Threshold of War

by Heinrichs, Waldo;

  War plans were integrated and polished. Centerpiece for the navy was a bold plan of Admiral Yamamoto, which the navy general staff adopted October 19, for a carrier raid on Pearl Harbor to eliminate the possibility of the American fleet interfering with southern operations. These operations would begin with simultaneous invasion of the Philippines, mounted’ and supported from Formosa and the Palaus; of Malaya, staged through and covered from Indochina; and of Thailand and Burma, from Indochina. Wake Island and Hong Kong would be subdued along the way. At a later stage Japanese forces would concentrate on the Dutch East Indies and Burma. These immensely complex and risky operations would require every ship the navy could send to sea but would need less than one-fourth of the Japanese army. As November unfolded, the various forces moving into position for attack would become increasingly evident to ABCD intelligence.

  The diplomatic plan of the Tōjō government was more a repackaging than a revision. Foreign Minister Tōjō Shigenori offered two approaches. Plan A was a restatement of the Japanese position for a comprehensive settlement, only now more precise about the question of troops in China. Japan would remove its forces after a peace settlement but insist on retaining garrisons in Hainan, North China, and Inner Mongolia for a prolonged but finite period. Plan B, a fallback option in case Plan A failed, would put the China problem aside and seek a partial settlement by a return to the conditions existing prior to the Japanese advance into southern Indochina.

  Discussions resumed in Washington on November 7 along the lines of Plan A and continued every few days, twice at the White House, to November 18. This phase of the everlasting Hull-Nomura talks was quite distinctive, and not just from the urgency with which the Japanese pressed their case. Hull was different: more impatient, critical, and intrusive, altogether more “preachy,” he flogged the tired old issues again and again. On the Axis alliance he pushed harder than before. Could the ambassador assure him, Hull asked, that if his government entered into a settlement with the United States the Axis alliance “would automatically become a dead letter,” “automatically disappear”? No Pacific settlement was possible with Japan “clinging to her Tripartite Pact.”67

  Nor would a settlement in China be possible so long as the United States continued to assist Chiang, dragging out negotiations forever, the ambassador pointed out. China would then, just on the troop issue perhaps, hold the key to Japanese-American relations “which might result in war.” Hull asked how many soldiers Japan wanted to retain in China and was told about 10 percent of those currently present. It was a situation full of trouble, the secretary of state responded, “one of Japan’s own making and it was up to the Japanese Government to find some way of getting itself out.… “If only the Japanese people could get “war and invasion out of mind.”68

  Hull seemed to be emphasizing differences as if to bring matters to a head instead of stringing out the talks for maximum delay, as he had in September and October. But the matter he wished to dispose of was not the talks themselves but the idea of a comprehensive settlement, as represented in Plan A. In November with increasing urgency the American government sought a partial, temporary settlement with Japan, a modus vivendi. It did so in the growing realization of a shift in strategic circumstances.

  The German offensive against Moscow had bogged down at the end of October. German propaganda admitted on October 27 that “weather conditions have entailed a temporary halt in the advance.”69 In the following several weeks the German command reshuffled armies and replenished divisions for one final heave at Moscow on November 15, which the Soviets knew was coming and braced for.

  The hopes of British-American observers for German failure before Moscow outpaced reality. New York Times dispatches were consistently optimistic from November 1 to 20. German sources reported the weather “miserable beyond all conception”; roads “simply disappeared” in “one great indivisible quagmire.” The “fabled Russian winter” was “closing in,” then gripping “Nazi armies,” killing German soldiers. “Stalemate,” “standstill,” “floundering,” and “failure” were words used to describe the German offensive. The Russians were said to be halting, holding, or beating off the Germans, even gaining ground, pushing on, beginning a “sustained counteroffensive.” The Soviet regime would never permit a lull in battle, said the Times, and so the Eastern front was now a “permanent factor” in the war.

