by Ian Kershaw
Roosevelt himself had already indicated a changed, hardened tone to Nomura on receiving the Japanese ambassador again, in Hull’s presence, on 3 September, on the same date that the important Liaison Conference was taking place in Tokyo. The President this time gave Nomura no encouragement. He, like Prince Konoe, had public opinion to take into account, he said. And opinion was vehement in its demands ‘that there be no changes in our policy in order to accommodate Japan’. He professed still to want a meeting with Konoe. But a summit, he pointed out, could not be undertaken without preliminary talks. There were still major differences which would have to be cleared up beforehand. Hull’s ‘Four Principles’ were once more emphasized. Essentially, Roosevelt was stating once more that agreement was only possible if Japan bowed in advance to American demands on China and the Tripartite Pact, renouncing her claim to dominance of the ‘new order’ in the Far East and ending discrimination in international trade. The limited concessions, intended to pave the way for the summit, offered by Toyoda in a dispatch transmitted on 4 September before hearing the report of Nomura’s meeting with Roosevelt, were scarcely sufficient to alter this basic American position.47
Even so, Nomura cabled his view to Tokyo on 11 September that a significant Japanese move on China would pave the way for Konoe to meet Roosevelt. His cable smacked of increasing desperation. He proposed, by now more in hope than belief, to let the Americans know that Japan would agree to withdraw all its troops from China within two years of an end of hostilities. He thought this might provide at least the basis for discussions at a summit. Negotiations for a ceasefire and a subsequent peace conference would then take longer, he somewhat cynically calculated, so that any actual withdrawal would still be some years down the line, by which time much might have happened to alter circumstances. He asked for a firm decision on troop withdrawal.48
This was provided by the Liaison Conference on 13 September, and adopted as policy a week later. But the terms were unlikely to prove endearing to the Americans as a basis for peace negotiations. The army, angered at even the moderate watering down of Japanese demands by Toyoda on 4 September, now stiffened them again. The ‘Basic Terms of Peace between Japan and China’, presented to the Liaison Conference, insisted on the continued stationing of Japanese forces in northern China and Inner Mongolia for defence against Communism. Other troops would be withdrawn as soon as the ‘China Incident’ was settled. But this was to be brought about by merging the Chungking government of Chiang Kai-shek with the Japanese puppet regime under Wang Ching-wei in Nanking–something which it was obvious the Chinese nationalists would never freely accept. China and Japan would cooperate economically. Manchukuo was, of course, to be recognized.49 The army’s position was that, should these terms be rejected, Japan must be ready to go to war.50
Toyoda, the Foreign Minister, was reluctant to present this tougher set of demands to the Americans, certain that it would meet outright rejection. Ambassador Nomura confirmed this on 27 September when he eventually received the new ‘Draft Understanding’. By this point, the armed forces were rapidly losing confidence in Toyoda, and in Konoe. The fragile compromise that had temporarily held together those factions in the elite pressing for war without delay and those hoping to stave off war through negotiations was now breaking apart. On 25 September Sugiyama and Nagano, the chiefs of staff of the army and navy, had successfully pressed for a deadline of 15 October to be set for the successful completion of negotiations with the United States. By that date, the decision for war or peace had to be taken. Konoe was shocked. He threatened to resign. But Kido reminded him that he himself had been present at the Imperial Conference on 6 September when ‘early October’ was accepted as the last date a decision could be taken.51 Konoe backed down. Unable to abdicate responsibility for, or change the course of, unfolding events which he thought disastrous, the Prime Minister left Tokyo and retired, wearied and depressed, to his home in the seaside resort of Kamakura.52
The predictable American reply to the Japanese terms was not long in coming. Behind the language of diplomacy, when Hull met Nomura on 2 October, stood the blunt rejection of the Japanese proposals and an unyielding restatement of American demands, which in turn were by now inflexible and completely unacceptable to Japan. Hull also indicated his doubts about the value of a meeting between Konoe and Roosevelt until Japan was prepared to alter its stance.53 China, as had been the case throughout, was the crux. War, it now seemed plain, could only be avoided if Konoe could persuade his army leadership to commit itself to troop withdrawals from China. Of that, there was not the slightest chance. Toyoda was overruled by the military representatives in the Liaison Conference on 4 October when he wanted to reply to Hull’s uncompromising note. The army and navy chiefs of staff had lost patience with American delaying tactics. They wanted an end to further attempts at negotiation.54
