by Toland, John
Hull was already on the phone with Stimson, telling him that he had “about made up his mind not to give … the proposition [the modus vivendi] … to the Japanese but to kick the whole thing over—to tell them that he has no other proposition at all.”
This prompted Stimson to check with Roosevelt by phone to find out if the paper he had sent the night before about the new Japanese expedition from Shanghai into Indochina had been received. Roosevelt reacted so violently that Stimson commented in his diary that he “fairly blew up—jumped up into the air, so to speak”—and said no, he hadn’t seen it and it “changed the whole situation because it was an evidence of bad faith on the part of the Japanese that while they were negotiating for an entire truce—and entire withdrawal [from China]—they should be sending this expedition down there to Indochina.”
Not much later Hull appeared in person. He recommended that in view of the opposition of the Chinese they drop the modus vivendi and offer the Japanese a brand-new “comprehensive basic proposal for a general peaceful settlement.”
Still angry at the news of the Japanese convoy, Roosevelt approved, and that afternoon Kurusu and Nomura were summoned to the State Department. At five o’clock Hull handed them two documents, “with the forlorn hope that even at this ultimate minute a little common sense might filter into the military minds of Tokyo.”
Kurusu and Nomura expectantly began reading the first paper, an Oral Statement which set forth that the United States “most earnestly” desired to work for peace in the Pacific but that it believed Proposal B “would not be likely to contribute to the ultimate objectives of ensuring peace under law, order and justice in the Pacific area …” In place of Proposal B, Hull offered a new solution and it was embodied in the second paper, marked “Strictly Confidential, Tentative and Without Commitment.” Kurusu read its ten conditions with dismay. It peremptorily called for Japan to “withdraw all military, naval, air and police forces from China and Indochina”; to support no other government or regime in China except Chiang Kai-shek’s; and, in effect, to abrogate the Tripartite Pact.
It was far harsher than the American proposal made on June 21 and Hull had drawn it up without consulting General Marshall or Admiral Stark, who happened to be in the act of drafting still another memorandum to Roosevelt begging for more time to reinforce the Philippines. Hull’s proposal again raised the dead issue of the Tripartite Pact, though Kurusu had already given written assurance it had little significance, and introduced a new proposal calling for “a multilateral nonaggression pact among the British Empire, China, Japan, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union and Thailand and the United States.” Kurusu knew this would complicate an already complicated situation and cause more delay. When Nomura sat down, too stunned to talk, Kurusu asked if this was the American reply to Proposal B.
It was, said Hull, and pointed out the economic advantages to Japan if she accepted: an offer to unfreeze Japanese funds, make a trade agreement based upon reciprocal most-favored-nation treatment, stabilize the dollar-yen rate, reduce trade barriers and grant other considerable economic concessions.
Kurusu foresaw that in Tokyo this would be regarded as an insult, as a bribe, and began taking exception to the conditions. He didn’t see how his government could possibly agree to the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all troops from China and Indochina, and if the United States expected Japan “to take off its hat to Chiang Kai-shek and apologize to him,” no agreement was possible. He requested that they informally discuss the proposal at greater length before sending it on to Tokyo.
“It’s as far as we can go,” said Hull. Public feeling was running so high that he “might almost be lynched” if he let oil go freely into Japan.
Kurusu observed with mordant humor that at times all “statesmen of firm conviction” failed to find public sympathy. Wise men alone could see far ahead and they sometimes became martyrs, but life was short and one could only do his duty. Dejected, he added that Hull’s note just about meant the end, and asked if they were not interested in a modus vivendi.
The phrase had become an unpleasant one to Hull. We explored that, he said curtly.
Was it because the other powers wouldn’t agree? Kurusu asked.
It was uncomfortably close to the truth. “I did my best in the way of exploration,” said Hull.
4.
