by James Johns
Negotiations with Japan fell primarily on the shoulders of Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Hull, a Democrat from Tennessee, was no stranger to politics. After serving eleven terms in the House of Representatives, he was elected to the Senate as well, resigning from that office in 1933 when Roosevelt appointed him secretary of state. He would serve Roosevelt faithfully for eleven years, holding that office longer than anyone else, and he would eventually win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for his efforts in establishing the United Nations. But he would also be forever linked to the Hull Note, the Americans’ final proposal to the Japanese that closed the door to any further negotiations with the United States just prior to the Pearl Harbor attack.
Since all were living in the same world, the State Department was certainly aware that issues affecting Europe and Asia would eventually affect the United States. To that end, Secretary of State Hull, in July of 1939, posed the Americans’ primary concern to the Japanese ambassador that the whole of China should not be Manchurianized, which would affect American rights and interests in the Far East. It was in that same month that the United States canceled their commercial treaty with Japan. In itself, it was freeing up the United States for future sanctions.
Throughout 1940 and early 1941, however, Japan was still importing 80 percent of the material she needed to wage war, and 88 percent of that was coming from the United States: coal, iron, steel, rubber, oil, and aviation fuel.4
Traditionally, the Japanese were no strangers to aggression. In 1910, they had annexed Korea. Then in 1914, while the nations of Europe were bogged down in World War I, Japan quietly occupied the Marshall, Marianna, and Caroline Islands. The Japanese occupation included names like Palau, Truk, and Saipan, which would virtually isolate the island of Guam, a U.S. territory.
To accuse Japan of following the lead of events in Europe would be shortsighted. Japan marched into Manchuria in 1931, six years before Hitler denounced the Treaty of Versailles in January 1937, and five years before Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. Japan walked out of the League of Nations in May of 1935, exactly four months before the Germans. She started her war with China in July 1937, over two years before Hitler invaded Poland. In this sense, Japan was the leader.
December 12, 1937, was perhaps the Americans’ first exposure to the affairs of the Far East with the Japanese invasion of China and the attack on the American gunboat, the Panay, on the Yangtze River. During the siege of Nanking, the Panay was loaded with refugees, diplomats, and journalists attempting to flee the city. Once they got out on the river, the Panay was attacked by Japanese aircraft, but the aircraft crews would later claim that on that bright, sunny day they couldn’t see the American flag. Apparently the aviators were reluctant to attack the ship, but eventually they followed orders. There were conflicting views as to the reason for the attack. Some thought that Japan was testing America’s reaction, while others thought there had been conflicts within the Japanese high command.
Regardless, the Panay was sunk with two people killed and forty-eight wounded.5 Among the survivors were two American newsreel cameramen who had caught the attack on film. One of the newsmen, Norman Alley from Universal, shot over five thousand feet of film of the attack. Universal had advertised the film as unedited and uncensored, but before it was shown in American theaters, under FDR’s orders, approximately thirty feet of the most damaging scenes were cut, scenes in which the planes were attacking low across the water, where the U.S. flag would be so obviously visible.6 After all, the flag had been painted on the decks and awnings. So the scenes were certainly damaging to the Japanese government and were ordered extracted from the film. Then the U.S. government proceeded to sue the Japanese government for damages. Apparently, the waters had to be muddied for a quick financial and diplomatic resolve of mistaken identity. The administration was not quite ready for war with Japan at that point and needed to cover up any signs that the attack had been deliberate. In the end, Japan paid the United States $2 million in reparations for sinking the Panay.7
In July 1938, the Japanese Army in Manchuria bulged out to the east, occupying Russian territory around Vladivostok. Later, they were beaten back by eastern Russian forces. Seesawing back and forth with heavy casualties eventually led to a Russo-Japanese Neutrality Pact signed in Moscow on April 13, 1941.
After the German attack on Russia in June of 1941, this pact would release forty Soviet divisions that had been held to guard against any Japanese aggressive move. Those divisions were transferred to the west, where they arrived in the Moscow area in November in time to meet the German drive to take Moscow.
