by FDR
Roosevelt announced the freeze of Japanese assets on July 26. It was coupled with a freeze on Chinese assets and a military order placing the Philippine armed forces under American command.40 Later that afternoon the War Department announced that General Douglas MacArthur had been recalled to active duty to command U.S. forces in the Philippines.* “If there is going to be trouble in the Far East,” Roosevelt told his military aide, Pa Watson, “I want Douglas to be in charge.”
The chain of circumstances leading to MacArthur’s recall is unclear. What little documentation exists suggests MacArthur took the initiative with a letter to FDR’s press secretary Steve Early (an old friend) on March 21, 1941, offering his services to the president. “Isn’t that fine? It is just what I would expect Douglas MacArthur to do,” said Roosevelt. Pa Watson, the president’s military aide, thereupon wrote MacArthur that Roosevelt “wants you in your military capacity rather than any other.” MacArthur replied, “This would naturally be my choice and I am gratified beyond words that this is his decision.”
The War Department was less enthusiastic about MacArthur’s recall than FDR was. By the end of May 1941 MacArthur had heard nothing from Washington and dispatched another letter to Early stating he had booked passage back to the United States and planned to settle in San Antonio. There is no paper trail of what happened next, but apparently FDR made his wishes known to Stimson and Marshall. Early wired MacArthur to sit tight, and on June 20, 1941, Marshall wrote that he and Stimson agreed that “your outstanding qualifications and vast experience in the Philippines make you the logical selection for the Army in the Far East should the situation approach a crisis.”41
After the order freezing Japanese assets was announced, FDR departed Washington for Hyde Park, and four days later he left for New London and the trip to Newfoundland to meet Churchill. There is no doubt about his intentions. The freeze was designed to disconcert the Japanese, but the flow of oil was to continue. Daniel Bell at Treasury was aware of that; Ickes, who had been named petroleum coordinator, was aware; and so was the State Department. “The President’s chief objective in the Pacific for the time being,” Sumner Welles told his British counterpart, Sir Alexander Cadogan, at Argentia, “is the avoidance of war with Japan.”42
The export licenses Japan required fell under the jurisdiction of the interdepartmental Foreign Funds Control Committee, a subcabinet body chaired by Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson. The committee had the sole authority to release the frozen funds. As fate would have it, Acheson was one of the leading hawks in the administration, who had long favored a full embargo of oil shipments to Japan. With Roosevelt and Welles out of the country and Hull taking the waters at the Greenbrier in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, Acheson asserted that the freeze order was imprecise and refused to thaw Japanese funds for any purchases whatever. With the breathtaking arrogance that became his hallmark, the future secretary of state maintained his action could not possibly provoke war in the Pacific since “no rational Japanese could believe that an attack on us could result in anything but disaster for his country.”43* Despite protests from the State Department’s Far Eastern Division and the Treasury, Acheson refused to make any Japanese funds available—a de facto embargo that snuffed out Japan’s access to petroleum. “Whether or not we had a policy, we had a state of affairs,” gloated Acheson in his memoirs.44
FDR learned of the freeze only upon his return from Newfoundland in early September, and by then to reverse the policy and issue the export licenses would have been perceived by many as appeasement. Public opinion polls in early August indicated that 51 percent of Americans believed America should risk war rather than allow Japan to become more powerful. By September that number had risen to 67 percent.45 In that context Roosevelt allowed Acheson’s decision to stand. Contrary to his original intention, all American trade with Japan was now cut off.46 In Tokyo, Ambassador Grew brooded about the effect: “The vicious circle of reprisals and counter reprisals is on. Facilis descensus Averni est. [The descent into Hell is easy.] Unless radical surprises occur, it is difficult to see how the momentum of the down-grade movement can be arrested, or how far it will go. The obvious conclusion is eventual war.”47
The embargo stunned Tokyo. Japan consumed an estimated 12,000 tons of oil each day and had less than a two-year supply on hand. As one Japanese leader put it, the nation was “like a fish in a pond from which the water was gradually being drained away.”48 Added to the worry about petroleum was the balance of naval power in the Pacific. In the summer of 1941 the Imperial Navy enjoyed numerical superiority against the combined fleets of the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. But the naval buildup Congress authorized after the fall of France in 1940 would eliminate that advantage by 1942. If Japan was to act, the window of opportunity was closing rapidly.
