by FDR
The Japanese saw themselves as colonizers rather than conquerors—like the Dutch in the East Indies, the French in Indochina, the British in Burma and Malaya, and yes, the Americans in the Philippines. They invested heavily in Manchuria, installed the boy emperor of China (who had been deposed in 1912) as sovereign, renamed the territory Manchukuo, and immediately dispatched half a million citizens to settle there, with another 5 million slated to join them. Between 1932 and 1941 Japanese public and private investment in Manchuria totaled $3.3 billion (roughly $45 billion in today’s currency.)9
Nevertheless, the Stimson Doctrine suited America’s sense of righteousness. It reflected the influence of generations of American missionaries in China as well as latent public support for Chinese independence. Yet it ignored strategic reality in the Far East, overlooked the needs of the growing Japanese economy, and underestimated the advantages of modernization that accompanied Japanese colonization.
Roosevelt embraced the Stimson Doctrine wholeheartedly. Despite warnings in 1932 by brain trusters Raymond Moley and Rexford Tugwell that America’s interests lay with Japan, FDR, as president-elect, backed Stimson down the line. “How could you expect me to do otherwise, given my Delano ancestors?” he asked.10 Roosevelt’s comment was flippant. Yet it determined American policy for the next decade.
As Moley and Tugwell had warned, the Stimson Doctrine curdled U.S. relations with Japan but had little effect on the situation in the Far East. As a policy, it was purely rhetorical: “an attitude rather than a program” in the words of historian Herbert Feis.11 When Japan stepped over the line with its assault on China in 1937, the United States took few tangible steps to oppose it. Roosevelt condemned Tokyo’s action and provided some token aid to Chiang Kai-shek but did nothing to curtail American exports to Japan, including the strategic materials and petroleum that fueled the Japanese war machine. The United States championed Chinese sovereignty verbally but resisted committing substantial resources to defend it.
By 1940 Japan’s wrongful incursion into China was three years old, with no conceivable end in sight. Japanese troops had won significant victories and occupied China’s most productive coastal regions but had not been able to subdue Chinese resistance. In a word, China had become a quagmire. The impatience of the military to end the stalemate brought down Japan’s government in July 1940 (the third government to fall in less than two years) and installed an Army-dominated regime pledged to expedite the war and solve Japan’s dependence on foreign imports, particularly those from the United States.12 The Roosevelt administration was not complicit in the fall of the government, but a more conciliatory stance toward Manchuria—as was urged by the American embassy in Tokyo—would have provided Japanese politicians more leverage to withstand the military.*
Until 1940 the Sino-Japanese conflict was a purely regional affair. It convulsed Asia but remained an isolated event unconnected with the accelerating pace of aggression in Europe.13 With a new government in Tokyo, that changed quickly. Encouraged by Hitler’s conquest of France and the Netherlands, as well as the onset of the Battle of Britain, Japan’s promilitary government turned its eye to the colonial outposts in Southeast Asia: the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies, the rubber plantations of British Malaya, and the tin mines and rice paddies of French Indochina. “We should not miss the present opportunity or we shall be blamed by posterity,” said Japan’s new war minister, General Hideki Tojo.14
With Britain under German attack, Tokyo prevailed upon London to close the Burma Road for three months (cutting China’s principal supply route) and to withdraw the British garrison from Shanghai. A more concerted move against the French and Dutch colonies appeared imminent. The path to a world war lay open. Roosevelt responded on July 26 with an embargo banning the export of high-octane aviation gasoline and premium grades of iron and steel scrap to Japan. It was a slap on the wrist, but Washington hoped it would send a message to Tokyo and deter further moves against Southeast Asia. “We are not going to get into any war by forcing Japan into a position where she is going to fight for some reason or another,” FDR told the State Department.15
