Reasoning as to which way Japan might jump was speculative, in the category of the possible rather than the probable. Minds leaning one way did not rule out the other. The only conviction was an exasperated apprehension over Japan’s undifferentiated and opportunistic expansionism. Nevertheless, the conjunction of the German threat to Moscow with the fall of the Konoe cabinet gave greater prominence in American official minds to the northern vector than the southern.
The question returned of how to get Japan “off Russia’s back,” as Norwegian diplomat Trygve Lie put it.38 Roosevelt confided to Halifax on October 10 that sometime earlier (possibly in a verbal message delivered by Harriman) he had advised Stalin that in case of an acute crisis on the German front he should withdraw his troops from Siberia and not worry too much what the Japanese did, because any incursion could be corrected later — how, Roosevelt did not say.39 The president was hard to pin down. Shortly after the fall of the Konoe cabinet, Halifax pursued the question. What would the United States do in the event of a Japanese attack on Russia, an event the Foreign Office considered possible given “the stimulus of the German advance on Moscow, the pressure of our economic measures, and the likelihood that Japan would wish to avoid a head-on collision with the A.B.C.D. Powers by moving southward”? But the Americans as usual avoided commitments.40 On October 22, through Winant, Maisky urged a British-American warning against an attack on the Soviet Union, but Hull was not prepared to go beyond the generalized admonition he had given in the past.41
To the British mind, the German attack and Japanese cabinet shift called for the utmost firmness in diplomacy. The trade embargo was “slowly strangling” Japan, British diplomats believed, forcing it sooner or later to “break out or give way.”42 Whether or not Japan attacked depended on the solidity of the democratic front. The British no less than the Commonwealth and Chinese governments were deeply apprehensive that the Hull-Nomura conversations would lead to some kind of appeasement of Japan and a weakening of that front, but they were at a loss to know what to do, for the discussions were entirely in the hands of the State Department, which did not take kindly to advice.43
They had nothing to fear; as seen before, the Americans had no intention of offering concessions. Hull and Stimson agreed between themselves that if the Japanese threw in their hand they might be allowed to keep Manchuria, but should be required to evacuate the rest of China and guarantee Soviet borders. An army intelligence estimate of October 2 warned against an agreement ending the war in China and permitting Japan to withdraw the bulk of its army: “Any action on our part … which would liberate Japanese … forces for action against Russia’s rear in Siberia would be foolhardy.” The object of policy must be to assist China in its efforts to “contain” the Japanese army.44 Army War Plans advised a continuance of existing pressures “with a view to rendering Japan incapable of offensive operations against Russia or against possessions of the associated powers in the Far East.”45 Roosevelt and Hull repeatedly assured friendly ambassadors that no concessions would be made. Not for the last time, coalition diplomacy powerfully reinforced United States firmness.
The only further means of immobilizing Japan, so far as Roosevelt and his advisers could see, was to strengthen American military power in East Asia. That could most effectively and quickly be accomplished, the War Department believed, by speeding the air reinforcement of the Philippines.
