As in Weimar Germany the failure of the centre implied the rise of Right or Left. The latter, though growing more significant through the ‘30s, had no more roots in Japanese society than the centre; there was no strong tradition of radical materialism, no large socialist or communist parties seeking a compromise between economic growth and social justice.
The Right, on the other hand, could offer a traditionalist anti-materialism to those suffering material hardship and visions of a stronger Japan to those suffering from the effects of Western competition. As in Germany little more than lip-service was paid to the anti-plutocratic elements of this ‘ideology’; what really mattered was that a militant nationalist policy could turn attention away from the formidable problems at home. Lebensraum on the Asian mainland would provide new land for the inhabitants of the crowded Japanese islands, new markets for Japanese products, new sources of raw materials for a country which had next to none of its own. All the young men who might join revolutionary groups would enter the armed forces instead; they would be purified in the service of the nation rather than corrupted in the godless ways of alien materialism. They would become modern Samurai, the heirs of past Japanese glories.
All would be cloaked in the familiar phrases. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere would bring justice and order to the war-torn mainland; the Japanese Army would assume that burden of exporting civilisation previously borne by the white races.
Yet time for the completion of this glorious endeavour was not unlimited. China, the obvious centrepiece of the Sphere, was apparently sorting out its own problems. Both Chiang Kai-Shek’s nationalist movement and the Communist Party were growing yearly stronger at the expense of those warlords who for decades had held the country in splintered chaos. The Japanese had taken Manchuria in 1932 and granted it a fictional independence as Manchukuo; if they were to save the rest of China from disorder it would have to be soon, before the Chinese saved themselves.
1937 seemed an opportune year. Europe was preoccupied with the imminence of its own catastrophe, the United States absorbed in contemplation of its isolationist navel. Only the old enemy to the north presented a military threat, and this had been much reduced by the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany and Italy the previous year. Imperial Japan took the irreversible plunge. An incident at the Marco Polo bridge near Peking was deliberately allowed to get out of hand, and within weeks the Japanese Army was marching south towards Shanghai, the Yangtse valley and the conquest of China. Or so it thought.
But the Chinese did not submit, preferring to withdraw deeper and deeper into the vastness of their country. Soon, to the annoyance of the Japanese, they were receiving help from the United States, Britain and France.
The two European powers could be ignored. They were far away, they were weak, and they were otherwise involved. But the Americans were a different proposition. Their enmity, though clearly hypocritical - as the future Foreign Minister Matsuoka said: ‘And what country in its expansion era has ever failed to be trying to its neighbours? Ask the American Indian or the Mexican . . .’ - was also dangerous. No one was as aware of the Japanese Armed Forces’ dependence on the United States as the leaders of the Japanese Armed Forces. The Navy, which protected both Japan and its overseas armies, was built largely with American scrap-iron and ran on American oil. The threat was real. Though the Japanese knew that the United States was as yet both unwilling and unable to fight a war in the Pacific, the threat could not be ignored. The need for haste in the subjugation of China was more apparent than ever.
The outbreak of war in Europe improved the situation, in that it diverted Western forces and attention. The Nazi- Soviet Pact was a shock but in the long-term beneficial to Japan; it neutralised the Soviet Union almost as effectively as a German attack would have done. But there were also new problems to consider, most notably those concerning the Dutch East Indies, Japan’s only alternative source of oil. If the Netherlands fell to the Germans who would assume control in Batavia? Japan was not at this time considering herself for the vacant appointment, but she was determined that no one else should secure it. Through the first half of 1940 Japanese diplomacy became very insistent on this issue. The United States, misinterpreting these cries of alarm emanating from Tokyo as evidence of fresh aggressive designs, proceeded to retaliate.