The first news of Hull’s reply reached Tokyo late in the morning on November 27. It came in a message from the military attaché in Washington to Imperial Headquarters which began by announcing that the United States had replied in writing to Proposal B but that “there was no gleam of hope in negotiations.” Staff officers huddled around the communications room, anxiously waiting while the rest of the message, containing the gist of Hull’s proposal, was being decoded.
The message was sent at once to the Palace, where a liaison conference was in session. It arrived just as the meeting adjourned for lunch and Tojo read it aloud. There was dumfounded silence until someone said, “This is an ultimatum!” Even Togo, who had held forth slight hope of success, never expected this. “Overpowered” by despair, he said something in such a stutter that no one could understand him; the Hull note “stuck in the craw.” His distress was intensified when he saw that several Army men were pleased, “as if to say, ‘Didn’t we tell you so?’ ”
But to one Navy man, Admiral Shimada, it was “a jarring blow.” Hull’s reply was “unyielding and unbending” and didn’t so much as recognize the fact that Japan had made significant concessions.
The demands were equally outrageous to a peacemaker like Kaya. Hull obviously knew that Japan would have to refuse them. He was rejecting an immediate accommodation and seemed to be wanting endless discussions instead. It was just a stall for time. America had made up her mind to go to war—to attack Japan! That Japan had already offered to withdraw troops from southern Indochina at once wasn’t enough; Hull wanted all troops withdrawn at once from Indochina and China. An impossibility.
What particularly infuriated every man in the room was the categoric demand to quit all of China. Manchuria had been won at the cost of considerable sweat and blood. Its loss would mean economic disaster. What right did the wealthy Americans have to make such a demand? What nation with any honor would submit?
Hull’s proposal was the result of impatience and indignation, but the passage that most incensed the Japanese had been tragically misunderstood. To Hull, the word “China” did not include Manchuria and he had no intention of demanding that the Japanese pull out of that territory. Back in April he had assured Nomura that there was no need to discuss recognition of Manchukuo until a basic agreement had been reached, and he imagined that the issue was disposed of. To the Japanese, however, the Hull note had to be taken at face value. After all, the Americans had hardened their position on a number of issues since the days of the Draft Understanding.
The American reply should have been clear on this point; at the very least, the Japanese reaction would have been far less bitter. The exception of Manchuria would not have made the Hull note acceptable as it stood, but it might have enabled Togo to persuade the militarists that negotiations should be continued; it could very well have forced a postponement of the November 30 deadline.a
Thus it was that two great nations who shared a fear of a Communist-dominated Asia were set on a collision course. Who was to blame—the United States or Japan? The latter was almost solely responsible for bringing herself to the road of war with America through the seizure of Manchuria, the invasion of China, the atrocities committed against the Chinese people, and the drive to the south. But this course of aggression had been the inevitable result of the West’s efforts to eliminate Japan as an economic rival after World War I, the Great Depression, her population explosion, and the necessity to find new resources and markets to continue as a first-rate power. Added to all this were the unique and undefined position of the Emperor, the explosive role of gekokujo, and the threat of Communism from both Russia and Mao Tse-tu
ng which had developed into paranoiac fear.
Americans, too, suffered from paranoiac fear, theirs of the “yellow peril,” and yet, oddly, they had no apprehensions about Japan as a military foe and reveled in stories of Nipponese ineptitude. According to one story going around Washington, the British had built warships for Japan so top-heavy that they would capsize in the first battle. The Japanese air force was also generally ridiculed, its pilots regarded as bespectacled bunglers, more to be laughed at than dreaded. Perhaps this sense of superiority subconsciously tempted some American leaders, including Roosevelt, to drive the Japanese to the limit of their forbearance.
How could a nation rich in resources and land, and free from fear of attack, understand the position of a tiny, crowded island empire with almost no natural resources, which was constantly in danger of attack from a ruthless neighbor, the Soviet Union? America herself had, moreover, contributed to the atmosphere of hate and distrust by excluding the Japanese from immigration and, in effect, flaunting a racial and color prejudice that justifiably infuriated the proud Nipponese. America should also have perceived and admitted the hypocrisy of taking such a moral stand on the four principles.b Her ally, Britain, certainly did not observe them in India or Burma, nor did she herself in Central America where “gunboat diplomacy” was still upholding the Monroe Doctrine. Her self-righteousness was also self-serving; what was morality at the top became self-interest at the bottom.
