Once again Japan expected to crush the Chinese quickly. Enjoying overwhelming ground, naval, and air superiority, the Japanese offensive of late 1938 triumphed in virtually every encounter. But Chinese resistance was also stiffening, forcing Japanese troops to rely increasingly on chemical weapons. (Here too there were Western precedents: most notably, Germany’s first use of poison gas in World War I and Fascist Italy’s use of gas in Ethiopia in 1935.) By November, Japanese troops had occupied the “three Wuhan cities” of Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang on the Yangtze River in central China, and Canton in the far south; they controlled the main railways throughout the country and had established controlling enclaves in all of China’s richest, most developed coastal provinces.96 Chiang Kai-shek, proclaiming that the war must continue, retreated with his entire government farther into the interior to the walled, mountain city of Chungking, beyond Japan’s power to pursue him.97
For Japan, Wuhan was indeed the high point of the war, the extreme limit of its offensive capability at that time. As news of its victories came back, the nation celebrated as it had when the press first reported (prematurely) the news of Nanking’s fall: Sirens sounded, newspapers published extras, and the emperor, as he had done during the Manchurian Incident, donned full uniform and appeared astride his white horse.
Konoe soon issued his second statement on the war, on November 3, l938. Maintaining that Japan intended to construct a “New Order in East Asia,” he also declared that it would not veto participation by the Nationalist Chinese government. Eight weeks later, on December 22, Konoe made an important third pronouncement, which set forth the “three Konoe principles,” thereafter considered to be Japan’s official war aims. First, China must formally recognize Manchukuo and establish relations of “neighborly friendship.” This principle implied that China cease all anti-Japan activities. Second, China would be required to join Japan in defending against Communism; this implied that Japan had a right to maintain armies within China. Third, there must be broad economic cooperation between the two governments, including acceptance of Japan’s right to develop and exploit the natural resources of North China and Inner Mongolia.98
On these three principles, Japan hoped to establish its “New Order in East Asia.” Konoe’s statement was intended to drive a wedge between the factions in the Nationalist government—former premier Wang Ching-wei on the one hand and Chiang Kai-shek on the other. The eventual outcome would be a new collaborationist government to rule from Japanese-occupied Nanking over Japanese-controlled provinces.99
IV
On January 4, 1939, Konoe resigned, unable to end the fighting in China or to bring about a consensus within his divided cabinet on a military alliance with Nazi Germany. His departure opened the way for three successors—former privy council president Hiranuma, Gen. Abe Nobuyuki, and Admiral Yonai—to carry the “holy war” forward. An accommodation with Wang Ching-wei to establish a rival regime in Nanking was in the offing. But Japan had not crushed Chiang Kai-shek. On the contrary, it had aroused a deep spirit of national resistance wherever its often wantonly brutal troops had advanced. Unable to maintain control of the vast rural countryside, forced to stretch its fronts and their lines of supply and communications to the limit, the Japanese armies in China soon found themselves hopelessly frustrated, both militarily and politically. At that point World War II started in Europe, and Japan’s ruling groups began to imagine that the rising power of Germany offered them a way out of their dilemma.
Following his resigned prime minister’s recommendation, the emperor at the start of 1939 appointed Hiranuma as Konoe’s successor. Hiranuma was a strong supporter of the army and a person whom Hirohito had once considered an outright fascist. Since the army mutiny of 1936, however, he had distanced himself somewhat from the radical right by dissolving the Kokuhonsha—at Prince Saionji’s insistence—and cultivating ties with members of the court entourage. Now, under coaching from Finance Minister Ikeda Seihin and the court group, he redefined himself further, promising not to make enemies of Britain and the United States by entering hastily into a military alliance with Nazi Germany. His partial turnaround on the German alliance was enough to put him in Hirohito’s good graces.100
For the next nine months Hiranuma grappled not only with military and diplomatic problems arising from the deadlocked war in China but also with the problem of the Soviet Union. In May the Kwantung Army clashed with Soviet and Mongolian forces near Nomonhan village, on the border between northwestern Manchukuo and Outer Mongolia (the Mongolian People’s Republic). The fighting quickly developed into a full-scale border war, involving large numbers of tanks, artillery, and aircraft. Although the Kwantung Army brought biological warfare weapons to the front, no conclusive evidence shows that they actually used germ warfare against Mongolian and Soviet forces, as later charged.101 Fighting at Nomonhan continued until September 15, when Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and Japanese ambassador Tg Shigenori signed a truce agreement in Moscow.