Roosevelt and Hull had long been both admonishing the Japanese and supplying their armed forces with the materials they needed to do the things they were being admonished for. In the summer of 1940, with Germany victorious in the West and Japan seemingly more voracious than ever in the East, the American administration deemed it time to act. Two steps were taken, one to weaken Japan and one to strengthen the United States. Roosevelt restricted the sale of oil and scrap-iron to foreign governments and firms, and decreed the creation of a ‘two-ocean navy’, one that would ensure US superiority in both Atlantic and Pacific by the end of 1942. The message was crystal-clear.
Imperial Japan and the United States were now trapped in a vicious spiral of measures and counter-measures that could only end in war. The former had grown used to the latter’s complaints and to the feeling that there was nothing much behind them. Now, suddenly, the gloves were off and the fists were very visible. In two years’ time those fists would pack a formidable punch, while the Japanese, thanks to the new restrictions, would be less well-equipped to fight than they were now. Speed, which had been advisable before, was now imperative. If there was to be a war with America it had to start soon, while there was still some hope of victory. If there was to be an acceptable peace that too had to come soon, while Japan was still bargaining from a position of strength.
The negotiations for peace, and the preparations for war, went on. The political leaders sought a formula that would both avoid the fatal collision and keep alive Japan’s dreams of empire on the mainland. Would a pledge to move no further south satisfy the Americans? Would they then allow Japan a free hand in China?
The answer was no. The Americans did not care about, or wish to understand, Japan’s predicament. Like authoritarian parents scolding a child they saw only consequences, not motivations. Having delivered the scolding and the threats they simply turned their self-righteous backs. And not only metaphorically. For through the spring of 1941 the US Navy was becoming increasingly embroiled in the distant Atlantic.
Here was the chance, perhaps the last chance, for Japan to strike. A neutrality pact was signed with the Soviet Union in April; Japan’s rear was formally secured. Yet still the leadership held back from the ultimate step. The Army was ready for war but the Navy doubted if it could be won. The politicians wondered whether the negotiations would proceed more smoothly if the sword was more visible. They pushed towards the brink, trusting in Roosevelt and Hull to pull them back with concessions.
Then, out of the blue as far as the Japanese were concerned, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. Things were moving too fast; the world was being rearranged and the Japanese were not making the most of the opportunity. If they did not act soon then either an all-powerful Axis or an all-powerful Soviet-American bloc would be standing in their way, re-asserting the supremacy of the white man. At two Imperial Conferences, on 25 June and 2 July, the long- delayed decisions were finally taken.
In the north the Army would wait. ‘In case the German-Soviet war should develop to our advantage, we will make use of our military strength, settle the Soviet question and guarantee the safety of our northern borders.’ The Kwangtung Army, in ‘friendly’ Manchukuo, would be strengthened. Its staff would draw up plans for the invasion and administration of Siberia.
They would only be contingency plans. Overall the Army did not much like the enormous distances, the difficulties of terrain and climate involved. And there was no oil in Siberia. The Kwangtung Army would only move in if and when the Soviet Union was decisively beaten by the Germans.
For the moment then, Japanese attention was focused on the south. Now was the time to raise the stakes, while
the Americans were involved in the Atlantic and awaiting with trepidation the outcome in Russia. In July the Japanese Army took over the rump of French Indo-China.
The gamble failed. The US Government, far from turning a blind eye to this latest indiscretion, announced a freezing of Japanese assets in the United States. The British and, more significantly, the Dutch East Indies administration, soon followed suit. There would be no more oil to power Japanese expansionism.
In Tokyo the worm wriggled on the end of its own hook. From here on each turn of a Japanese propeller reduced the precious stocks of fuel oil. The Navy joined the Army in arguing for war. As it would take both six months to prepare the politicians were allowed that much time to find an acceptable alternative. They failed. Konoye asked to meet Roosevelt, but was refused. A grim fatalism gripped the rulers in Tokyo. One word expressed it all. ‘Sayonara’ - so be it. It was no longer a drift towards war - it was a countdown.