By mid–1939, however, Europe had become center stage, and the United States started shifting its attention from the Pacific to across the Atlantic. It would be remiss not to review the intrigue and logic of the various pacts being signed by Germany, Japan and Russia.
For Adolf Hitler, it would be in Germany’s interest to be assured of noninterference from Russia in Germany’s planned invasion of Poland. Because of the assumed incompatibility of Nazism and Communism, Britain and France had just assumed that Russia would be in the western camp against Germany should hostilities ever develop. Although Stalin was not sure he could trust Hitler, after observing events at Munich with the French and British sellout of the Sudetenland, he felt that he could trust them even less.
The leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and France signed an agreement known as the Munich Agreement at the end of September 1938 that both Great Britain and France believed would appease Germany and forestall future military aggression on Germany’s part. It allowed Germany to annex a strategic portion of Czechoslovakia where border defenses and heavy industries were located. Heavily populated by Germans, this territorial designation was known as the Sudetenland. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain tried to assure the British people that the agreement would lead to settlement of other European border disputes and would keep the peace between Great Britain and Germany. Nevertheless, by the middle of the following March, the agreement became meaningless when Hitler moved his troops in and took over the remainder of Czechoslovakia.
On August 24, 1939, in the time frame of less than one day, another agreement, known as the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, was signed in Moscow that essentially divided Poland into two halves. Germany would also trade industrial machinery in exchange for foodstuffs and strategic minerals, an exchange that would continue until Hitler turned on Russia. And finally, the pact established a mutual agreement that Germany would not interfere with Soviet aims in Finland, Latvia, and Estonia, but the southernmost Baltic state of Lithuania would be at the mercy of Germany.
By the summer of 1940, the isolationist posture in Congress was weakening somewhat, which was illustrated at a hefty cost to American taxpayers. With congressional approval of one navy expansion bill after another, Americans witnessed for the first time events that would shape things to come. The expansion bills provided for not only hundreds of thousands of increased tonnage of combatant and auxiliary ships, but also the manufacture of 15,000 aircraft for the navy.8
Where only twelve private companies had been manufacturing for the navy as of June 30, 1940, this number would increase to over 100 companies by the end of June 1941. And by that same time, nearly 700 new navy vessels would be under construction. Frank Knox reported in his navy budget that unpaid obligations had, by June 30, 1941, reached over $10 billion and that over $7 billion in obligations were estimated for 1942.9
Amidst all the military expansion of 1940, the Republicans held their national convention in Philadelphia during the last week of June. Wendell Willkie was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate. While he did not start out as the strongest contender, he beat out Robert Taft, son of President William Howard Taft, and the party voted solidly for noninvolvement in the war in Europe.
The British Purchasing Mission, which had been established in Washington in November 1939, reached an agreement with the U.S. government allowing Britain to pu
rchase 40 percent of U.S. aircraft production. To help finance this huge rearmament, Americans’ taxes were increased, and 2.2 million people who previously did not pay taxes were brought into the fold.
By this time, it was obvious that in the interest of the Americans’ own rearmament program, the export of strategic materials could not continue, and it was announced that as of August 1940, the president would no longer export to Japan aviation fuel and a variety of machine tools. The commanding general of IX Corps in San Francisco, John L. DeWitt, reported that if Japanese aircraft fuel purchases continued, the United States would run short within six to nine months. From this time on, Japan’s fuel reserves started to dwindle. This event would redirect Japan’s interest to the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya for their oil and rubber.