Finally, America made a grave diplomatic blunder by allowing an issue not vital to her basic interests—the welfare of China—to become, at the last moment, the keystone of her foreign policy. Until that summer America had had two limited aims in the Far East: to drive a wedge between Japan and Hitler, and to thwart Japan’s southward thrust. She could easily have attained both these objectives but instead made an issue out of no issue at all, the Tripartite Pact, and insisted on the liberation of China. For this last unattainable goal America’s diplomats were forcing an early war that her own militarists were hoping to avoid—a war, paradoxically, she was in no position to wage. America could not throw the weight of her strength against Japan to liberate China, nor had she ever intended to do so. Her major enemy was Hitler. Instead of frankly informing Chiang Kai-shek of this, she had yielded to his urgings and pressed the policy that led to war in the Far East—and the virtual abandonment of China. More important, by equating Japan with Nazi Germany, her diplomats had maneuvered their nation into two completely different wars, one in Europe against Fascism, and one in the Orient that was linked with the aspirations of all Asians for freedom from the white man’s bondage.
There were no heroes or villains on either side. Roosevelt, for all his shortcomings, was a man of broad vision and humanity; the Emperor was a man of honor and peace. Both were limited—one by the bulky machinery of a great democracy and the other by training, custom and the restrictions of his rule. Caught up in a medieval system, the Japanese militarists were driven primarily by dedication to their country.c They wanted power for it, not war profits for themselves; Tojo himself lived on a modest scale. Prince Konoye’s weaknesses came largely from the vulnerable position of a premier in Japan, but by the end of his second cabinet he had transformed his natural tendency for indecisiveness into a show of purpose and courage which continued until his downfall. Even Matsuoka was no villain. Despite his vanity and eccentricities this man of ability sincerely thought he was working for the peace of the world when he saddled Japan with the Tripartite Pact; and he wrecked the negotiations in Washington out of egotism, not malice.
Nor were Stimson and Hull villains, though the latter, with his all-or-nothing attitude, had committed one of the most fatal mistakes a diplomat could make—driven his opponents into a corner with no chance to save face and given them no option to capitulation but war.
The villain was the times. Japan and America would never have come to the brink of war except for the social and economic eruption of Europe after World War I and the rise of two great revolutionary ideologies—Communism and Fascism. These two sweeping forces, working sometimes in tandem and sometimes at odds, ultimately brought about the tragedy of November 26. America certainly would never have risked going to war solely for the sake of China. It was the fear that Japan in partnership with Hitler and Mussolini would conquer the world that drove America to risk all. And the ultimate tragedy was that Japan had joined up with Hitler mainly because she feared the Anglo-Saxon nations were isolating her; hers was a marriage in name only.
A war that need not have been fought was about to be fought because of mutual misunderstanding, language difficulties, and mistranslations as well as Japanese opportunism, gekokujo, irrationality, honor, pride and fear—and American racial prejudice, distrust, ignorance of the Orient, rigidity, self-righteousness, honor, national pride and fear.
Perhaps these were essentially the answers to Händel’s question: “Why do the nations so furiously rage together?” In any case, America had made a grave mistake that would cost her dearly for decades to come. If Hull had sent a conciliatory answer to Proposal B, the Japanese (according to surviving Cabinet members) would have either come to some agreement with America or, at the least, been forced to spend several weeks in debate. And this hiatus would in turn have compelled postponement of their deadline for attack until the spring of 1942 because of weather conditions. By this time it would have been obvious that Moscow would stand, and the Japanese would have been eager to make almost any concessions to avoid going into a desperate war with an ally which now faced inevitable defeat. If no agreement had been reached, America would have gained precious time to strengthen the Philippines with more bombers and reinforcements. Nor would there have been such a debacle at Pearl Harbor. There is little likelihood that the implausible series of chances and coincidences that brought about the December 7 disaster could have been repeated.