III
In December 1941 the Japanese Army comprised fifty-one divisions. Twenty-two were engaged in China, fourteen were occupying Manchukuo, and five were based in the home islands. This left ten for the conquest of South-east Asia. Clearly quality, rather than quantity, would be the key to the early Japanese successes.
The Japanese had learnt two valuable lessons in China. One was the use of aircraft in a ground-support role. The other was the art of retaining mobility in difficult conditions. It was frequently impossible to move heavy vehicles or guns away from the few reasonable roads and so the Japanese, if they wished to avoid costly frontal attacks, had been forced to devise lighter equipment. Light tanks were constructed, with the emphasis on mobility rather than firepower. Light mortars were developed for the troops to carry. Bicycles were flown into China by the thousand. The Japanese Army became masters of mobility in areas where a western army would hesitate to move at all. The extra training in jungle warfare and amphibious landings which took place in the months preceding Pearl Harbor thus honed an already sharpened weapon.
Their prospective opponents were in a sorrier state. Between them the British, the Dutch and the Americans could muster over 350,000 troops in the threatened areas, but this numerical superiority had little significance. The western-officered native units, which made up more than half the total, were badly trained and equipped and hardly bursting with enthusiasm at the prospect of fighting their fellow Asians on behalf of the White Man’s Burden in South-east Asia. The European and American troops were not much superior. More highly motivated perhaps, but little more experienced in modern warfare, and not at all in its tropical form.
These limitations were serious enough; the failure to perceive them was catastrophic. It was widely assumed that the Japanese, like other Asians, would prove indifferent warriors - who had they ever beaten but decrepit Tsarist Russia? - and therefore not too much of a problem. The Japanese had acquired, not undeservedly, a reputation in the West as the Asian mimics of the white man’s ways. From this it was assumed, quite wrongly, that they were incapable of initiatives of their own. All Western intelligence of Japanese strategic thought, weaponry and fighting ability was perceived through the distorting lens of racism. It echoed the German mistake in Russia, and it was to have equally disastrous consequences. No one dreamed that the Japanese had developed the finest fighter aircraft of the war. The British fully expected to hold Hong Kong, where they had only four planes, for the three months it would take for reinforcements to arrive! McArthur, the US C-in-C in the Philippines, talked of setting the ‘paper cities of Japan’ ablaze with his nine B-17 bombers! He was so confident of holding Luzon that he decided to spread his forces out and so hold the entire archipelago.
A similar optimism was, more understandably, displayed in Allied naval circles. There was virtual parity in capital ships - eleven Allied to ten Japanese - and capital ships were what naval warfare was all about. Or so everyone, including most of the Japanese, still believed. Unfortunately for the Allies it was no longer true. Carriers were now the key to the world’s oceans, and the Japanese had ten to the Allies’ three in the Pacific area.
Six of Japan’s, armed with over four hundred planes, made up Admiral Nagumo’s First Air Fleet, the most powerful naval strike force the world had ever seen. It was, like the rest of the Japanese Fleet, a highly-trained, disciplined and coherent force. It saw itself as the heir to a great naval tradition; it had never suffered defeat. It eagerly anticipated new laurels, to add to those won at Russian expense in 1904-5.
Both Army and Navy were thus strong in width and capable, as was soon to be seen, of delivering blows of stunning force. In the short run they were more than a match for anything the Western powers could throw against them.
But there was no strength in depth. For all its qualities the Japanese Armed Forces could not overcome the limitations of the Japanese economy. Like the Wehrmacht the sword of the Rising Sun was a virtually finite resource when compared with those of its enemies. Each hack or slash would have to be definitive. Victory would have to be swift, or in the long run defeat would be by a thousand cuts. And this victory, given the inconceivability of conquering the enemies’ homelands, would have to be primarily psychological. If the enemy could not be destroyed then his will to fight on had to be.
Was this possible? The Japanese military leaders preferred to ignore the question. They had to try. Sayonara.