American plans for deploying air power to East Asia had steadily expanded in August and September: first a squadron, then a group, then two groups. This was “great strength” to General Marshall, though not the four groups envisaged by the air staff in July. Seventy B-l7s were to be in the Philippines or on the way by January 1, 1942. Thirty-five B-24 Liberators, a four-engine bomber with a slightly longer range, would leave for Manila by February 1. Between April and October 1942 the total force would rise to 136 operating heavy bombers and thirty-four reserves together with additional dive bombers and fighters.46 These numbers, of course, were ever in jeopardy from a president listening to the urgent pleas of the British and Russians. The more were Stimson and the army anxious to stress the strategic importance of an American air mission in East Asia.47
On October 16, in the wake of the fall of the Konoe cabinet, Roosevelt called an emergency meeting of his military advisers. It seems most likely that at this meeting he decided to accelerate Philippine reinforcement plans. Thirty planes of the 7th Bombardment Group were now to leave one month earlier than scheduled, by December 1, the remaining five with thirty more by January 1, and another thirty by February 1, together with thirty-five B-24s. Under this speeded-up delivery schedule, by March 1942 the Far East Air Force would muster 165 heavy bombers.48
Now the Philippines would have an air force headquarters, with bomber and interceptor commands, to be led by Major General Lewis H. Brereton, who, as Marshall pointed out to MacArthur, had a “keen appreciation … of the potentialities of air power.” Now also for the first time the army committed an additional ground combat unit to the Philippines, an infantry regiment, together with another tank battalion, an anti-aircraft regiment, and a field artillery brigade. Together with more air and ground service units, prospective reinforcements would add 44,000 Americans to the Philippine garrison.49
The navy, too, contributed to the reinforcement of the Philippines by sending Submarine Squadron 2 from the Pacific Fleet to the Asiatic Fleet. These twelve newly commissioned vessels joined eleven modern and six old boats at Manila to form the largest submarine force in the navy. Submarines seemed ideally suited to the straits and restricted shipping passages surrounding the South China Sea. The navy had great faith in new torpedoes which were designed to explode simply by passing through a warship’s magnetic field.50
As the American air commitment grew, so did the concept of its use. Bombers which could fly 2,000 miles need not be restricted to one base. B-17s and B-24s using Darwin, Singapore, a base in the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines could command the myriad of narrow seas, archipelagos, peninsulas, and islands that lay between Asia and Australia. The navy began delivering bombs to Singapore. Roosevelt encouraged the Australians to move squadrons up to North Borneo. From Davao in the Philippines and Rabaul on New Britain the bombers could reach the Japanese Mandates and prevent a Japanese flanking of the Philippines from the east.51
The ferry route across the central Pacific and the Japanese Mandates being too vulnerable, the army and navy began development of a more southerly route, with shorter hops to accommodate medium bombers as well. This line of communications consisted of Palmyra and Christmas Islands, due south of Hawaii, the Phoenix group (Canton, Howland, Phoenix) southwest of there, then the Samoan Islands, the Fijis, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and Rockhampton on the northeast coast of Australia which would serve as a major air depot and distributing point.52
As the effort to establish American air power in East Asia accelerated and expanded in October, the American military leadership warmed to the idea. The army’s War Plans Division study encouraged by Stimson concluded that “strong offensive air forces” in the Philippines, prepared to operate from British and Soviet bases, would provide a crucial deterrent to Japanese expansion in any direction. Japan would be unable to undertake any southward advance without first removing the threat in the Philippines, but attacking these islands would be a major operation requiring carrier planes and air support from Formosa. Japan, they were confident, would hesitate to try it except as a last resort.
Deterring a Japanese attack on Siberia would be major American, British, and Dutch forces in its rear, the possibility of American entry into the war, and the use of Russian bases for bombardment of Japan’s highly inflammable cities. Even if the United States did not enter the war, the American commitment to supply the Soviet Union would serve as an implicit threat to a Japanese attack northward. General Arnold, chief of the Air Corps, wrote MacArthur that B-24s from northern Luzon could reach as far as Nagasaki and, if arrangements could be made to use Vl
adivostok, operations from there could cover most of Japan.53
Stimson’s vision was even more sweeping. The bombers, he said, were the country’s “big stick.” They “revolutionized” the strategy of the Pacific, carrying American power to the Philippines for the first time since the aftermath of World War I, when Japan secured the central Pacific islands and the United States agreed at the Washington Conference to limit the size of its fleet. “From being impotent to influence events in that area,” he wrote Roosevelt, “we suddenly find ourselves vested with the possibility of great effective power.” Time was needed; the deterrent threat was still “imperfect.” Even so, it “bids fair to stop Japan’s march to the south and secure the safety of Singapore.”