Japanese casualties—excluding their Manchukuoan auxiliaries—totaled more than 18,925 dead, wounded, or missing—virtually an entire division.102 The officers responsible for provoking the disastrous Nomonhan incident—the commander of the Kwantung Army, Gen. Ueda Kenkichi, and his two senior staff officers, Maj. Tsuji Masanobu and Lt. Col. Hattori Takushiro—were merely reassigned. No rethinking of army plans and methods took place. The emperor again refrained from punishing anyone, and in 1941 he even allowed Tsuji and Hattori to be promoted and to serve in important positions on the Army General Staff, just as he had earlier allowed the perpetrators of the Manchurian Incident to be posted to central headquarters in Tokyo, and promoted.103
Moreover, it appeared that the officers involved had acted legitimately on the basis of a document—the “Outline for Dealing With Disputes Along the Manchuria-Soviet Border”—that Hirohito had sanctioned shortly before the incident erupted. As the troops were following orders he had approved, he certainly did not want to punish them; and the army high command also saw no need to give more attention to a reckless action that had ended so miserably.104
That summer of 1939 the Hiranuma cabinet confronted yet another serious diplomatic problem arising from the stalemated war in China. For several months the North China Area Army had been unhappy over London’s decision to stabilize China’s national currency. Alleging the presence of Chinese terrorists operating from within the British concession in the occupied city of Tientsin, the army began puting pressure on the enclave. Japanese troops encircled the entire concession with an electrified wire fence and started searching foreigners for their possession of banned Nationalist currency. In mid-June they escalated their harassment to a full blockade and started strip-searching British citizens, male and female alike. Concurrently, at home, the army and right-wing groups unleashed an anti-British propaganda campaign.105 To the delight of army leaders, Hiranuma’s home minister and close consultant, Kido, refused to rein in the campaign even though it had incurred Hirohito’s displeasure.106
As Japan’s relations with Britain worsened throughout the spring and summer of 1939, the pending problem arose of whether to strengthen ties with Germany, an idea the emperor opposed. When pro-Nazi ambassadors Gen. shima Hiroshi in Berlin and Shiratori Toshio in Rome refused to convey the Foreign Ministry directive carefully circumscribing the terms under which Japan would join a new Axis pact, Hiranuma merely fretted. When he informed the emperor of their actions, Hirohito too grew excited but chose not to order their recall.107
Then, on July 26, 1939, the United States, having repeatedly protested Japanese actions in China, notified the Hiranuma government that it intended not to renew the U.S.–Japan Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, scheduled to lapse in January 1940. Up to that point the Roosevelt administration had pursued a policy of gentle appeasement of Japan, but its basic Asian policy had always been to maintain the imperialist status quo embodied in the Washington treaty system. Thus it had consistently refused to recognize any cha
nges Japan had brought about by force in China. Roosevelt had also propped up China’s national currency by making regular silver purchases—a policy that would eventually lead him to join the British in providing foreign exchange so that Chiang Kai-shek could stabilize his currency, counter the proliferation of Japanese military currencies in occupied areas, and go on fighting.108 Now, however, anticipating that war would soon break out in Europe, the United States put Japan on notice that serious economic sanctions could follow further acts of aggression. Thereafter, if Japan’s leaders were to continue the war in China, they would have to take more seriously the reactions of the United States, on which they depended for vital imports needed to wage war.
