Threshold of War

by Heinrichs, Waldo;

  Japan did not seem likely to take the final step immediately. American naval intelligence knew that the bulk of the Japanese fleet was in home waters. It lay anchored in full view of the public at Yokohama on July 8, and the captain of an American ship sighted three carriers and seven battleships maneuvering off the southern tip of Kyushu on July 16. The Japanese government sought to reassure the British and Americans that their intentions were limited to Indochina; the bases in southern Indochina were not “jumping off places.” Hollow as these assurances sounded for the future, they seemed to put a period on Japanese advance for the moment.11

  Yet MAGIC was a source of daily disquiet. According to intercepts, Japan was ordering its shipping in the Atlantic to hasten to the Pacific, clearing the Panama Canal by July 22. A probable reason was fear of seizure in American ports in reprisal for the Indochina advance, but it also seemed likely that the ships were needed for troop lift to Manchuria or some other large-scale impending operation. On July 5, American officials detained a Japanese freighter at Manila with a cargo of chrome for the United States but with scheduled intervening stops at Japanese ports. Messages passed back and forth between Tokyo and Japanese embassies and consulates concerning disposal of codes, documents, and property if “worse came to worst.” Japanese intelligence designated Mexico City as headquarters for reporting about the United States in case of a break in relations. It suggested ways of tying down American forces: for example, by fomenting rebellion in Guatemala, leading to American armed intervention. Intercepts of messages between Tokyo and the embassy in Washington discussed use of American blacks as spies and agitators. The time had come to send home portraits of the emperor, which held a revered place in every Japanese mission abroad. From U.S. Treasury officials came word that Japanese firms were liquidating their assets in the United States. Apprised of some of this intelligence by Welles on July 10, Lord Halifax concluded that the situation with Japan was “deteriorating rapidly.”12

  MAGIC gave the impression of a Japan on the move, one way or the other, or both, not immediately but soon. It reflected the opportunism of Japanese policy and its dependence on external developments, as well as the sense of urgency and of momentous departure that prevailed in Tokyo. What MAGIC could not capture were the fissures, doubts, crossed purposes, least-worst choices, and misapprehension that shaped the Imperial decision of July 2. The result, even taking into account the north-south ambivalence, was a picture of a more confident and resolute and therefore more fearsome Japan than was really the case. Yet it is hard to imagine how the truths might have been discovered, given the secrecy of Japanese policymaking and the virtual elimination of American embassy contacts with influential Japanese. Ambassador Grew, nine years in Japan and supported by an excellent staff of foreign service officers, many of them fluent in Japanese, despaired: he had never had “greater difficulty” in keeping his government informed.13

  So far as diplomacy was concerned, Japanese-American relations were a wasteland in July 1941. No sooner did sprigs of flexibility and interest in negotiations appear than they were scorched by the increasingly confrontational postures of the two powers. And these sprigs were scarcely promising to begin with.

  At least Matsuoka was no longer an obstacle. The high-rolling foreign minister had put himself out of favor with the military by insisting on an immediate attack against the Soviet Union and, given the Hull statement of June 21, he was regarded as an insuperable obstacle to further talks with the Americans. He symbolized the German connection, which so far had produced nothing but unpleasant surprises for Japan. On July 16 the Konoe cabinet resigned and was reconstituted without Matsuoka.14 Before this, in an interview with an American newsman, Prince Konoe had stressed the defensive nature of the Axis alliance and his desire to improve relations with the United States.15 Ambassador Nomura, in a talk with Admiral Turner, insisted that Japan held in its own hands the decision as to when the military claims of the alliance came into effect. Japan would in any case act only for its own (and not Germany’s) purposes.16 Hull, at the request of the Japanese embassy, withdrew his offending statement of June 21 aimed at Matsuoka, and Tokyo sent a revision of the April draft understanding; the way seemed clear for resumption of diplomacy.17 In Tokyo, Grew had been encouraged by the cabinet shift. The new foreign minister, Admiral Toyoda Teijirō, who spoke English well, seemed keenly interested in improving relations. Grew concluded on July 23 that Japan would adopt a less dynamic and more independent foreign policy. He would not venture to predict a new orientation or rapprochement with the British and Americans, but he mentioned it.18