On September 6, 1941, the Japanese government met with the Emperor. Prime Minister Prince Fumimaro Konoye, who desperately sought to prevent war, was given a month to negotiate a settlement with the United States. If an agreement to lift the embargo could not be reached by October 10, the armed forces would prepare to move south. Emperor Hirohito, who rarely intervened in such ceremonial conferences, reminded the government of the risks ahead. When the military appeared to equivocate on the desirability of a diplomatic settlement, he reached into his robe, drew out a piece of paper, and read a poem by his grandfather, the great Emperor Meiji:
Throughout the world
Everywhere we are brothers
Why then do the winds and waves rage so turbulently?
After a stunned silence, Admiral Osami Nagano, chief of the Navy general staff, promised that diplomacy would take precedence. “War would be chosen only as an unavoidable last resort.”49*
On the evening of September 6, after the conference adjourned, Prime Minister Konoye invited Ambassador Grew for a private dinner. Traditionally in Japan the prime minister had no contact with foreign envoys, and Konoye took elaborate precautions to keep the meeting secret.50 They dined in the home of a mutual friend, Baron Ito; automobile license plates were altered to avoid identification; servants were sent home before the guests arrived, and the meal was served by Baron Ito’s daughter. For three hours Konoye pressed Grew for a personal meeting with FDR, perhaps in Hawaii. “Time is of the essence,” said the prime minister.51 He told Grew that his government believed the four principles for reconciliation previously announced by Secretary Hull provided a satisfactory basis for resolving all differences: the territorial integrity of all nations; noninterference in the internal affairs of other nations; the open door for trade; and the preservation of the status quo except for change by peaceful means.52 Konoye assured Grew that if he and Roosevelt could agree on the principles, the details would fall into place. “The Prime Minister is cognizant of the fact that certain points may need clarification and more precise formulation, and he is confident that the divergences in view can be reconciled to our mutual satisfaction” (Grew’s emphasis). Konoye said the ship waiting to take him and his party to meet the president was equipped with powerful radio equipment that would allow him to communicate directly with Tokyo. When he reported to the Emperor that an agreement had been reached, “the Emperor would immediately issue a rescript ordering the suspension forthwith of all hostile operations.”53
Grew said, “I returned to the Embassy from that historic meeting with the firm conviction that we had been dealing with a man of unquestioned sincerity, a point which need not be labored when one considers the high traditions of Prince Konoye’s background and family, extending back to the dim ages of Japanese history.”54
Grew immediately informed Washington of his talk with Konoye: “the most important cable to go from his hand since the start of his diplomatic career.”55 In numerous follow-up messages, including a personal letter to FDR on September 22, he warned that time was short.* Above all, he cautioned against the State Department’s tendency to insist on detailed, ironclad commitments before the meeting. It was
not the Japanese way. The conciliation process was evolutionary. Konoye, with the Emperor’s backing, was taking the first step. The alternative, Grew warned, was replacement of the Konoye government by a military dictatorship and a steady drift toward war.56
Washington disregarded Grew’s advice. The hawks in the cabinet—Stimson, Knox, Ickes, and Morgenthau—were not interested in a settlement short of Japan’s capitulation. “I approve of stringing out negotiations,” Stimson told Morgenthau, but “they should not be allowed to ripen into a personal conference between the President and the Prime Minister. I greatly fear that such a conference if actually held would produce concessions which would be highly dangerous to our vitally important relations with China.”57 Hull and the Far Eastern Division of the State Department shared Stimson’s concern. When alerted to the possibility of a Roosevelt-Konoye meeting, the division warned Hull of the consequences, believing that FDR might be too accommodating. It insisted that prior to any summit meeting Japan announce its intention to withdraw from the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy; agree to remove its troops from China; clarify its stand on the open door; and resolve whatever ambiguities there were concerning Hull’s four principles for reconciliation.58