“It could be a great blow to scrap metal and oil,” Hirohito complained to his chief aide-de-camp, Hata Shunroku, on August 5, shortly after the American move:
Even if we can purchase [oil and scrap] for the next six months, we will immediately have difficulties thereafter. Unless we reduce the size of our army and navy by one-third, we won’t make it…. They [his military and naval leaders] should have prepared for something like this a long time ago. It’s unacceptable for them to be making a commotion about it now.109
But of course Hirohito did not enjoin his chiefs of staff to end the China war, or to reduce the size of anything; he simply got angry at them for not having anticipated the American reaction.
A few weeks later, on August 23, 1939, while the Japan-Soviet truce to end the fighting on the Mongolia-Manchukuo border was being negotiated in Moscow, Germany signed a nonaggression pact with its ideological enemy, the Soviet Union—which contravened the 1936 Japan-German Anti-Comintern Pact. After a fruitless three-year quest for “collective security” with the West against German territorial expansion in Europe, Stalin had declared Soviet neutrality and, in a secret protocol attached to the pact, made a deal with Hitler to take over the Baltic states and eventually partition Poland.110 Stunned by this diplomatic reversal, and unsure how to interpret the enormous strengthening of both German and Soviet power that Hitler’s alliance with Stalin portended, the Hiranuma cabinet resigned on the morning of August 28.
A very angry Hirohito used the occasion of this cabinet change to inform Chief Aide-de-Camp Hata that he intended to appoint someone he could trust as the next army minister, certainly not Isogai Rensuke or Tada Hayao (generals whose names had appeared in the press), and that Hata “should convey that to the army minister [Itagaki Seishir].”111 For many months Hirohito’s displeasure with Itagaki’s reporting had been building, and he had told him to his face that he lacked ability. Now, on the twenty-eighth, Hirohito appointed General Abe prime minister, telling him (according to Konoe, who told Kido) to chose either his chief aide, Hata, or Gen. Umezu Yoshijir as army minister, and to try to “cooperate” with the United States and Britain. However, “the most important matter” was “preservation of internal order.” “[B]e very careful in chosing your Home and Justice Ministers,” he warned.112 This seems to have been an authentic expression of Hirohito’s distrust of the Japanese people; it may also have echoed, rather less clearly, his uneasiness with the German-Soviet rapprochement: nothing good could come of such an unnatural coupling, so be on guard against further Soviet and German maneuvering. On the afternoon of the next day, Hirohito formally appointed Hata Shunroku, the military professional he liked and trusted, as Army Minister.113 Retired admiral Nomura Kichisabur, a man who promised to reestablish good relations with the United States, came in as Abe’s new foreign minister.
Meanwhile Hitler had already revealed to his generals, in May, his strategy for attacking and destroying the armies of the Allies and seizing control of the European continent. With Germany at the height of its power relative to Britain, France, and Poland, Hitler now decided to put one part of his overall plan into effect. On September 1, 1939, the first day of the Abe cabinet, German armies invaded Poland, starting a new European war. Two days later Britain and France intervened, declaring war on Germany, and on September 8, President Roosevelt, Hitler’s most implacable enemy, proclaimed a state of limited national emergency.
Soon the United States, despite its declaration of neutrality, was shipping Britain and France growing supplies of war matériel. In October, Roosevelt ordered a large part of the American fleet, home-ported in Southern California, to Hawaii to relieve pressure on the British, French, and Dutch colonies and Pacific Ocean defenses. Positioning the fleet at Pearl Harbor, he hoped, might serve to deter revisionist Japan from overturning the status quo in Southeast Asia. These momentous events, all occurring during the early months of Abe’s tenure, raised fears in Tokyo that the United States, despite its strong isolationist sentiment, would eventually enter the war on the side of Britain and France. Unable to respond to the new international situation, the Abe cabinet collapsed on January 14, 1940.