  This was the day before Japanese troops landed in southern Indochina. A MAGIC intercept of a July 19 message reassured Germany that the cabinet shift had not changed Japan’s foreign policy and that it remained “faithful to the principles of the Tripartite Pact.”19 On July 23, Acting Secretary Welles, in his most solemn and Olympian manner, informed the Japanese counsellor of embassy that the occupation “constituted notice … that the Japanese Government intended to pursue a policy of force” and was the last step before conquest of territories in Southeast Asia. In view of these considerations and at the request of Hull, he concluded, the American government could see no basis for the continuation of the Hull-Nomura talks.20 The following day Roosevelt, anxious not to close all doors, made one more gesture, suggesting to Nomura the neutralization of Indochina, but acknowledged the proposal might be too late. Nomura barely mentioned it to Tokyo.21

  Not only was diplomacy impossible in the context of armed advance but also the Japanese-American agenda, as it had year after year in the past, was lengthened by one more knotty problem. Increasingly British and American officials turned to consideration of military and economic measures for stopping Japan’s advance in any direction. They were affected not simply by the increased threat from Japan and the poverty of diplomacy. They were also impatient. Preoccupied with the greater threat of Germany and in particular by the large strategic consequences and possibilities of the German invasion of Russia, they found Japan’s new intents immensely provoking. The evidence these provided of further strains in the Axis alliance was reassuring, but a Japan pursuing a more independent—and unpredictable—course was in some ways more disconcerting. A dramatic change in fortune of the European war was in the making, either for much the worse or much the better, along the roads to Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev. The Americans were on the point of intervening in the Battle of the Atlantic, but could not fight two wars at once. Somehow Japan must be boxed in and neutralized; East Asia must be disconnected from the central problems of war and defense.

  One obvious course was to deter Japan by strengthening and, so far as possible, combining the East Asian forces opposing Japan: the British Commonwealth, the Dutch in the East Indies, and the Chinese. The possibilities for coalition-building had greatly improved. The threat of a Soviet-Axis combination, which lurked in the background of Matsuoka diplomacy, had disappeared. Not that Russia was joining the anti-Japanese front; it was preserving the strictest neutrality. But the rapid development of Soviet ties with Britain and the United States had to weigh in Japanese calculations. The German-Soviet war provided Roosevelt with a superb opportunity to do what he did so well, to enlarge the realm of common values and friendly relations for the United States. At the same time it left Japan more isolated.

  MAGIC provided abundant evidence of Japan’s sense of encirclement by enemies. For example, Japanese officials reported 431 American aviators and technical experts had arrived at Chengtu on July 15 and another 450 were at Manila en route to China. Ten B-17 bombers were said to have arrived at Rangoon for shipment to China, together with 220 trucks. The Americans were building air bases in southwest China, according to an intercept from Nanking. Tokyo noted a great disparity between what Chungking was asking for and what it was getting, but the ties seemed closer. Shanghai heard rumors of a secret Chinese-American understanding for the expansion of the Chinese air force and American use of Chinese bases. A
secret agent reported that B-17s had the range to fly to Tokyo from China, raid the city for two hours, and return. The appointment of Owen Lattimore as Chiang’s personal aide meant more British, American, and Soviet assistance for China, Shanghai reported, and more cooperation between Kuomintang and Communist forces. Tokyo warned of an American-British-Dutch-Chinese bloc which could join with the Soviet Union in attacking Japan. Nomura despaired of the increasing determination of the Dutch, British, and Americans to protect the “Malay Barrier” with “concerted air and submarine defense.” Japanese officials in the Dutch East Indies, according to MAGIC, noted the presence of American naval officers in Soerabaja and of British and Australian army officers in Batavia. The British and Americans were, in Tokyo’s words, “acting like a cunning dragon seemingly asleep.” This stream of intelligence reflected and enhanced Japanese fears that their nation had enemies in all corners.22

