Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

by Ian Kershaw

  These, broadly sketched, were the mentalities that helped shape the way Japan’s options were viewed in autumn 1941. By the end of November, the fateful choice had been made. It was to be war. The fleet had already set out for Pearl Harbor. How was this momentous decision arrived at?

  I

  In August 1941, following the American imposition of the oil embargo, the storm clouds over the Pacific started to gather rapidly. Some among Japan’s leaders, previous advocates of the assertiveness that had led to the current predicament, were now gripped by anxiety and foreboding.

  The new Foreign Minister, Toyoda Teijiro, tried to bridge the increasingly yawning gulf between American and Japanese interests with proposals drawn up on 5 August and put to Washington the following day. He stipulated that Japan had no intention of stationing troops in the south-west Pacific beyond French Indochina. And she was prepared to guarantee the neutrality of the Philippines (an American possession). These minimal concessions were all the Japanese had to offer. In return, the United States would have to cease military measures against Japan in the south-west Pacific, urging Britain and the Netherlands to do the same. The United States would also cooperate in Japan’s acquisition of natural resources in the Dutch East Indies, restore normal commercial relations, act as a mediator to end the war in China, and accept Japan’s special position in French Indochina even once troops were withdrawn.11 It was scarcely an endearing package from an American perspective. It remained a dead letter.

  Another initiative came from an even higher level. Though he had fully supported Japan’s expansionist programme and backed the continuing war in China, the Prime Minister, Prince Konoe Fumimaro, was now so disturbed by developments that he contemplated a last, desperate attempt to head off what seemed increasingly like an inexorable collision course with America. He proposed a personal meeting with President Roosevelt, at Honolulu or at sea in the mid-Pacific.12 Such a proposal had no precedent in Japanese history. And it carried dangers, physical as well as political, for the Prime Minister. Speaking to military leaders, he justified the initiative, not through a wish to bridge the differences with the United States at whatever cost, but by showing the world that Japan had done everything possible to avoid war. ‘If it comes to war after we have done all that can be done, that can’t be helped,’ he declared. ‘In that case we will have come to a resolution and the people will also be fully prepared. Moreover, it will be clearly understood by the world in general that we have shown good faith in going to such lengths.’13 Privately, he appears to have been ready to offer a number of limited concessions, such as the withdrawal of troops from Indochina. According to later testimony of those close to him, Konoe would, if necessary, have sought the Emperor’s approval by telegram and agreed to the concessions in order to outflank the army and to save the peace.14 Given Konoe’s usual weakness and indeterminacy, whether he would have taken such a bold step might justifiably be doubted. And had he made any concessions likely to have swayed the Americans, these would almost certainly have been opposed by the military–and by violently anti-American public opinion–back home. At least two plots by fanaticized radical nationalists to murder Konoe were uncovered.15 Change of government by assassination had only a few years earlier been effected more than once. Konoe, as friendly voices had warned him, would probably not have lived to tell the tale. If he was serious in thinking that he could outmanoeuvre the army by his ploy, he was greatly underestimating the hold which by now the military leadership in both army and navy had gained over the levers of power in Japan.

  The Emperor endorsed the idea of a summit with President Roosevelt at an audience with Konoe on 4 August and urged him to proceed without delay.16 The Foreign Minister, Toyoda, also backed the scheme as a last hope of avoiding disaster. Oikawa Koshiro, the Navy Minister–often hesitant, ambivalent and wavering in his views–was prepared to go along with the suggestion. Possibly he thought its chances of success were slight. He certainly knew that the navy’s preparations were well advanced, and that its expeditionary force would be virtually ready for action by the beginning of September.17 The more forthright Army Minister, Tojo Hideki, gave only conditional approval on behalf of the army. He would not oppose the move; but only as long as Konoe was prepared to uphold the basic, non-negotiable principles of Japanese policy and ready to commit Japan to war against the United States should Roosevelt prove unyielding.18