The secretary of war allowed to Harriman that he was not so sure about deterrence northward, but that advance he considered unlikely at the moment. In arguing for the reinforcement to the president, however, Stimson was more sanguine. He related it directly to preservation of Russian defensive power in Europe. With the Archangel route in jeopardy and the Persian corridor undeveloped, Vladivostok was crucial. He presented an exciting picture of heavy bombers shuttling from the Philippines across Japan to bases at Vladivostok and thence onward to Alaska and back, after the fashion of the German Condors flying between bases in western France and Norway. That sort of capability would have “immense powers of warning to Japan as well as of assurance to Russia.” Hull was said to be cheered too. The air move had “really given a punch to his own diplomacy in the Far East and … opened the door to Vladivostok…”54
The austere General Marshall was obviously excited by the possibilities he described for Admiral Stark on the phone:
The conception is that if we can build up quickly, considering the fact those planes can operate from Fort {sic} Darwin and Australia, from New Britain; from Singapore and the Dutch East Indies; possibly even Vladivostok, we can cover that whole area of possible Japanese operations.… And we stick to it into the Mandated Islands. {This} would exercise a more determining influence on the course of events right now than anything else.… Because it practically backs the Japanese off and would certainly stop them on the Malaysian thing. It probably would make them feel they didn’t dare take the Siberian thing and I think it has a better than 50% chance of forcing them to practically drop the Axis.
By acting with rapidity the United States might give the Japanese “a complete pause.”55
As the army became increasingly aware, this vision of power overcoming distance did not extend to the supply and service functions which made it possible to put these planes in the air. The transport shortage, aggravated by commitment of the biggest ships to the British, slowed reinforcement. So did the navy’s insistence on escorted convoys for troop transports and vital cargo ships and for roundabout routing, southward from Hawaii and then close to Australia, for all other vessels. Lacking fuel storage along the air route and in the Philippines, the air force had to supply gasoline in drums, which themselves were in short supply, and reserve cargo space for bulky storage tanks. Departure of the 19th Bombardment Group in October was delayed by the need to reinforce the cabins to withstand the recoil of added machine guns. Stimson became so impatient with postponements that on October 16 he ordered the first flight of B-17s to take off the next day or explain in writing to him why not. The air force provided daily reports on their progress across the Pacific.56
The British were making similar calculations of deterrence at the same time. The Admiralty had been planning gradually to form an Eastern fleet of six battleships, a battle cruiser, and an aircraft carrier over the next six months. Since August, Churchill, seeking to instill fear in the Japanese and encouragement in the Dominions, had been pushing for immediate dispatch of a small, powerful force centering on a modern battleship of the King George V class. The Admiralty, anxious to keep its best battleships in the Atlantic against the Tirpitz and its fellow raiders, was reluctant.57
The fall of the Konoe cabinet and what Eden described as the “Russian defeats” and what the Admiralty described as “the deterioration of the Russian situation” brought the issue to a head. These events were bound to encourage Japanese “extreme elements,” the foreign minister pointed out, in which direction it was not yet clear, but “the stronger the joint front that the A.B.C.D. Powers can show, the greater the deterrent to Japanese action.” Sending a capital ship would make a difference, a Foreign Office diarist noted, for the Japanese were “so hysterical” they might “rush themselves off their feet.”58 Availability of more capital ships from speedy repairs, near-completion of the battleship Duke of York, and American acceptance of defense of Denmark Strait against raiders strengthened the case.