Roosevelt’s limited embargo produced the opposite effect to what he intended. It riled the Japanese but did nothing to restrain them. Indeed, it convinced Tokyo that its American supply line was in jeopardy and should be replaced as soon as possible. On September 23, with the reluctant acquiescence of Vichy France, Japan occupied the northern portion of Indochina, adjacent to the Chinese province of Yunnan. Roosevelt responded the following day with a complete embargo on all types of iron and steel intended for Japan and on September 25 announced a $100 million loan to China through the Export-Import Bank.16 An implacable tit for tat had begun. The United States and Japan settled into a rhythm that would characterize their relations for the next year. Each undertook a series of escalating moves that provoked but failed to restrain the other. Japan gambled on the action it could take without precipitating open conflict with the United States. The Roosevelt administration—which did not give its full attention to the matter—reckoned it could pressure Tokyo by economic means without driving the Japanese to war.17
Two days after Roosevelt announced the loan to China, Japan joined the Berlin-Rome axis. The move caught Washington by surprise. Japan recognized the leadership of Germany and Italy in Europe; Germany and Italy recognized Japanese hegemony in Greater East Asia. All three agreed to come to the aid of one another if attacked by a third party that was then at peace. Since the treaty explicitly excluded the Soviet Union, it was unmistakably clear that the pact was aimed at the United States. In effect, events in Europe and Asia were now joined. By threatening Washington with a two-front war, each of the contracting parties hoped to prevent American intervention.18
Japan had raised the ante, and Roosevelt began to have misgivings about a confrontation in the Pacific. In early October 1940 Churchill requested the United States send a naval squadron (“the bigger the better”) to visit Singapore—a bit of saber rattling he thought would intimidate the Japanese.19 General Marshall and Admiral Stark thought the move unnecessarily provocative, and FDR agreed. With the election a month away, the president simply ignored Churchill’s request and sent no reply.
Throughout the winter and spring of 1940–41 Roosevelt received conflicting advice. The hawks in the administration—Stimson, Knox, Morgenthau, Ickes, and Harry Hopkins—urged the president to tighten the screws on Japan and embargo the shipment of the oil it so desperately needed. (Eighty percent of Japanese petroleum came from the United States.) Secretary of State Hull and the military urged FDR to go slow. Hull favored continued negotiations; Marshall and Stark argued that if Japan’s oil supply were closed off she would be forced to seek other sources. The Dutch East Indies, Burma, Malaya, and even the Philippines would be threatened. Not only was the United States unprepared, but a military confrontation against Japan in Southeast Asia would undermine efforts to support Britain in the Atlantic. “Every day that we are able to maintain peace and still support the British is valuable time gained,” said Stark. Marshall agreed. This was “as unfavorable a moment as you could choose for provoking trouble,” the chief of staff told the president, and he urged that the Marine garrison in Shanghai be withdrawn to avoid a possible incident.20
With the Battle of the Atlantic raging full tilt, Japanese policy remained a secondary issue for Roosevelt. But he was not dismayed by the split among his advisers. The president liked to keep his saddlebags balanced. When Justice James McReynolds of Tennessee resigned from the Supreme Court in February 1941, Morgenthau suggested FDR appoint Cordell Hull (another Tennessean) to the vacancy and make Stimson secretary of state. As Morgenthau saw it, that would remove the principal advocate of negotiations from the cabinet and put the more bellicose Stimson in charge. Roosevelt refused to be stampeded. It was a bad suggestion, he told Morgenthau. In retrospect, said the president, he wasn’t at all sure Stimson had been right about Manchuria in 1932 and that Hull’s tactics of negotiation
might have been the better course for the United States to pursue. “The president’s comments certainly surprised me,” wrote Morgenthau.21
Policymakers in Tokyo were equally divided. According to longtime ambassador Joseph C. Grew—a schoolmate of FDR at Groton and Harvard who sometimes wrote “Dear Frank” letters to the president—the Emperor, the premier, and a majority of the cabinet, as well as most of the Japanese Navy, favored continued negotiation with the United States. The Army, desperate for victory in China, pressed for war, as did Foreign Minister Matsuoka, but thus far they had been unable to convince their colleagues.22*
On April 13, 1941, Matsuoka scored an important diplomatic victory when Japan and the Soviet Union announced the conclusion of a neutrality pact between the two nations. Again Washington was caught flat-footed. Russia recognized the independence of Manchukuo and implicit Japanese control; Japan reciprocated with respect to Outer Mongolia, a Soviet satellite similarly detached from China. The pact represented a significant strategic breakthrough. By resolving the smoldering colonial tensions along Manchukuo’s border, it freed both nations to shift their military focus elsewhere.