  Below ministerial level, others in the military were even less well disposed towards Konoe’s initiative. The chief of the navy General Staff, Nagano Osami, remained dogmatically of the view that diplomatic negotiations with the United States should be broken off, and that Japan should go to war. Among naval planners, the view was that the planned summit meeting was ‘an odd artifice’. There was scarcely greater endearment in the army. The chief of the army General Staff, Sugiyama Gen, and the Operations Division chief, the hawkish Tanaka Shin’ichi, were willing to acknowledge Konoe’s move as ‘one last effort’, since ‘if Roosevelt misinterprets our Empire’s true intentions and persists in pursuing the same old policies, no objections can possibly be raised to prevent our confronting this with resolute determination to join battle with the United States’. Likely failure, in other words, would legitimate war. And there was another advantage: ‘We can’t say that Konoe can’t go to the United States. We figure it’s 80 percent certain that his trip will end up a failure, but even if he does fail we’ll have pinned the Prime Minister down about not resigning.’ The manoeuvre was likely to bring about, then, the change in political leadership in Japan that many in the military were already thinking was long overdue. Sugiyama and Tanaka nevertheless struck a note of caution. Pinning the slippery Konoe down ‘might be like trying to nail jelly to a wall’.19

  The Japanese ambassador in Washington, Nomura Kichisaburo–a tall, good-natured, one-eyed, retired admiral with limited command of English, much given to bowing, and relatively pro-American in his views–was instructed on 7 August to seek the summit between Konoe and Roosevelt.20 The American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, however, fed by MAGIC digests of Japanese intelligence intercepts, reacted coolly. The move into southern Indochina had confirmed his assumptions. ‘Nothing will stop them except force,’ he had said on 2 August.21 He told Nomura bluntly six days later: ‘We can begin consultations only when Japan stops using force.’ He showed scant interest in the idea of a summit meeting, remarking that he had little confidence in putting it to Roosevelt without evidence of a change in Japanese policy.22

  Meanwhile, Roosevelt was preoccupied with another summit meeting–one that was taking place. Between 9 and 12 August 1941 he was engaged in his high-level talks with Winston Churchill, at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. To the western powers, the reaffirmation of the commitment to freedom, peace, economic liberalism and rejection of force in international affairs enunciated in the Atlantic Charter signed at the end of their historic conference was a powerful declaration of noble principles. But from a Japanese perspective, the joint statement of Roosevelt and Churchill looked quite different. Its very principles seemed threatening. As Tokyo’s leading newspaper, Asahi, reported, they seemed simply to restate the determination of the western powers to maintain ‘a system of world domination on the basis of Anglo-American world views’.23 Only submission by Japan to this aim, the conclusion was drawn, would avoid war. The augurs, both in Tokyo and in Washington, for the sort of concessions capable of heading off war that might be made in a Konoe–Roosevelt summit were not promising.

  On the American cruiser Augusta, during their talks in Placentia Bay, Churchill had urged Roosevelt to take a tough line with the Japanese. Roosevelt was, however, keener to play for time. He had no illusions about Japanese intentions, since the Americans had been reading their intelligence signals for months. But deferring the outbreak of hostilities even for a few weeks would help American military preparations, and would assist the British, so he argued, to build up defences around Singapore. ‘I think I can baby them along for three mo
nths,’ he told Churchill.24

  When he met Nomura on 17 August, on his return from Placentia Bay, Roosevelt handed him a warning (drawn up during his meeting with Churchill, and based on the latter’s draft) that further Japanese advances in the south-west Pacific would prompt American countermeasures, perhaps leading to war. But, retreating from the hard line he appeared to have offered Churchill, the President then gave the Japanese ambassador a second, more conciliatory note. If Japan were to suspend her expansionism and ‘embark upon a peaceful program for the Pacific’, he would be ready to reopen conversations with Japan. He suggested a meeting in mid-October in Juneau, Alaska. Nomura was sure that Roosevelt was in earnest. ‘A reply should be made before this opportunity is lost,’ he cabled Tokyo. His government should ‘decide on this matter urgently’.25