* In addition to sending considerable supplies to China, America was now providing manpower. Claire Chennault, a former U. S. Army Air Corps colonel, and his Flying Tigers were openly training in Burma for air battle with the Japanese. On April 15, 1941, President Roosevelt had signed an unpublicized executive order authorizing Reserve officers and enlisted men to resign from the Army Air Corps, the Naval and Marine Air services so they could join Chennault’s American Volunteer Group. Since the United States was not at war with Japan and could not deal openly with China, all arrangements had to be made with an unofficial agency to ensure secrecy. The Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company of China was set up and authorized to hire a hundred American pilots and several hundred ground crewmen to “operate, service and manufacture aircraft in China.” The Japanese considered this a hostile, provocative act.
† Many Japanese are convinced that this and other diplomatic messages were purposely mistranslated. No evidence could be found of this. It is far more likely that the inaccuracies came from ignorance of the stylized Japanese used by diplomats. It is also possible that the hastily trained translators wanted to make their copy more readable and interesting.
‡ There were several possible reasons why Hull revived this dead issue: out of moral indignation; out of fear of denunciation from the American public, which generally equated Japan with Nazi Germany, if any agreement was reached with Japan; to prepare the public for a war with Japan by raising the specter of a Hitler-Tojo joint attack.
§ At Sugamo Prison, after the war, Tojo told Kenryo Sato that if he had received the Roosevelt modus vivendi, the course of history would probably have changed. “I didn’t tell you at the time, but I had already prepared a proposal with new compromises in it. I wanted somehow to carry out the Emperor’s wishes and avoid war.” Then he heaved a big sigh. “If we had only received that modus vivendi!”
ǁ This entry was later used by revisionist historians such as Charles Beard to bolster their claim that President Roosevelt purposely maneuvered Japan into an attack on American territory. A superficial reading of the controversial diary entry and subsequent remarks by Stimson se
em to indicate that the anti-Roosevelt group is correct, but a study of the records of the discussions between the President and his advisers in the last days of November make it evident that they were expecting an onslaught on Singapore, Thailand or some other part of the Southeast Asian continent. They certainly did not appear to anticipate an initial attack on any American territory such as the Philippines or Guam, much less Hawaii. Thus, when Roosevelt said “we were likely to be attacked” he probably used “we” meaning the ABCD powers. It was a “difficult proposition” just because he did not expect a direct assault on the United States, and the problem was to make an attack on Singapore or Thailand seem to be a “first shot” against America. There were two ways to carry on this “maneuvering”—with a diplomatic warning to Japan or with a message to Congress so phrased that if Japan made a move south, even without directly menacing American territory, we would take it to be an assault on our vital interests—and, as it were, an assault on the United States.
In the absence of positive proof this assumption, and it can only be an assumption, seems much more logical and fair than the wishful reasoning of those who disapproved of almost everything Roosevelt did.
a All of the men at the liaison conference, from Tojo to Togo, believed that Hull’s reference to “China” included Manchuria. In 1967 a number of Tojo’s close associates were asked what might have happened if Hull had clarified that point. Kenryo Sato, learning the truth for the first time, slapped his forehead and said, “If we had only known!” Very excitedly he added, “If you had said you recognized Manchukuo, we’d have accepted!” Suzuki, Kaya and Hoshino would not go that far. Kaya, now a leading politician, said, “If the note had excluded Manchukuo, the decision to wage war or not would have been rediscussed at great length. There’d have been heated arguments at liaison conferences over whether we should withdraw at once from North China in spite of the threat of Communism.” At least, said Suzuki, Pearl Harbor would have been prevented. “There might have been a change of government.”