  Official reports were more guarded but increasingly hopeful. Some said the offensive had been stopped, others that it was too early to predict. According to the American embassy at Kuibyshev on October 28, the Soviets apparently did not expect to hold Moscow but would make the Germans pay the highest possible price for it. Still, the weather at Moscow was “thickening.” November 9 the embassy reported that Vladimir Dekanozov, former Soviet ambassador to Berlin, believed that if Leningrad and Moscow could hold out another month the Germans would be stalled for the winter. Though large Soviet forces had been withdrawn from the east, he assured the embassy that enough remained for a stubborn defense in case Japan attacked. On November 13 the embassy reported that the fall of Moscow was no longer considered inevitable. Churchill was now said to have reversed his odds: he was waging five to four on the Germans’ being stopped.70

  Whereas American officials in October considered a Japanese attack northward the most likely possibility, in November that eventuality seemed farfetched. American consuls in Manchuria had nothing to report. In a November 7 dispatch, Grew found “no indications” the Tōjō government contemplated such action. The appointment of Togo, former ambassador to Moscow, as foreign minister seemed to indicate, on the contrary, a constructive attitude toward the Soviet Union. The Japan Times and Advertiser, regarded as a mouthpiece of the foreign office, doubted the collapse of the Soviet Union even if Moscow, Leningrad, and the whole of European Russia were conquered. Japanese forces in Manchuria were sufficient, the American embassy in Tokyo believed, to take advantage of a Soviet collapse, but not to take on an “intact Soviet Far Eastern army and air force.” Japan, Grew believed, would persist in a policy of “watchful waiting.”71

  Japanese military movements were, if anything, southward, not northward. The American consul in Saigon reported an increase in Japanese troops in Indochina in the latter part of October. Airplanes, tanks, artillery: “military equipment of all kinds” was arriving. Construction of air bases, radio stations, piers, and barracks was preparing the way for “accommodation of a large army.” Under instructions to monitor the buildup closely, the Saigon and Hanoi consuls reported further increases in the first week of November to approximately 50,000 troops with the majority in southern Indochina, some arriving there from Hanoi by rail. The naval attaché in Tokyo expected a buildup of 100,000 and occupation of Thailand.72 Concentrations were beginning to occur at sea too: troop transports off Hainan, according to the Chinese, and communications intelligence of naval, air, and base force movements to the Mandates. Two new carriers had joined the fleet which was gathered at Kure.73

  This apparent southward drift of Japanese power was accompanied in Tokyo by a virulent anti-American press campaign. The United States had “the soul of a prostitute,” said Tokyo’s Nichi Nichi. According to Domei, the official news agency, Japan was completing its “war structure” for a seemingly inevitable “armed clash in the Pacific.” The American oil embargo was forcing the nation to “drastic action” for self-defense. A newspaper close to Japan’s foreign office insisted that peace hinged on “America’s sincerity in understanding and recognizing Japan’s immutable national policy.”74

  The anger and fatalism of these public expressions of Japanese policy worried Grew. On November 3 he sent a powerful telegram to the State Department based in part on a draft by Eugene Dooman, his counselor of embassy, who had grown up in Japan and been educated in the same school as many of Japan’s civilian leaders. That economic coercion could bring about Japan’s collapse as an aggressive power was an “uncertain and dangerous hypothesis,” Grew warned. The failure of con
ciliation begun by the Konoe cabinet could well produce an abrupt swing of policy in the opposite direction to an “all-out, do or die attempt, actually risking national hara-kiri, to make Japan impervious” to foreign economic pressures. He was anxious to avoid any misconception of “Japan’s capacity to rush headlong into a suicidal struggle with the United States,” or the discounting of current preparations as mere “saber rattling.” The primary question in this “grave and momentous subject” was whether war with Japan was justified by American national objectives, and that was a question on which the sands were “running fast.” “Action by Japan which might render unavoidable an armed conflict with the United States may come with dangerous and dramatic suddenness.”75