Wars are easier to begin than to end. The Japanese strategy for the opening months was obvious. A secure source of oil was the number one priority, therefore the Dutch East Indies and Borneo had to be taken and held. The communications between these islands and Japan had to be secured, therefore South-east Asia had to be taken in toto from the Dutch, British and American forces stationed there. The only serious threat to this catalogue of conquest was the US Pacific Fleet sitting in Pearl Harbor. That had to be destroyed. It could only be destroyed by a surprise attack. Surprise was only possible at the commencement of hostilities. Ipso facto the war would have to begin with an attack on Pearl Harbor.
With the American fleet accounted for, and South-east Asia incorporated in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a vast defensive perimeter would be created, running from Burma around the East Indies and New Guinea and north across the Pacific to the Aleutians. This would then have to be defended against the inevitable counterattack. The enemy would be repulsed, and would realize that eventual success would cost an exorbitant price. He would thus sue for a reasonable peace. So ran the theory. So, almost, would run the reality.
IV
At 07.53 on 7 December Flight Leader Mitsuo Fuchida stared down from his cockpit at the blue waters of Pearl Harbor. It looked uncannily like the model he had spent so many hours studying in the Akagi operations room. Nothing was moving. The planes on Hickam Field were lined up wing-tip to wing-tip; the capital ships of the US Pacific Fleet stern to bow along ‘Battleship Row’. ‘Tora tora tora,’ he radioed the anxious Nagumo - surprise had been complete. Behind Fuchida the sky was full of Kido Butai’s planes, the pilots waiting to begin their attack. He fired the blue signal flare; they peeled off from their formations and flew down into war.
An hour or so later Pearl Harbor was full of burning, keeling ships. Four of the nine capital ships were sunk, another four badly damaged. Nearly two hundred planes had been destroyed. Operation ‘Z’ had succeeded.
Across the Pacific to the west other Japanese forces were moving into action. In the South China Sea thousands of soldiers watched from their landing-craft as the shorelines of northern Malaya and southern Thailand grew closer and more distinct. Others waited on the Indo-Chinese frontier for the order to march on Bangkok.
In Formosa Japanese airmen waited for the sky to clear. Their targets were the US air-bases in the Philippines, and the bad weather was to prove a blessing in disguise. For unknown to the cursing Japanese pilots the US planes had been sent aloft on receipt of the news from Pearl Harbor. They would barely have touched down again before the delayed Japanese arrived overhead to
catch them helpless on the ground.
By 10 December the US air strength in the Philippines had been virtually destroyed, and the first Japanese troops were wading ashore in northern Luzon. On the same day Japanese reconnaissance planes discovered the two British capital ships -Prince of Wales and Repulse - which Churchill had optimistically sent east as a deterrent. Within two hours they were no more than bubbles on the surface of the South China Sea.
In four days the Japanese had sunk six and severely damaged four of the eleven capital ships ranged against them. Masters of the sea and masters of the air, they were now ready to assert their mastery on land against the isolated colonial armies of South-east Asia.
Chapter 4: Winter
London/ Washington DC
Optimism is the content of small men in high places.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The two wars, Asian and European, were now inextricably linked in the Pacific Ocean. It remained for either Germany or the United States to close the circle of global war in the Atlantic.
Both hesitated. Roosevelt was unsure whether the American public’s new-found fury, born in the trauma of Pearl Harbor, would stretch to include the greater menace bestriding continental Europe. He hoped the Germans would take the initiative and so render the problem academic.
In Berlin opinions were divided. Goering and the Army leaders, though convinced that war with America was inevitable, saw no need to hasten the evil day. Raeder disagreed. The need to respect the United States’ purely nominal neutrality had hitherto placed severe restrictions on German action in the Atlantic. Now, with war inevitable, and with British and American naval strength depleted by the demands of the war with Japan, those restrictions had to be lifted.
The Moscow Option Page 7