Even so, the navy was not altogether united in its stance. The Navy Minister, Oikawa–a born waverer, in contrast to the Army Minister, Tojo–visited Konoe at Kamakura and told him that ‘we must be prepared to do nothing less than swallow whole the United States proposal’, promising the navy’s support and presuming that the army would also comply.55 It was wishful thinking. The hopes of Konoe and Oikawa, aligned to those of Toyoda, of overthrowing the Imperial Conference’s decision of 6 September were doomed to failure. Oikawa could not even rely upon the united backing of the navy, let alone of the army. The chief of staff, Nagano, was the most forthright of those who insisted on an early decision, and a commitment to the policy that war would follow if negotiations had not been brought to a successful conclusion–meaning acceptance of Japanese demands–by mid-October. Between Oikawa and Nagano, other voices could be heard from navy leaders, worrying about the consequences of a war with the United States, advising caution, implying that the army would have to soften its stance if the navy opted for continued negotiation, but ultimately ambiguous and refusing to speak forcefully and plainly for peace rather than war. The head of the navy’s Operations Division, Fukudome Shigeru, summed up the concerns of those whose feet were turning cold when he said on 6 October, at a meeting of army and navy planning chiefs: ‘I have no confidence in South Seas operations. As far as losses of ships are concerned, 1.4 million tons will be sunk in the first year of the war. The results of the new war games conducted by the Combined Fleet are that there will be no ships for civilian requirements in the third year of the war. I have no confidence.’56 But such serious doubts stemming from the centre of naval planning operations remained without practical consequences. The divisions remained. And it was Oikawa rather than Nagano who found himself increasingly isolated within the navy leadership.
The army, meanwhile, was far more united. Its stance was more unequivocal than that of the navy. Negotiations, it was adjudged, stood no chance of success (though they could be continued until 15 October). Most pointedly, it was stated that no changes, even minor ones in wording, were to be made on the issue of the stationing of troops in China. Nevertheless, Fukudome’s statement had worried army leaders. If it were true, they agreed that the Army and Navy Ministers and chiefs of staff would have to resign for having misled the Imperial Conference into sanctioning a war which Japan had no chance of winning. The claim would have to be clarified. But when Tojo and Oikawa met on the morning of 7 October, incisiveness clashed with ambiguity. Tojo was emphatic that to accept Hull’s ‘Four Principles’ was to return to the position of the 1920s, under the Nine Power Treaty, and to Japan’s state of powerlessness before the ‘Manchurian Incident’. This would upturn the whole of Japanese policy since 1931, and totally undermine the aim of the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’. His other point of no compromise was the stationing of troops. This was the ‘absolute minimum demand’. To withdraw troops from northern China and Mongolia would threaten the existence of Manchukuo. Once again, it would mean a return to the country’s weakness and exposure to American dominance. All Oikawa could offer as a parry to such a clear and unbending p
osition was that negotiations should continue, but that he did not want to alter the Imperial Conference decision, nor to object to a resolution for war.57
With the clock ticking towards the deadline of 15 October, and with unity and clarity on the question of peace or war still missing, Konoe summoned a meeting of the crucial five government ministers (the Foreign, Army and Navy Ministers, and General Suzuki of the Cabinet Planning Board, besides himself) to take place at his Ogikubo residence on the outskirts of Tokyo on Sunday, 12 October. The meeting gave Konoe few grounds for celebrations on his fiftieth birthday. Tojo declared at the outset in his usual blunt manner that negotiations held out no promise. Oikawa could have taken the opportunity to declare the navy’s unwillingness to risk a war that, as Fukudome had stated some days earlier, some of its leading planners feared could not be won. A clear stance from the navy might, even at this juncture, have shifted the odds in favour of peace, not war. Instead, Oikawa simply restated the dilemma of negotiations or military action. He added, however, that if the route of negotiations were chosen, this would mean a decision ‘not to resort to war for perhaps several years’, a line that ran counter to the policy adopted at the Imperial Conference on 6 September. Oikawa then baulked at advancing any recommendation, leaving the decision to the Prime Minister. Konoe asked how the Foreign Minister, Toyoda, estimated the prospects of negotiations. Put on the spot, Toyoda equivocated. He could not say with confidence that they would prove successful. It would depend upon what the other side had to say. Tojo pounced on the truthful, but in the context utterly feeble, answer. ‘Such a wobbly position will put me in a bind. I won’t be able to persuade the High Command to go along,’ the Army Minister exclaimed. ‘There must be much greater grounds for confidence.’ Oikawa agreed that Japan might find herself ‘strung along’, then ultimately sucked into war anyway. Konoe said that, of the two options, he chose diplomatic negotiations. But Tojo countered that this was simply a subjective view. He could not convince the High Command on that basis alone. The meeting ended inconclusively. But the army’s stance was now dominant. It had not been supported outright at the meeting. But nor had any of the other four present directly rejected Tojo’s position.58 The crisis of Konoe’s government was deepening.