  The American ambassador in Tokyo, Joseph C. Grew, highly experienced in Japanese affairs and attuned to their ways of thinking, still firmly believed that skilful diplomacy could find a way out of the impasse. When told of the proposed summit between Roosevelt and Konoe by the Japanese Foreign Minister, Toyoda, on 18 August, he immediately sent a message to Washington, urging ‘with all the force at his command, for the sake of avoiding the obviously growing possibility of an utterly futile war between Japan and the United States, that this Japanese proposal not be turned aside without very prayerful consideration’. He was sure, he added in subsequent dispatches, that the Japanese government was ready to make far-reaching concessions. He advised not an immediate attempt to produce a general plan for the reconstruction of the Far East, but a step-by-step relaxation of American sanctions to match actions on Japan’s side to implement its proposed commitments.26

  The Japanese response to Roosevelt’s warning and accompanying note–a cordial message from Konoe and formal reply–was agreed by the Liaison Conference on 26 August.27 Nomura handed them both to the American President two days later.28 In a personal message, couched in terms of goodwill and regret for past misunderstandings, Konoe urged a meeting as soon as possible, preferably in Hawaii, to ‘explore whether it is possible to save the situation’. Discussion of the problems in the Pacific should be broadly framed. Detail could be worked out later by officials. The formal note stressed that Japanese actions had been necessary for national self-defence and underlined the threat posed by American countermeasures. But it was also conciliatory in tone. Japan was prepared, it went on, to remove her troops from Indochina as soon as a just peace could be established in east Asia. There was no intention to advance into neighbouring countries, nor to attack the Soviet Union. ‘In a word,’ it declared, ‘the Japanese Government has no intention of using, without provocation, military force against any neighbouring nation.’29

  Roosevelt was suitably cordial, even affable, when he received Nomura. He looked forward, he said, to three or four days with Prince Konoe. He was pleased to learn that the Prime Minister spoke good English. He again suggested Juneau as the venue. But he proposed no date. In truth, he was still ‘babying’ Japan along. Secretary of State Hull in any case poured cold water on hopes of a summit when he met Nomura later that evening. Influenced less by Ambassador Grew than by the head of the State Department’s Division of Far Eastern Affairs, the hawkish Stanley K. Hornbeck, and even more so by MAGIC intercepts, Hull was duly mistrustful of a summit without a precise, preformed agenda. ‘It seemed to us that Japan was striving to push us into a conference from which general statements would issue,’ he wrote later, ‘and Japan could then interpret and apply these statements to suit her own purposes,’ even citing the President’s endorsement. ‘It was difficult to believe that the Konoye [Konoe] Government would dare to agree to proposals we could accept,’ he added. ‘A substantial opposition existed in Japan to any efforts to improve relations with the United States.’30

  This opposition had meanwhile been active in preparing its own ground. It comprised, in the main, differing factions, each with its own agenda, in both the army and navy, especially among middle-echelon officers. Since the opposition, whatever its factional differences, could always fall back upon the immutability of Japanese expansionist aims and the need to ensure that the sacrifices in the ‘China Incident’ had not been in vain, it always had good chances of blocking any initiative that posited meaningful concessions. In the first week of September, the counter-position to Konoe’s proposals for a summit with Roosevelt was finalized, then confirmed as national policy in the presence of the Emperor. It amounted to a decision that Japan would go to war if agreement could not be reached with the United States within an extremely tight time frame–less than six weeks.

  II

  Already by 16 August, the day before Roosevelt and Nomura spoke in Washington of a possible summit between the President and Prince Konoe, the bureau and division chiefs of the army’s and navy’s planning staff were meeting in Tokyo to discuss a proposed ‘Plan for Carrying out the Empire’s Policies’. The essence of the ‘Plan’, put forward by the navy, was that Japan should both prepare for war and at the same time conduct diplomacy. This amounted to a compromise. The navy believed a decision for war could follow mobilization; the army wanted it the other way round. But in the compromise, diplomacy was only given the briefest of chances. The countdown to hostilities was already stipulated. The navy had told the army the previous day that it would like an agreement between the two services on operations to be reached by 20 September, and war preparations to be concluded by 15 October. Mid-October was the envisaged diplomacy deadline. If agreement could not be reached by then, Japan would exercise force. Drafts of the ‘Plan’ were fine-tuned in almost daily meetings between army and navy staff over the next two weeks. Lengthy deliberations over minor wording amendments reflected the nuances of different factions and interests. But nothing of substance was altered. The fundamentals were not in dispute. By 30 August, the document was finalized and agreed as ‘Essentials for Carrying out the Empire’s Policies’.31 The critical stipulation was: ‘In the event that by early October there is still no prospect of obtaining our demands through diplomatic negotiations, we shall immediately resolve to go to war with the United States (Britain, Holland).’32