  From the American point of view this Japanese talk of encirclement was absurd, for they were having the greatest difficulty building what would later be described as “situations of strength” against Japan. The British and American navies could not agree on a combined plan for the defense of the “Malay Barrier.” The ADB-1 plan, formulated by British Commonwealth, Dutch, and American military representatives at Singapore in April, found little favor in Washington. Stark and Marshall rejected it July 3, hastening perhaps to ensure that the British did not act during the crisis on the assumption of greater American support than they were going to get. The plan was too slanted toward British imperial interests: Singapore, Burma, the Indian Ocean trade routes, and Australia. It reflected London’s east-west strategic perspective, whereas the Americans operated on a north-south axis. With Japanese naval power in the mandates between the Philippines and Hawaii, American access to its colony in war was necessarily from the southwest Pacific; Admiral Hart was expected to retire southward through the Makassar Strait and the Moluccas toward the arc of islands forming the Dutch East Indies. The ADB plan, however, would send him, train and all, west to Singapore under British command.

  Furthermore, ADB was much more positive about the Philippines than the Americans felt at the moment. It urged the building of air bases there for the bombardment of Japan, a form of warfare which Japan with its inflammable cities “particularly fears.” The current American view was the traditional one: that the islands could not be held for long. They could be outflanked by Indochina on the west and the Palaus on the east. The U.S. Pacific Fleet was a deterrent of course, but remote from defense of the “Malay Barrier.”

  The failure of ADB planning did not mean the absence of cooperation. The navies were getting to know each other and each other’s bases and waters. An ADB communication system linking naval contingents, based on a Dutch machine cypher, was established and arrangements for exchange of encrypted Japanese intercepts and decrypted values were being made. Furthermore, ADB conceptions were beginning to influence American strategic thinking about the Philippines. Even so, at the moment the coalition was a hollow shell.23

  No British or American battleships—and only one 10,000-ton British carrier—were stationed between Alexandria and Pearl Harbor. At the “Malay Barrier” the American-British-Dutch coalition could muster eight cruisers (with another six in Australia and New Zealand) and twenty-four destroyers, the American portion being one heavy cruiser, one old light cruiser, and thirteen World War I four-stack destroyers.

  However, the battleship situation in the Atlantic was beginning to improve, and the British were raising their eyes at last to the formation of an Eastern fleet. Once the Americans took responsibility for guarding Denmark Strait, which awaited Roosevelt’s conference with Churchill, four old British battleships on convoy duty in the western Atlantic could be refitted and sent to the Indian Ocean. The new American battleships North Carolina and Washington were undergoing trials, and H.M.S. Duke of York was due for completion by the end of the year.24 Admiral Stark took up with the Admiralty once more the question of assigning American battleships to Gibraltar to relieve British capital ships for the east. The American navy may have had in mind sending the new battleships when completed to Iceland and the Idaho, New Mexico, and Mississippi to “the Rock,” their original assignment under ABC-1, but without Mediterranean responsibilities.25 These prospective reinforcements, together with completion of repairs on other British battleships and bomb damage to the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, would turn the naval balance in the Atlantic in Britain’s favor. And so combined naval planning against Japan was not as futile as it seemed.

  While prospects brightened for an Eastern fleet, the defense of its base, Singapore, seemed ever more problematical. Lacking enough troops to defend the 500-mile-long Malay States colony, the British had decided in 1940 to rely on air power to keep the Japanese at a distance, but then found it possible to gather only 180 of the 336 aircraft required, and most of these were obsolete. The small and only partially trained army—three divisions and one brigade—with little artillery and no tanks had to spread out through jungle country, with few roads, to defend the airfields. Japanese landings at Singora and Pattani on the Thai peninsular coast just north of Malaya, from which beachheads they could strike south along the main line of communication and outflank the airfields, would be impossible to prevent unless Britain preemptively invaded Thailand at least four days before the Japanese struck. Such an operation not only posed logistical problems; it also raised the question whether the United States Congress would be prepared to declare war and join forces in the event of British aggression. No solution to these strategic dilemmas was in sight. Furthermore, first claim on British reinforcements was held by the Middle East Command, which planned an offensive for November.26