While Matsuoka prepared the way for war, the peace faction in the Japanese government moved to repair the breach with Washington. In early 1941 Tokyo replaced its ambassador to the United States with Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, a former foreign minister who had served as naval attaché in Washington during World War I and was acquainted with Roosevelt from that time. As foreign minister, Nomura had shown a keen interest in improving relations with the United States.23 He feared the drift to war and undertook the Washington posting at the urging of naval colleagues to help prevent it.24 Roosevelt received Nomura cordially. He recalled their earlier friendship, said he intended to call him “Admiral” rather than “Ambassador,” and proposed they talk candidly. “There is plenty of room in the Pacific area for everybody,” said the president. “It would not do this country any good nor Japan any good, but both of them harm to get into war,” to which Nomura readily assented.25
Roosevelt suggested that Nomura might find it useful to sit down with Hull and discuss how relations could be improved. For the next nine months Nomura and Hull met some fifty times, often at the secretary’s home in the Wardman Park Hotel. Hull wrote later he credited Nomura “with being honestly sincere in trying to avoid war between his country and mine.”26 Both men worked under severe handicaps. Nomura was out of step with his government in Tokyo, and Hull, who was in poor health, was often excluded from White House strategy sessions.27
Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 took Tokyo by surprise. When he recovered from the shock, Foreign Minister Matsuoka said it provided Japan with a golden opportunity to extinguish for all time the Russian threat in Siberia. “He who would search for pearls must dive deep,” he told the cabinet.28 Despite the recently concluded neutrality agreement with Moscow, Matsuoka maintained that the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy took precedence. In his view, which he put directly to the Emperor, Japan should join the war against Russia immediately.29
The Army high command agreed that Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union offered an opportunity, but they wanted no part of another northern adventure. In May 1939 the Japanese Kwantung Army had crossed the Khalkhin-Gol River separating Manchukuo from Soviet-controlled Mongolia to attack Red Army troops stationed on the other side. The fighting escalated through the summer, culminating in the humiliating defeat of the Japanese at the end of August. Japan’s losses totaled more than 50,000 men killed and wounded; the Russians (under General Georgi Zhukov) lost one-fifth that number.30* There was as yet no evidence that Stalin was reducing his Siberian garrison to meet the German invasion, and without overwhelming numerical superiority the Japanese generals had no interest in attacking the Red Army again.31
Instead of going north, the Army advocated a southern strategy. The German attack would keep the Russians at bay, and with its northern flank protected Japan could move south against Burma, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. Seizing Southeast Asia would further isolate China, ensuring Chiang’s eventual defeat. But above all it would provide continued access to vital raw materials. And the petroleum from the rich oil fields of the East Indies would eliminate Japan’s dependence on the United States.
