By the time FDR learned of the de facto oil embargo, it was already month-old news in Tokyo. The day after the FDR-Hull lunch, Emperor Hirohito sat solemnly with government leaders listening to planning board director Teiichi Suzuki:
As a result of the present overall economic blockade imposed by Great Britain and the United States, our Empire’s national power is declining day by day. Our liquid fuel stockpile, which is the most important, will reach bottom by June or July of next year, even if we impose strict wartime control on the civilian demand. Accordingly, I believe it is vitally important for the survival of our Empire that we make up our minds to establish and stabilize a firm economic base.9
Admiral Osami Nagano—the chief of staff of the imperial Japanese navy—told Hirohito and assembled leaders,
Since Japan is unavoidably facing national ruin whether it decides to fight the United States or submit to its demands, it must by all means choose to fight. Japan would rather go down fighting than ignobly surrender without a struggle, because surrender would spell spiritual as well as physical ruin for the nation and its destiny.10
Dean Acheson had cut off Japan’s economic lifeblood, but Roosevelt’s government did not track how the freeze and oil embargo was affecting Japan. Edward Miller wrote,
The oversight is astonishing. U.S. civilian and military officials had studied Japan’s dependence on foreign trade for more than four years. They understood that a nation heavily dependent on overseas commerce, especially with the United States, would suffer grievously when its international financial resources were immobilized.11
The First Wise Man and the China Lobby had promised that once the oil was cut, the mad dog’s military machine would stall, the military class would be humiliated, and democrats would arise in Tokyo and Chungking as American friends. It didn’t work out that way. In a cabinet meeting on October 14, the relatively moderate Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe suggested that the mad dogs withdraw from China. War Minister General Hideki Tojo bellowed, “I make no concessions regarding withdrawal! It means defeat of Japan by the United States—a stain on the history of the Japanese Empire!”12 Instead of empowering moderates in Tokyo, Washington’s demands resulted in the fall of a moderate government and in the Japanese military taking full control. The chief of the mad dogs, General Hideki Tojo, now became prime minister.
The Tojo government refused to withdraw from China, and in early November the Japanese tankers in San Pedro weighed anchor with no oil and left the West Coast. Tojo warned his compatriots,
Two years from now we will have no petroleum for military use. Ships will stop moving.… We can talk about austerity and suffering, but can our people endure such a life for a long time?… I fear that we would become a third-class nation after 2 or 3 years if we just sit tight.13
Yoshimichi Hara, president of the imperial privy council (composed of Japan’s ex-premiers), lamented Japan’s situation:
If we were to give in, we would give up in one stroke not only our gains in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, but also the benefits of the Manchurian Incident. This we cannot do. We are loath to compel our people to suffer even greater hardships, on top of what they have endured during the four years since the China Incident. But it is clear that the existence of our country is being threatened, that the great achievements of the Emperor Meiji would all come to naught, and that there is nothing else we can do.14
The Tojo government secretly defined its goals:
To expel the influence of [the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands] from East Asia, to establish a sphere for the self-defense and self-preservation of our Empire, and to build a New Order in Greater East Asia. In other words, we aim to establish a close and inseparable relationship in military, political, and economic affairs between our Empire and the countries of the Southern Region, to achieve our Empire’s self-defense and self-preservation.15
Meanwhile, Henry Luce and his wife crisscrossed the country enlightening Americans about New China. Luce said, “The imperial Japanese army has been stopped cold in its tracks.… China’s army is the out-standing creation of a very great leader of men—Chiang Kai-shek.”16 His wife said the Chinese were “spiritual allies” of America and “fellow Christians” and that Mr. and Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek were “the greatest married team in the world,” with the exception of the Roosevelts.17 On November 8, 1941, Luce mailed all Time subscribers a letter asking them to help the Chinese who “have incorporated many of our own hopes and aspirations into their Republic, now battling for its life.”18
Luce had Teddy White write a series of Chiang-positive articles in Fortune magazine hinting that the national security of the United States would be at stake if America lost China:
For the chronicle of history the matter is very clear: this is not aid to a country in need, charity on a cosmic scale. This is part of the search by the American people for their own well-being and security. Thus, although China’s moral claims may be as great as China’s bitter wants, the determinant of U.S. action is the needs of the U.S.; and any examination of the record of “Aid to China” must be judged in the light of U.S. strategy in a troubled world.19
On November 26, 1941, six Japanese aircraft carriers sailed from Hitokappu Bay in the Kurile Islands in the direction of Pearl Harbor. For over a decade, American military experts like General Billy Mitchell had warned of a troubling division of command at Pearl Harbor. The commanding Army general and Navy admiral in Hawaii barely spoke to each other. A divided command meant no defense at all and made the U.S. fleet a juicy and inviting target. The two civilian officials responsible for uniting the Hawaiian command—Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox—gave little thought to the problem. For almost a decade the First Wise Man had preached that Japan would never attack the U.S.
With China Lobby funds, the Stimson Committee’s Manhattan missionaries had conned the American public into believing that the U.S. could cut Japan’s oil supply and suffer no blowback. The mirage that the Generalissimo had been bravely fighting the Japanese had in turn allowed American officials to imagine that by standing with Chiang, they were increasing U.S. security in Asia. Now millions of neighbors in the Pacific would pay a terrible price.