At an October 17 meeting of the cabinet’s Defense Committee, Eden, Clement Attlee, and Churchill carried the day, and the Admiralty reluctantly ordered H.M.S. Prince of Wales immediately to join the battle cruiser Repulse in the Indian Ocean. The new carrier Indomitable, working up in the Caribbean, was to follow in late November, and four old “R” class battleships to arrive by the end of the year. Admiral Tom Phillips, vice-chief of naval staff, was ordered to command.59 Churchill informed Roosevelt of the dispatch of the Prince of Wales with delight. Here was “something that can catch and kill anything.” “The firmer your attitude and ours,” he urged, “the less chance of their taking the plunge.”60
Two reversals of long-term power deficits in East Asia were taking place, at least in the Anglo-American official mind. An air armada in the Philippines would not only at last make possible a defense of the archipelago but could be used there for deterring, and in the event of war attacking, Japan. The new Eastern fleet would finally make Singapore the mighty bastion of naval power it was supposed to be. And the Anglo-American strategic discordance seemed to be mending too. The Admiralty suggested the use of Manila as an advanced base for the Eastern fleet. To Admiral Stark and his advisers this degree of cooperation and forward staging seemed premature, but they were enthusiastic over the transfer, urging the British to go further and send cruisers and destroyers and more fighters and long-range bombers to Malaya.61 Admiral Thomas Hart, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, decided in October to fight from Manila Bay instead of withdrawing southward, as he was authorized, and Stark promised in case of war to send eight destroyers from the Philippines to the Eastern fleet.62 The two navies were operating on the principle of cooperation rather than unified command—leaving to their Asiatic commanders the problem of working out a combined operating plan—but American objections to the original ADB scheme were being met, one by one.63 The invention of the Philippines as a strategic asset was overcoming the Anglo-American planning impasse of the spring and summer.
The Soviet strategic connection was a different matter. The use of Soviet bases was a highly speculative proposition. Obviously these would not be available unless Japan attacked, for neither the Soviets nor the Americans had any desire to provoke a northward advance. Deterrence, then, would depend on whether the Japanese in deciding about the north would take into account threats from American bombers at the limit of their range in the south or possibly moving to bases in the north.
The Anglo-American reinforcement spasm of mid-October 1941 was replete with errors: placing excessive confidence in the symbolic deterrent effect of battleships and heavy bombers—the shadow of power—before they were fully emplaced, protected, and ready for use; exaggerating the capability of weapons (high altitude bombers against dodging ships; the effective range of bombers); simultaneously employing economic coercion, which would force action, and deterrence, seeking to forestall or delay action; grossly underestimating Japanese military capabilities, determination, and desperation.64 The Air Corps vision and doctrine of strategic air power and determination to protect its growth was an important factor in the American augmentation. Principally, however, both strategic deployments responded to threats that Japan appeared to pose, particularly to the Soviet Union at a critical point in the German invasion. Conv
inced that Soviet survival was essential to winning the war against the main enemy, Germany, and otherwise virtually helpless in providing immediate assistance, the United States and Britain determined at the very least to attempt to keep Japan off Russia’s back, even at some risk to themselves, a greater risk than they knew.
The Japanese were not in the least deterred. The fall of the Konoe cabinet was, to be sure, due to the hesitation of the prime minister and navy minister to take the final plunge, a decision for war after the failure of diplomacy by the deadline, but these ministers worried about Japan’s ability to win a long war, not about the dispatch of British and American forces (which after all had not arrived). And to the extent that “ABCD encirclement” was evidently tightening, it only heightened the resolve to break out before it was too late. At the same time, as long as preparations for war continued, the armed services were content to allow diplomacy to proceed.
The emperor, however, was anxious to start from scratch and have the entire question of going to war reconsidered, as if the decision of the September 6 Imperial Conference had never been taken. General Tōjō, so informed, agreed to this unprecedented command and led an intensive canvass from October 23 to November 2 of all relevant factors and possible courses of action. In the discussion the navy insisted it needed more steel for ship construction to wage war successfully, and when the army relented the admirals in effect signed up for war. The oil embargo “hovered over the conference table like a demon.”65 The players were somewhat different from September’s, but the stockpiles were lower, the urgency greater, and the predominant military and bureaucratic perspectives no less narrow and opportunistic. Unlike Konoe, Tōjō, characterized by his biographer as “blunt and decisive, forthright and assertive, naive and aggressive,” was prepared to lead the cabinet to a clearcut decision and the nation to war.66 At an Imperial Conference on November 5 the government agreed to make a decision for war if diplomacy had not succeeded by December 1.
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