Hull needed no prodding. Weaned on the fundamentalist pessimism of southern Appalachia, the secretary wanted every i dotted before agreeing to a meeting with the Japanese prime minister. He was also concerned about the public effect of such a conference coming so soon after FDR’s dramatic meeting with Churchill off Newfoundland. “I was thoroughly satisfied that a meeting with Konoye, without an advance agreement, could only result in another Munich or in nothing at all. I was opposed to the first Munich and still more opposed to a second Munich.”59
In his Memoirs Hull wrote, “President Roosevelt would have relished a meeting with Konoye, and at first was excited at the prospect. But he instantly agreed that it would be disastrous to hold the meeting without first arriving at a satisfactory agreement.”60 As Hull would have it, the State Department should control negotiations with Japan, and only when it was satisfied should FDR meet with Konoye to ratify what the diplomats had agreed to. Hull’s account appears unlikely. For someone who placed as much faith in his ability to improvise extemporaneous solutions as Roosevelt did, and who thrived in unstructured negotiations, it is difficult to believe that he would have “instantly” passed up the opportunity to meet with Konoye.* A more plausible explanation is that FDR, consumed by the war in Europe, had given the deteriorating situation in the Far East too little attention. Deeply engaged with the battle against German U-boats in the Atlantic, anxious to expedite aid to the Soviet Union, and troubled by the great battle shaping up before Moscow, he had left negotiations with Japan in Hull’s hands too long to overrule him now. And so when Hull and the State Department, plus Stimson, Morgenthau, and Hopkins, argued against such a meeting, Roosevelt acquiesced. Whether a meeting between the president and Konoye in autumn 1941 would have averted war is one of history’s imponderables. But it did not take place.61†
If Hull, the State Department, and the hawks in the cabinet feared a Roosevelt-Konoye meeting, ultranationalists in Tokyo were enraged at the possibility. Konoye narrowly averted assassination on September 18, 1941, when four young men armed with ceremonial daggers charged the vehicle in which he was riding from his home to his office. They were repulsed by plainclothes policemen, but the climate of assassination in Tokyo surely gave increased urgency to the negotiations.62
Yet nothing happened. Traditional historiography argues that Japan’s refusal to withdraw from China was the sticking point, and to some extent that is true. But the reverse is also true. Stimson, Morgenthau, and Hull feared that if Japan did withdraw from China it would free the Japanese Army to attack Russia in Siberia, which no one in Washington wanted. Accordingly, the best strategy was to keep the talks with Tokyo going but agree to nothing. On October 16, unable to lift the embargo or secure a summit with FDR, Konoye resigned. The Emperor, who still hoped for a peaceful resolution, turned to his war minister, General Hideki Tojo, to form a new government. Intervening directly in the process and wholly without precedent, Hirohito explicitly requested Tojo not to feel bound by the decision of September 6 to prepare for war but to review all issues anew: to start with a clean slate. Shaken by his new responsibility, Tojo accepted the Emperor’s request without question.63 In some respects, Hirohito’s action in picking Tojo was similar to Hindenburg’s selection of Hitler as chancellor of the Weimar Republic in January 1933: both hoped to resolve the crisis facing their nation by turning to the strongest player on the board.
