined the aims and structure of the United Nations Organization (UN). It also drafted the UN Charter, which was ratified at the first session of the UN General Assembly on 24 October 1945.