  MAGIC intercepts conveyed the same sense of impending finality. On November 2, Tokyo made it very clear to Nomura that the Plan A/Plan B proposals were a “last effort.” Tōjō used the language of ultimate crisis. The situation was “very grave,” relations had “reached the edge.” Without “quick accord,” negotiations would “certainly be ruptured.” Japan was gambling its fate “on the throw of this die,” “showing the limit of our friendship,” “making our last possible bargain.76

  Taken altogether this intelligence was puzzling. On the one hand, Japan and the United States seemed to be on a collision course unless saved by diplomacy. On the other hand, the only Japanese threat which had materialized so far, the Indochina concentration, did not seem to justify America’s going to war. The strategic and policy implications of that concentration were debated at the State Department and within the military early in November in response to an urgent plea from Chiang Kai-shek for a warning to Japan and dispatch of American and British air units to assist in repelling what he took to be an imminent Japanese attack from Indochina into Yunnan province. Japanese capture of Kunming, he warned, and closing of the Burma Road—China’s only remaining supply line from the West— would lead to China’s fall. The State Department was impressed and asked the military what support could be given.77

  The answer, concurred in by Roosevelt, was none. The army was skeptical of a Japanese thrust into Yunnan: the terrain was rugged, the defensive possibilities excellent and the forces presently in northern Indochina insufficient. They would need twice as many troops, ten divisions, and two months to mount a Yunnan offensive. The embassy in Tokyo, the consul in Hanoi, and the military attaché in London, reflecting British estimates, were also dubious.78 An alternate hypothesis was that Indochina was a staging area for an attack on Malaya, but the army’s War Plans Division considered this highly unlikely because landings along the eastern coast of Malaya would be difficult “while the northeast monsoon beats upon the shores of the China Sea from November to February.”79

  More likely, Japanese forces in Indochina were intended for a third alternative, the invasion of Thailand next door, which would pose a vital security threat only if extended to the Kra isthmus. Even that possibility was discounted by Admiral Ingersoll, vice chief of naval operations, who argued that Japan’s next move if it occurred would not be a one-country operation but an all-out attack on the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. Army War Plans considered this beyond Japan’s means: Malaya would require ten to twenty divisions and the Philippines ten, but Japan had only ten to twelve for southern operations altogether. An attack on Siberia was not considered a serious possibility now; an attack on Hawaii was not considered.80

  The army and navy recommended on November 5 that, unless Japan attacked British, Dutch, or American territory, the United States take no action which might precipitate war. This was not a time “to get brash,” said Ingersoll. The Pacific Fleet was inferior to the Japanese fleet to begin with, and currently major units were in the yards or escorting convoys. War in the Pacific would have to be waged with long lines of communication and inferior East Asian bases. Above all, offensive operations would require a major diversion of merchant shipping to the Pacific, most likely resulting in loss of the Battle of the Atlantic and the supply lines to Britain and Russia. Neither the army nor navy had any intention of altering the strategic priority of Europe.81

  With only a little more time, however, the strategic situation in East Asia would improve. By mid-December, or more precisely December 10 in General Marshall’s accounting, the reinforcement of the Philippines would have reached “impressive strength,” posing a “positive threat to any Japanese operations south of Formosa.” By then thirty-five B-17s of the 7th Bombardment Group were due to have arrived, doubling the number of heavy bombers in the Philippines, along with 145 P-40 interceptors and 54 dive bombers. MacArthur estimated that all elements of ten Philippine divisions and three regiments of constabulary would be mobilized and housed by December 15. By February or March, American power in the Philippines conjoined with British naval increases would reach the deterrent level. The situation called for delay by “clever diplomacy,” in Marshall’s view, with some minor concessions to the Japanese, such as relaxing oil restrictions.82

  So far the Americans had enjoyed the luxury of balancing potential power against threat without a time limit. But as the November 5 recommendation was going to the president, so was a MAGIC intercept informing Nomura that all arrangements for signing of an agreement must be completed by November 25.83