“The Japs are having a real drag-down and knock-out fight trying to decide which way to jump,” Roosevelt (who thanks to MAGIC intercepts was privy to the Tokyo debate) told Harold Ickes on July 1. “No one knows what the decision will be, but it is terribly important for the control of the Atlantic for us to keep peace in the Pacific. I simply have not got enough Navy to go round.”32
At a meeting of the privy council held in the presence of the Emperor on July 2, the Japanese government chose to go south. The Kwantung Army would be reinforced to take advantage of the situation should Russia suddenly collapse, but the principal thrust would be southward. “The Imperial Government will continue its efforts to effect a settlement of the China Incident, and seek to establish a solid basis for the security of the nation. This will involve an advance into the Southern Regions and, depending on future developments, a settlement of the Soviet Question as well.” The Emperor and the Navy hoped the southern strategy could be pursued peacefully but were under no illusions. “The Imperial Government will carry out the above program no matter what obstacles may be encountered.… In case the diplomatic negotiations break down, preparations for war with England and America will also be carried forward.”33
On July 23 Japanese troops, already garrisoned in northern Indochina, moved into the southern portion of the country. Under a new protocol signed with Vichy, Japan acquired the use of eight airfields including Da Nang and Bienhoa, the naval bases at Saigon and Cam Ranh Bay, and the right to station an unspecified number of troops in the south. This provided the Japanese with a forward vantage point from which not only to interdict the remaining supply routes into China but to threaten Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines.
Cables from Ambassador William Leahy in Vichy as well as MAGIC intercepts alerted Roosevelt as early as July 14 that the Japanese planned to move into southern Indochina.* At cabinet on the eighteenth Morgenthau pressed the president for a response: “What are you going to do on the economic front against Japan if she makes this move?”
“Well, to my surprise [wrote Morgenthau] the President gave us quite a lecture why we should not make any move because if we did, if we stopped all oil, it would simply drive the Japanese down to the Dutch East Indies, and it would mean war in the Pacific.”34
FDR’s caution dovetailed with the military’s assessment. On July 21, 1941, Admiral Stark forwarded to the president a Navy Department memorandum emphasizing the paramount importance of the Battle of the Atlantic and suggesting that the Japanese were unlikely to move beyond Indochina unless the United States cut off the flow of oil. “An embargo would probably result in a fairly early attack by Japan on Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies, and possibly would involve the United States in an early war in the Pacific.” Stark added a handwritten postscript noting his concurrence.35 Marshall told Stimson essentially the same. “Collapse in the Atlantic would be fatal; collapse in the Far East would be serious but not fatal.”36
When Roosevelt met with his cabinet on July 24, the day after the Japanese occupation of southern Indochina, he spent much of the time whiplashing his subordinates to expedite aid shipments to the Soviet Union. He was annoyed by the Japanese move but had not changed his view that the United States should not overreact. “Notwithstanding that Japan was boldly making this hostile move,” wrote Ickes that evening, “the President was still unwilling to draw the noose tight. He thought it might be better to slip the noose around Japan’s neck and give it a jerk now and then.”37
The noose Roosevelt envisaged was a freeze on Japanese assets in the United States. That would require specific government approval before funds could be released to pay for exports to Japan. It would not embar
go trade but would add a modicum of inconvenience and uncertainty. The Japanese would have to apply for an export license before each shipment. Much to the disappointment of the hawks in the administration, FDR said the United States would continue to ship oil and gasoline. Asked specifically by acting Treasury secretary Daniel Bell (Morgenthau was on vacation) how Japanese requests for petroleum should be handled, FDR said he was “inclined to grant the licenses for shipment as the applications are presented.”38
Roosevelt was more explicit later that day when speaking extemporaneously to volunteers from the Office of Civilian Defense. People are asked to conserve gasoline, he said. Why should they do so when we are shipping all of this gasoline to Japan?
Now the answer is a very simple one. There is a world war going on, and there has been for some time. One of our efforts, from the very beginning, was to prevent the spread of that world war in certain areas where it hadn’t started. One of those areas is a place called the Pacific Ocean. It was very essential from our own selfish point of view of defense to prevent a war from starting in the South Pacific.…
All right. And now here is this Nation called Japan. Whether they had aggressive purposes to enlarge their empire southward, they did not have any oil of their own. Now, if we had cut the oil off, they probably would have gone down to the Dutch East Indies a year ago, and you would have had war. Therefore, there was—you might call—a method in letting this oil go to Japan, with the hope—and it has worked for two years—of keeping war out of the South Pacific for our own good, for the good of the defense of Great Britain, and the freedom of the seas.39