  The British desperately needed help as the Japanese approached the doorstep of the British empire in July 1941. The Chiefs of Staff and defense committee of the War Cabinet debated the next move. How could Japan be deterred? By a warning that the next move would mean war? But where to draw the line? At Malaya, all of Thailand, or the southern tip of Thailand? Should Britain now promise assistance to the Dutch? Could Britain take any measures without a guarantee from the United States? Would any warning have effect if not joined in by the United States? As officials of the Foreign Office, the military and the cabinet went round and round these questions, it became clearer that the key to Southeast Asian defense for Britain was a joint British-American warning to Japan based upon obtaining an American guarantee of help. Soundings were taken in Washington.27

  The view from outside the war was very different from inside it. American officials were disinclined to bring matters to a head with Japan. What mattered were outcomes in Russia and on the Atlantic. A sense of weakness in East Asia and fatalism about the probable course of events there prevailed. The Department of State briefly considered a suggestion from Winant for a regional defensive alliance. If the imperialist stigma could be removed by elevating India to dominion status, then a coalition of British Commonwealth nations and China would be sufficiently attractive to the American public to allow a pledge of support.28 This was cast aside, undoubtedly because it was inconceivable that Churchill would permit a change in the status of India. Welles allowed that the United States would inevitably be involved if the Japanese attacked Singapore or the Dutch East Indies, but not necessarily if they attacked Thailand. This was a personal opinion, he said, not a governmental promise. The Americans ruled out minatory language.29

  Nevertheless, in spite of all this negativism, the American strategic view of Southeast Asia was beginning to change. The shift was detectable not in broad theater terms but on the narrower question of reinforcement for the Philippines.

  Gradually, barely perceptibly at first, the United States Army was coming to view the Philippines not as a strategic liability after all but as an asset. The generals and colonels had to come far. In the traditional view the islands were indefensible and not worth a large military investment. American army officers and men there numbered less tha
n 11,000. All the airplanes, about 165, were obsolete. The largest American infantry unit was the 31st Regiment. At the last it would defend the beaches of Corregidor, denying Manila Bay to the enemy for as long as possible, but, as everyone understood, not long enough for the Pacific Fleet to arrive in time.30 A naval observer reported to Admiral Stark that the army planned in the event of war to tell the Japanese that Camp John Hay and Fort McKinley were non-military zones for women and children.31 The army believed that American forces in the islands together with the Philippine Scouts would delay and to that extent perhaps deter a Japanese attack on Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. The British Chiefs of Staff disagreed: the Philippines was not a serious deterrent so long as the United States would not reinforce it.32

  The strategic shift had begun early in 1941. A War Plans Division recommendation of October 1940 for withdrawal of American armed forces from the islands for lack of a policy for holding them met with strong dissent in the General Staff. As War Plans had pointed out, the world situation and defense spending were changing the premises, creating perhaps the need and before too long the capability of a firmer stand. In January, Washington approved an increase in the strength of the 31st Regiment from 1,107 to 1,653, and the Philippine Scouts from 6,415 to 12,000, together with an increase of 1,500 in coast artillery troops.33 In February 1941, General Douglas Mac-Arthur, military adviser to the Philippine government, offered a plan for the defense of most of the Philippines. He had the quaint idea of defending the Visayas, the host of islands lying between Luzon and Mindanao, by guarding the passages inward from the oceans with coastal defense guns, mines, and torpedo boats. The 12-inch guns he requested were unavailable, but Marshall and the president approved 8-inch and 155-caliber substitutes.34 Each month the gates opened a little wider; by July even scarce, modern P-40 fighters were approved.