Congress was on a roll. With the recent passage of the military-expansion bills, the next logical step would be the Selective Service Act. Well into 1940, American mobilization had been set to U.S. military requirements on a World War I dimension. The U.S. Army appropriation of $6 billion in 1940 alone equaled appropriations spent over the previous sixteen years.10 But World War II would require twice the call of World War I. The new equation was the fact that the Americans’ future enemies were increasing at a far greater rate than their own new appropriations were. By the fall of 1941, the United States could still list only thirty-three infantry divisions, which included only four armored divisions.11 By September, the War Department had plans for an army of over one and a half million.12 By comparison, Japan alone at this time was calling up another two million. Another two million!13
To meet the American manpower shortage, Congress had passed the Selective Training and Service Act of September 16, 1940, the first peacetime draft in American history. All men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five were required to register with their local draft boards.14 Everyone who registered on October 16, 1940, received a draft number. Similar to the process used in 1917, all numbers were placed in a huge glass bowl, and in a ceremony two weeks later in Washington, a number was drawn and handed to the president. This number represented the order in which registrants would be drafted. Presenting the number to President Roosevelt was none other than Secretary of War Henry Stimson.
In addition to serving as President Hoover’s secretary of state from 1929 to 1933, Stimson had previously served as secretary of war from 1911 to 1913 under President William Howard Taft. Although Stimson was a Republican, Roosevelt was counting on him to generate the bipartisan support he needed when he reappointed Stimson secretary of war in 1940. Roosevelt had made the perfect choice. By the time Stimson had left the Hoover cabinet in 1933, he had already become very outspoken in opposing Japan’s aggression in China, and he would eventually assume personal control over the development of the atomic bomb. Described by some as a leading influence in declaring war against Germany, Stimson gave Roosevelt his full support, and throughout World War II, he would oversee armed forces of over sixteen million Americans who served.
Leading military operations at the beginning of World War II were Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold Stark. General Marshall had been heavily involved in planning and training during World War I, and between the wars, he was one of the key planners in the War Department, eventually being named Deputy Chief of Staff of that department. Generally, those who disagreed with President Roosevelt would be shown the door, but that was not the case with Marshall. Even after he openly disagreed with Roosevelt about providing Britain with aircraft, Roosevelt actually nominated Marshall for the position of army chief of staff, and he was sworn in on September 1, 1939, the same day that Germany invaded Poland.
The relationship between Franklin Roosevelt and Admiral Stark dated all the way back to 1914, when Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the navy, and although they were friends, it was not the friendship that earned Stark the CNO appointment. Stark had served extensive duty on torpedo boats and destroyers during World War I, developing his expertise in antisubmarine warfare. During the 1930s, he served as aide to the secretary of the navy, as well as the chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, and it was in these roles that Stark was able to hone his diplomatic skills. He was taken by surprise when Roosevelt appointed him chief of naval operations, thinking that the role should have gone to Admiral Ernest King. But other top naval officials agreed with Roosevelt, and Stark was sworn in during August of 1939. (Stark would later be replaced by Admiral King in March of 1942.)
By late summer of 1940, as Congress was voting in the military expansion bills and the Selective Service Act, Roosevelt took another step in building up U.S. forces. He exercised his executive power to call up the National Guard, and on August 31, 1940, he signed the order that would bring three hundred thousand men into active federal service.15
But this still didn’t solve the manpower shortage because all draftees would serve only twelve months of active duty and then be released at about the time that they were fully trained. Those drafted would only serve their twelve months in the Western Hemisphere, which eliminated them from manning the one hundred twenty American overseas thousand-man garrisons from Iceland, Panama, Alaska, and Hawaii, to the Philippines.16 The American press, however, built a very impressive picture of American invincibility. Unfortunately, the Americans’ perception of the Japanese was exactly the opposite. Americans considered the Japanese to have poor eyesight and to be incapable of flying. They also had the impression that the Japanese military possessed obsolete military hardware and were totally uninformed on the state of American defenses in the Far East. Soon they would learn differently.