On the day Konoye resigned, Roosevelt penned longhand notes to Churchill and King George VI. “I am a bit worried over the Japanese situation,” he told the King. “The Emperor is for peace, I think, but the Jingoes are trying to force his hand.” To Churchill he said, “The Jap situation is definitely worse and I think they are headed north—however in spite of this you and I have two months of respite in the Far East” (FDR’s supposition was that Japan would not move south until Russia was defeated).64
The following day, Roosevelt met with Hull and his military advisers. At the president’s direction Admiral Stark flashed a warning to commanders in the Pacific that hostilities between Japan and Russia were a strong possibility. An attack on U.S. and British forces could not be ruled out. “In view of these possibilities you will take due precautions.”65 Neither Stark nor General Marshall considered the Japanese threat imminent. The next day, October 17, 1941, Stark assured Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the Pacific Fleet commander, that he did “not believe the Japs are going to sail into us. In fact, I tempered the [alert] message I was given considerably. Perhaps I am wrong, but I hope not. In any case after long pow-wows in the White House it was felt we should be on guard.”66 General Marshall, for his part, informed General Walter C. Short in Hawaii and MacArthur in the Philippines: “No abrupt change in Japanese foreign policy appears imminent.”67
In Tokyo the “clean slate” debate within the Tojo government continued through the first week in November. Grew advised Washington that the hopes for a settlement were fading fast. The economic pressure Washington had applied, particularly the oil embargo, had been a mistake, said Grew. In a lengthy cable on November 3, 1941, and a shorter follow-up the next day, Grew warned that if negotiations failed “Japan may go all-out in a do-or-die effort to render herself invulnerable to foreign economic pressure, even to the extent of committing national hara-kiri. Those of us who are in direct touch with the atmosphere from day to day realize that this is not only possible but probable” (Grew’s emphasis).
Grew said Japan’s standards of logic “cannot be gauged by any Western measuring rod. It would be hazardous to base our national policy on the belief, held in certain quarters, that our economic pressure will not drive Japan to war.” If war came, Grew noted, it “may come with dangerous and dramatic suddenness” (Grew’s emphasis).68
Grew understood the situation better than most. On the afternoon of November 5, 1941, the Japanese privy council, again meeting in the presence of the Emperor, made the decision to prepare for war. “To adopt a policy of patience and perseverance,” said Prime Minister Tojo, “was tantamount to self-annihilation. Rather than await extinction, it was better to face death by breaking through the encircling ring and find a way for existence.”69 At the insistence of Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, negotiations with Washington would continue. But if an agreement could not be reached by November 25, the final decision for war would be placed before the Emperor. Warning orders to prepare for combat were flashed to the military services, and Ambassador Nomura was instructed to make a final approach to Hull. Said Togo, “The success or failure of the pending discussions will have an immense effect on the destiny of the Japanese Empire. In fact, we gambled the fate of our land on the throw of this die.”70
At the same time the privy council was meeting in Tokyo, the Joint Board of the Army and Navy—a precursor of the Joint Chiefs o
f Staff—met in Washington to review the situation. After reaffirming the primary objective of American policy to be the defeat of Germany, the Board explicitly advised FDR, “War between the United States and Japan should be avoided.” Such a war, said Marshall and Stark, “would greatly weaken the combined effort in the Atlantic against Germany,” and the United States simply was not prepared. To emphasize the need for peace in the Pacific, the chiefs stated categorically that further Japanese advances in China or into Thailand or an attack on Russia “would not justify intervention by the United States against Japan.”71
Inauguration, March 4, 1933. Except for exchanging pleasantries, President Hoover and Roosevelt rode in silence to the ceremony at the Capitol. They did not see each other again.
First press conference, March 6, 1933. FDR met the press twice a week—a total of 998 times—usually in the Oval Office, and always unrehearsed. Roosevelt enjoyed the sessions as much as the reporters. John Gunther, a frequent attendee, said that in forty minutes FDR “expressed amazement, curiosity, sympathy, decision, playfulness, dignity, and surpassing charm.”
Fireside chat. Whenever FDR sought to rally public opinion, he took to the airwaves, usually Sunday nights, to speak directly to the people. By explaining the issues in simple language that everyone could understand, whether it was the banking crisis, Lend-Lease, or the menace of fascism, Roosevelt changed the nature of presidential leadership forever.