  The pace accelerated. On November 6, Ambassador Kurusu Saburō was reported in the press to be rushing to catch the Pan American Clipper at Hong Kong with “last” proposals for the United States. On November 8, Marshall directed that reinforcements for the Philippines “be expedited in every way.” On November 10, Churchill boasted publicly of sending a “powerful naval force of heavy ships” for service in the Indian and Pacific oceans. On November 11 the New York Times reported the crisis was “now held acute.” On November 14 the president ordered withdrawal of the remaining Marines in China. On November 15, from MAGIC, Tokyo confirmed November 25 as the final date and described it as “absolutely immovable.” On November 17, Grew warned that on account of the inability of the embassy to monitor Japanese military activity, it might not be able to provide adequate warning of Japanese actions outside the China theater “exploiting every possible tactical advantage such as surprise—” The sands were indeed running, and fast.84

  So Japan’s plan was to go southward, and it involved the United States. For three months Roosevelt’s foreign policy had sought to prevent Japanese movement in any direction, north or south. Now, with Soviet survival into 1942 seemingly assured, an easing of Japan’s problems in the south was not likely to encourage an attack on Siberia. With the Soviet factor disengaged, American strategic thinking reverted to the familiar balancing of interests between Atlantic and Pacific represented in the ABC talks and RAINBOW plans. In November the necessities and opportunities of the Battle of the Atlantic made it seem all the more imperative to maintain a strategic defensive in Asia and if at all possible to avoid war with Japan.

  Waging antisubmarine warfare in the Atlantic had proved to be more difficult than expected. Stimson gathered from Knox that the navy was “thoroughly scared about their inability to stamp out the sub menace.” Planners noted an alarming increase in the number of U-boats completing and coming on station. Admiral King was trying to get his hands on any ship over 600 tons which could make twelve knots and steam 3,000 miles or more to fill out his hard-pressed escort units.85 On October 17 the U.S.S. Kearny was hit while assisting a badly disorganized convoy under heavy attack. A torpedo blew out the forward boiler room, killing seven, but the ship limped back to Iceland safely. On October 31 HX 156 chanced upon a U-boat pack in transit, and the U.S.S. Reuben James was sunk with 115 hands.86

  Despite these losses and the unremitting misery of escort duty on the North Atlantic in winter, the outlook was, for the moment, improving. October’s losses were less than September’s, and U-boats sank only thirteen ships in November. One important reason for this success was the transfer of ten U-boats from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean to protect the supply route to Rommel’s army
in Africa, with more to follow.87 On November 7 the Soviet Union became eligible for Lend-Lease. On November 13, Congress rescinded the remaining neutrality laws, though by slender majorities, permitting the arming of merchant ships and their entry into combat zones. Now, besides assisting in British supply, American and American-controlled tonnage could carry war materials for the 1942 campaigning season directly to the Soviet Union by way of the Arctic convoys. Should German raiders break into the Atlantic, the Admiralty was informed on November 6, American forces would not be constrained by hemispherical boundaries.88

  Typical of 1941 was the swaying balance between current Anglo-American naval weakness and approaching strength. On November 3 the carrier Indomitable, assigned to the Eastern fleet, went aground in Jamaica. Ten days later the Ark Royal was sunk in the Mediterranean. Norfolk quickly repaired the Indomitable, but she was too late to sail with Phillips and was held in the Atlantic probably because— on account of refits and repairs—the Royal Navy was down to one fleet carrier. On November 25 a U-boat sank the battleship Barham.89 The balance was due to tip favorably again soon with new ships reporting for duty, but for the moment the margin of advantage on the Atlantic seemed very slim.

  So far the Hull-Nomura talks had been a matter of discovery and delay, not bargaining. Now the United States seriously considered what concessions it might make to avoid war. Roosevelt showed his interest in a modus vivendi the day after he learned of the November 25 deadline. On November 6 he sounded out Stimson on the idea of a truce with no further military buildup or troop movement for six months or until the Chinese and Japanese arrived at a settlement. The secretary of war promptly disposed of that sort of bargain by pointing out how it would let the Chinese down and cut short the reinforcement of the Philippines.