It plunged to the point of no return on 14 October. Konoe had arranged to meet Tojo for a private discussion just prior to the Cabinet meeting that day. All this meeting did was to reveal how wide the gulf between the two men had become. Konoe said he was sure that to open negotiations with a chance of rescuing peace hinged upon the issue of Japanese troops in China. He suggested to Tojo that Japan ‘ought to give in for a time’, accede to ‘the formality of withdrawing troops and save ourselves from the crisis of a Japanese-American war’. It was necessary, he stated, ‘to end the China Incident’. The Army Minister was appalled at what he saw as a breach of trust by Konoe, now retreating from a formal agreement at the Imperial Conference. He rejected the suggestion out of hand. ‘If at this time we yield to the United States,’ Konoe recalled Tojo saying, ‘she will take steps that are more and more high-handed, and will probably find no place to stop. The problem of withdrawing troops is one, you say, of forgetting the honour and of seizing the fruits, but, to this, I find it difficult to agree from the point of view of maintaining the fighting spirit of the Army.’ Konoe replied that American superiority in material resources meant Japan had to proceed with great caution. Tojo’s disdain for Konoe now meant reason momentarily deserted him. ‘There are times when we must have the courage to do extraordinary things–like jumping, with eyes closed, off the veranda of the Kiyomizu Temple’ (a Buddhist shrine in Kyoto, on the edge of a cliff), he snapped. The difference between the Prime Minister and him, Tojo stated, ending his extraordinary outburst, could be put down to personality. The implication was clear. Bolder leadership than that which Konoe could provide was necessary at this critical juncture.59
Tojo also spoke with great passion at the Cabinet meeting that followed. ‘To submit to the contentions of the United States in their entirety’, he thundered, ‘will annihilate the gains from the China Incident and by extension threaten the existence of Manchukuo, even affecting Japanese rule over Korea and Taiwan.’ The obvious intimation was that Japan would be cast back to powerlessness such as she had not experienced since before the time of the great Emperor Meiji. Tojo pointed to the millions of Japanese troops who had fought against hardship, the hundreds of thousands of war casualties, the billions spent on the struggle for the future of the nation. ‘Of course, if we want to go back to the little Japan of pre-Manchurian Incident days, there’s nothing else to be said, is there?’ he asked, rhetorically. There was nothing for it. Japan simply had to insist upon the stationing of troops in China, the heart of her demands. To concede now to the United States would be to endanger that future. It would mean a foreign policy amounting merely to submission.60 The Cabinet listened in silence, cowed by the Army Minister’s fervour, as he reminded them that they remained committed to the policy agreed by the Imperial Conference of 6 September: if no diplomatic settlement had been agreed by early October, then it would be war. Military preparations had been proceeding in accordance with that decision. They could now only be stopped by agreement with the United States on the issue of troops in China.61 The logic was plain. Only a new Cabinet, not bound by the decision of 6 September, could reverse the momentum for war.
Konoe understood the logic. He arrived for dinner with two colleagues that evening dressed in a traditional Japanese gown to say that he was there only to enjoy their hospitality. Their planned discussion was no longer necessary. His Cabinet was about to fall.62 In the early evening of 16 October, Konoe went to the palace and presented his resignation.