Another manpower resource for the military came out of the CCC. In 1933, Congress had formed the Civilian Conservation Corps with the mission to put thousands of unemployed young men to work in many government-sponsored programs. FDR ordered that it be managed by the army. This had its advantages and disadvantages. Within two months, more than three hundred thousand men were mobilized into about fifteen hundred camps, a record for the army.17 And because the army was in charge, about three thousand regular officers, as well as noncommissioned officers, were needed to operate and manage the program. In turn, it also required the War Department to call to active duty a number of reserve officers to replace the regulars. And by 1935, ninety-three hundred reserve officers were serving in the CCC.18 Although no actual military training was involved in running the CCC, the associated disciplined exposure to hundreds of thousands, as well as the valuable tutoring by thousands of reserve officers, would offer a head start for World War II.
By September of 1940, the noninvolvement sentiment in the United States had mushroomed into a political movement by the name of the America First Committee (AFC). Roosevelt had just announced his conclusion to the Destroyers for Bases Agreement with Britain, and with each step taking the country closer to war, the group announced their formal organization on September 4.
Founded by a group of Yale law students, the AFC’s ultimate focus was to keep Americans out of the European conflict, and they fought Roosevelt every step of the way in their opposition to Lend-Lease, U.S. Navy convoying, and repealing the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s. AFC’s primary policy was, instead of aiding the Allies with armaments, to build up American defenses at home first. In their strategic viewpoint, a stronger defense at home was the only way to preserve American democracy. Although the organization banned Nazis, Fascists, and Communists, the mere fact that they opposed Roosevelt’s interventionist policy put them at odds with the president and his cronies, who labeled AFC’s members as disloyal and unpatriotic. Roosevelt went so far as to deem AFC’s efforts as subversive, appointing John Franklin Carter, a journalist, to head up an investigation of AFC’s leadership. To Roosevelt’s dismay, Carter wasn’t able to come up with any Nazi leanings among its leadership or within AFC’s policies.
With backers like the powerful publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, and Joseph Kennedy, ambassador to Great Britain, its m
embership eventually grew to nearly one million.19 Other prominent businessmen included General Robert E. Wood of Sears Roebuck, H. Smith Richardson of the Vick Chemical Company, and Sterling Morton of the Morton Salt Company, along with Robert R. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, Joseph M. Patterson of the New York Daily News, and other publishers. Congressional representation would include two of Roosevelt’s most outspoken critics, Senator Burton Wheeler (D–MT) and Senator Gerald Nye (R–ND). Just a few of the many celebrities who joined up included Sinclair Lewis, Gore Vidal, Walt Disney, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Even former president Hoover became an AFC member, and by April of 1941, America’s favorite hero who had made the first transatlantic solo flight, Colonel Charles Lindbergh, also joined the ranks of AFC membership.
At the other end of the spectrum, another committee promoting peace evolved from the revision of the neutrality laws after war broke out in Europe in 1939. This organization also consisted of membership from both parties, including Henry Stimson and Frank Knox. Formed in May 1940, and chaired by newspaper editor William Allen White, this organization’s conviction that a war involving Britain and France would eventually involve the United States led to the revision of their title to the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. With the ultimate goal of keeping Americans out of the war by aiding the Allies, the group supported Roosevelt’s Destroyers for Bases Agreement, Lend-Lease, and naval convoying, and sought support to have the Neutrality Acts revised. The views of the committee were shared by the president and Secretary of State Hull, who was largely responsible for the repeal of that portion of the Neutrality Act that prohibited the sale of arms to the belligerents. This concept in itself put thousands of Depression Americans back to work, assuming, of course, that the British and French cash would hold out.
On September 27, 1940, the representatives of Germany, Japan, and Italy met in Berlin to conclude the signing of the Tripartite Pact. Representing Germany was Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and for Japan, Ambassador Saburo Kurusu, who would in November 1941 be sent to Washington to aid Ambassador Nomura in the negotiations with the United States. Italy was represented by Count Galeazzo Ciano, the son-in-law of Mussolini, who was later able to read between the lines. Count Ciano came to the unfortunate realization that for Italy’s survival, it must make a separate peace with the Allies, a position for which Mussolini would have him executed.