Immediately another frantic effort to choose a successor began. Privy Seal Yuasa queried the senior statesmen, even the venerable Saionji, but attended above all to the wishes of the emperor. At Hirohito’s insistence Reserve Admiral Yonai, a man in whom he reposed great trust, formed the next cabinet, and Hata was asked by Hirohito to stay on and assist Yonai as the army minister.114 To assuage criticism in the army at the selection of a naval officer, Hirohito also sanctioned at this time Gen. Tj’s elevation to the post of vice army minister.115
From the very start of his reign, Hirohito had played an active role in high-level personnel appointments. At such times he had imposed conditions, telling the prime minister–designate he must do such and such, or appoint certain persons to this or that ministry so they could control one or another particular section chief.116 Indeed, he and his advisers had destabilized the system of party government by insisting on determining who would be the next prime minister. Now, as the China war dragged on and the pace of European diplomacy quickened, his involvement in such matters increased. His interventions were made at his own choosing, and intentionally concealed from the public. When new calls arose from the army high command for a military alliance with Germany that would make Japan part of an anti–Anglo-American bloc, Hirohito continued to resist. The government, he insisted, should focus on bringing the China war to a swift conclusion and not ally Japan closer with Germany except to counter the Soviet Union.
Three months into Yonai’s tenure as prime minister, starting in April, Germany invaded Western Europe, completing the drastic realignment in international relations that it had begun eight months earlier with its conquest of Poland. One after another Europe’s remaining independent nations fell: Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and finally, with little military resistance, France, from which the British army was extricated at the last moment. Overnight the geopolitical perspectives in Tokyo changed. For three long years Japan’s leaders had been locked in a war of their own making in China, with no military or political victory in sight. The Nazi victories in Europe had created unprecedented opportunities for Japan to take over the Asian colonies of Britain, France, and the Netherlands. The expectation grew apace of making gains and compensating for weaknesses by riding on the coattails of the rising power of Germany, which now controlled most of the resources of Europe up to the Soviet frontier and was preparing to invade Britain. When Yonai failed to act on the long-pending issue of a German alliance, the army brought down his cabinet, and Hirohito did nothing to prevent it.
Throughout this chaotic series of international crises under three prime ministers—Hiranuma, Abe, and Yonai—Hirohito was content to watch as both the China war and the policy of southern advance unfolded. Not once did he make a personal effort to extricate Japan from its deadlocked war in China. And because Japan’s policy toward China remained unchanged, relations with the United States also failed to improve. Believing the policy of southern advance to be strategically desirable, Hirohito worried mainly over what stance the British and the Americans would adopt if the navy continued to move south.
By the summer of 1940, two new elements had
entered the picture, increasing the pressure on him to align more closely with the advocates of a new German alliance. One was the conquest of Western Europe by the German military juggernaut, which left Britain apparently isolated, on the verge of invasion; the other was the realignment of Soviet foreign policy under the aegis of Stalin’s pact with Hitler. The Soviet move seemed to have imparted new strength to the Axis alliance while also raising the specter of renewed Russian military aid to Chiang Kai-shek.117 In this situation of rapid military conquest and intense diplomatic maneuver, Hirohito vacillated, uncertain whether to stand firm against the army on a tripartite pact directed against the U.S. and Britain, or to change sides and sanction what the army wanted. Ultimately his decision would have less to do with shared ideological goals with the Nazis than with preserving the unity of Japan.
10
STALEMATE AND ESCALATION
Japan’s ruling elites had embarked on a war in China for which Hirohito and the authority of the throne were absolutely essential. Officially the armed forces were chastising the troops of Chiang Kai-shek and spreading the virtues of the emperor, not creating chaos and cruelty. Hirohito’s symbolic role was to obfuscate the relationship between the government’s principles of peace and its policies of violence. He personally made the whole military endeavor seem both ethical and rational. Outwardly he was the model of morality for Japanese society, the embodiment of its aristocratic and national values, a symbol of its professedly benevolent intentions. The role he played as supreme commander, shaping the fighting strategy and the conduct of the war from behind the scenes, was deliberately camouflaged. Yet the experience he gained in playing that role during the first four years of struggle against the Nationalists altered his attitude toward war in general and eventually made him more willing to risk Japan’s security for larger purposes.
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Page 37