In his letter to the Emperor, Konoe expressed his continued belief that ‘given time, the possibility of reaching an agreement with the United States is not hopeless’. The crux remained the withdrawal of troops from China. As he had done in speaking to Tojo, Konoe now advised the Emperor that the issue could ‘be settled if we are willing to sacrifice our honour to some extent and agree to the formula suggested by America’. He could at any rate not agree to plunging into a great war with the China Incident still unsettled, especially since he felt his grave responsibility for the unfolding of events since 1937. ‘Now is the time’, he wrote, ‘for us to sacrifice the present for the future.’ He admitted, however, that he had failed to persuade Tojo of this, and that the War Minister was adamantly of the view that Japan should ‘grasp the present opportunity and get ready for war at once’. He realized, therefore, Konoe concluded, that his ideas could not prevail, and that he could not carry out his governmental responsibilities.63
Despite his unyielding stance over the previous days, Tojo himself had belatedly, and somewhat surprisingly, come to see, even before Konoe had resigned, that, in the face of the navy’s hesitation and uncertainty, the decision by the Imperial Conference of 6 September needed to be reexamined. Only a new government, unbound by that decision, could undertake the task. When sounded out on a possible replacement for Konoe, Tojo suggested Prince Higashikuni, an army officer and close relative of the Emperor, as the only person capable of holding together the army and navy and sustaining national unity while abandoning the time limit set for a war decision and conducting a thorough policy review. Konoe agreed, following a sleepless night, that Higashikuni would be the best choice. But, under the express advice of Kido, anxious not to risk the prestige of the imperial house in an attempt to master the crisis, Hirohito rejected the proposal. Decisive was Kido’s point that a Cabinet led by a royal prince might eventually ‘cause the Imperial House to become an object of public hatred’. An astonished Tojo found himself summoned to the palace and asked by the Emperor to serve as Prime Minister. Tojo’s belated doubts about the course set for war, his unquestioning loyalty to the Emperor, his lack of political ambition and his ability to hold the army in check had persuaded Kido to favour him over the only other individual considered at this
point, the irresolute Navy Minister, Oikawa.64 But this could not disguise the fact: the most fundamental opponent of troop withdrawals from China, the man who had taken the hardest line on negotiations and, more than any other, had shaped the current crisis on the decision for war or peace, General Tojo Hideki, was now running the Japanese government.
IV
Tojo was a military man through and through, a career officer who had worked his way up through army officialdom. It had been his second nature to look no further than army interests. His refusal to budge on the issue of the stationing of troops in China, the potential lifeline to peace negotiations that had brought down Konoe’s administration, was testimony to the rigidity of his stance in upholding the priority of army concerns. He was a man of limited vision, with an unquestioning sense of obedience and service to the Emperor. ‘We’re still only human, but the Emperor is divine,’ he remarked. ‘I shall always bow my head to His Excellency’s divinity and greatness.’65 Now, called to take an office he had never in his wildest dreams imagined occupying, he was at once, and for the first time in his career, compelled to look beyond the army, to the wider interests of the nation at a time of great crisis.
Ironically, his appointment as Prime Minister offered a last glimmer of hope that war might be avoided. In pressing the appointment, Kido had overcome opposition in the gathering of senior statesmen–the seven former heads of government, on whose judgement Hirohito relied in selecting a new Prime Minister–by arguing that Tojo would not start a war if the Emperor spoke to him, and would be capable of handling negotiations with the United States.66 Tojo had left the audience with the Emperor asking for time to reflect upon the burden of responsibility now thrust upon him. The Emperor had asked him to bring about closer cooperation between the army and the navy–meaning, if cryptically expressed, that the armed services should be persuaded to unite behind the push for a negotiated settlement–and summoned Oikawa to tell him the same. Tojo and Oikawa were, shortly afterwards, joined by Kido, who explained the Emperor’s wishes in more explicit terms. The new Cabinet, Kido indicated, should on the Emperor’s orders re-examine state policy ‘without being obsessed with the Imperial Conference decision of 6 September’. This was a remarkable step. Never before had the Emperor been known to order the bypassing of a decision taken in his own presence at an Imperial Conference. Tojo was being asked to ‘go back to blank paper’–to start, that is, with a clean sheet.67