  The demands offered little prospect of diplomatic success. The United States and Great Britain should cease giving military and economic aid to Chiang Kai-shek; they should not extend their military presence in the Far East; and they should provide Japan with necessary economic resources. In return, Japan would agree not to advance from Indochina into neighbouring areas, apart from China, would withdraw from Indochina once a just peace in the Far East had been established, and was prepared to guarantee the neutrality of the Philippines.33 In fact, on the day before the Liaison Conference on 3 September, called to discuss the ‘Essentials’, Sugiyama, the army’s chief of staff, sent Konoe a warning shot across the bow, in case he showed any sign of weakening. There could be no wavering, Sugiyama emphasized, on the three fundamental principles: the alliance with the Axis powers, the attainment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and the stationing of troops in China.34 These formed the basis of army–navy understanding. Without support from the military, no civilian government could survive. But with such inflexible fundamentals of policy upheld by the military (and with much broader acceptance both among the elites and in public opinion), no diplomatic move stood much chance of success. Konoe was now in a bind partly of his own making. He could not back down from a commitment to the basic principles which he himself had been instrumental in establishing since the beginning of the war in China. But without a weakening of those principles, he had little or nothing to offer Roosevelt in the summit that he was still intent on promoting.

  Konoe’s heavily compromised position was probably the main reason–alongside his ingrained weakness and supine nature–why he raised no objections at the seven-hour-long Liaison Conference on 3 September, when the ‘Essentials for Carrying Out the Empire’s Policies’ were deliberated, then adopted. The other main proponent of a diplomatic settlement pre
sent at the meeting, the Foreign Minister, Toyoda, was equally compliant. The tone of the meeting was set by the bellicose chiefs of staff, Nagano and Sugiyama. It was plain that, while both were prepared to tolerate a short period of diplomatic soundings, their main concern was urgent preparation for the war that was judged to be highly likely. Neither was prepared to contemplate any loss of time in mobilization. War, if it were to come–and both thought it well-nigh inevitable–had to come soon. ‘Although I am confident that at the present time we have a chance to win a war,’ stated Nagano, ‘I fear this opportunity will disappear with the passage of time.’ His prognosis was one that should have given rise to the gravest doubts about the wisdom of his proposed course of action. He hoped for a quick showdown in a decisive battle with the enemy in Japanese waters. That would not in itself end the war. But it might give Japan the resources to fight a long war. ‘If, on the contrary,’ Nagano frankly pointed out, ‘we get into a long war without a decisive battle, we will be in difficulty, especially since our supply of resources will become depleted. If we cannot obtain these resources, it will not be possible to carry on a long war.’ His conclusion was that the armed forces had no alternative ‘but to push forward’. Sugiyama concurred. The target date for war preparations could be no later than the last ten days of October. Diplomatic objectives must be attained within the first ten days of the month. ‘Failing this,’ he said, ‘we must push forward. We cannot let things be dragged out.’ The main reason he gave for this was the ability to be able to act in the north the following spring–an army, though not a navy, priority.

  The remainder of the Conference was largely spent in discussion of wording amendments to the proposed ‘Essentials’. Strikingly, however, there was no rooted objection. Though long, the meeting was smooth. The crucial document, setting a timetable for a decision on war, was accepted without serious demur. Even more remarkable was that Nagano’s prognosis–imprecise, highly speculative and not altogether encouraging as it was–did not encounter serious questioning, let alone criticism. Even the navy’s own planners thought the odds would run strongly against Japan if the war were protracted, which was likely to be the case. Nagano was aware of this thinking. But his own inability to offer more than a determination to go to war resting upon lack of a perceived alternative and reliance on good luck drew no resistance from Konoe, Toyoda or the rest of the Liaison Conference.35