In his history of American foreign policy, George Herring concludes that America’s position on China involved it in war:
Had the [United States] abandoned, at least temporarily, its determination to drive the Japanese from China and restored some trade, it might have delayed a two-front war when it was not yet ready to fight one major enemy. Having already learned what seemed the hard lessons of appeasement [in Europe], U.S. officials rejected a course of expediency. Rather, they backed a proud nation into a position where its only choices were war or surrender.20
The historian John Toland, in his bestselling The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, concurred about the U.S. going to war over China:
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 [of 1941] America had two limited objectives in the Far East: to drive a wedge between Japan and Hitler, and to thwart Japan’s southward thrust. She could easily have obtained both these objectives but instead… insisted on the liberation of China.… America could not throw the weight of her strength against Japan to liberate China, nor had she ever intended to. Her major enemy was Hitler. [The Pacific War was] a war that need not have been fought.
World War II in the Pacific would result in the deaths of about one hundred thousand Americans and over two million Japanese. In the fall of 1941, the Wise Men didn’t contemplate such horror. But if war did come, Time magazine prayed for the New China dream:
China is today the only great non-Christian state with a Christian head. The conversion of Constantine is not the only case where through political events Christianity has come into sudden power after long years of st
ruggling growth.… Something not far different might occur in China. If anything should happen to bring the U.S. and Britain into an active shooting war at China’s side, enthusiasm for their allies might make millions of Chinese receptive converts to Christianity.21
On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Thomas Corcoran was at home and read in the New York Times that Senator Harry Truman was calling him to testify before his committee about lobbying for military contractors. Corcoran phoned his client T. V. Soong, probably so the two men could get their stories straight. T.V. greeted Tommy with shocking news: “Your fleet is at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.”22
Americans would always “Remember Pearl Harbor,” but the attack was not meant to be an invasion of the U.S.; rather, it was an attempt to cripple the U.S. Navy’s ability to block Japan’s all-important thrust south. The much more significant opening salvo of the Pacific war occurred one hour and twenty minutes prior to Pearl Harbor, when General Hirofumi Yamashita landed twenty thousand troops on the east coast of Malaysia and sent them south—as Franklin Delano Roosevelt had predicted—to Singapore and then on to the Dutch East Indies for oil.
In military parlance, the term blowback refers to the unintended consequences of a covert operation. Americans experiencing the blowback of their government’s actions saw Japan’s act of violence as a surprise attack; they were unable to put it into context because they were unaware of the United States’ secret acts of violence against the other country. The American public did not know that Acheson had cut Japan’s oil without FDR’s knowledge or that Roosevelt had been building an air force for Chiang to burn down Japan or that Tokyo knew of T. V. Soong’s lobbying of FDR and of the airplanes and pilots arriving at Rangoon. As lawyer and author Alan Armstrong wrote in Preemptive Strike, if the public had been aware that for one year FDR had been planning offensive air operations against Japan, “President Roosevelt may have risked impeachment.”23
In the Tokyo war-crimes trials after Japan surrendered, the U.S.-run tribunal defined aggression as “a first or unprovoked attack or act of hostility.” Koichi Kido, a close adviser to Emperor Hirohito, argued that “Japan was provoked into a war of self-defense.” William Logan—Kido’s American associate counsel—summed up the Japanese case:
We know of no parallel case in history where an economic blockade… was enforced on such a vast scale with such deliberate, premeditated, and coordinated precision.… Responsible leaders at that time sincerely and honestly believed that Japan’s national existence was at stake. [Because sanctions] threatened Japan’s very existence and if continued would have destroyed her, the first blow was not struck at Pearl Harbor. The Pacific War was not a war of aggression by Japan. It was a war of self-defense and self-preservation.24
When he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Henry Luce phoned his father, who told him, “We will now all see what we mean to China and China means to us.” Luce’s biographer Swanberg observed, “The Japanese attack was a providential aid to Luce’s own grand plans for Christianizing and Americanizing China at a speed hitherto undreamed of.” That evening, Reverend Luce died in his sleep at the age of seventy-three. The next day, when Teddy White expressed his condolences, Henry Luce replied calmly, “It was wonderful that he lived long enough to see America and China as allies.”25
Two days after the shock of Pearl Harbor, the New York Times published an editorial entitled “United We Stand.”
We have as our loyal ally China, with its inexhaustible manpower—China, which we did not desert in her own hour of need—China, from whose patient and untiring and infinitely resourceful people there will now return to us tenfold payment upon such aid as we have given. In the presence of these allies we shall find the key to the strategy of the Pacific.26
In China, the reality was the opposite. China Hand John Service remembered that when news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reached Chungking, “the Chinese were beside themselves with excitement and pleasure. To them this meant assurance of victory… they sat back after that and didn’t do much.”27 A Chinese writer later recalled the reaction of those around Chiang:
Officials went about congratulating each other, as if a great victory had been won. From their standpoint, it was a great victory, what they had waited for: America was at war with Japan. At last, at last, America was at war with Japan! Now China’s strategic importance would grow even more. American money and equipment would flow in; half a billion dollars, one billion dollars.… Now Lend-Lease would increase.… Now America would have to support Chiang, and that meant U.S. dollars into the pockets of the officials, into the pockets of the army commanders… and guns… for the coming war against Mao.28
Southern Methodist Chiang and Christian Miss Soong. Note the strategically placed Roosevelt photo; FDR’s support was their key to holding on to power. (Carl Mydans / Getty Images)
Chiang Kai-shek—who for a decade had predicted a war “in which the United States will figure as the champion and savior of China”—was so happy when he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that he pulled out his phonograph and played a recording of “Ave Maria” over and over.29 At long last, Chiang had his barbarian.
General Marshall was well aware that his commander in chief was emotional rather than realistic about China. Marshall’s envoy in China, General John Magruder, wrote Marshall that Chiang intended to hoard American aid “largely with the idea of post-war military action” and that Chiang regarded his armies as “static assets to be conserved for assistance in fighting against… fellow countrymen for economic and political supremacy.” Magruder called FDR’s expectation that Chiang would fight the Japanese an “alluring fiction” from the world of “make-believe.”30 One of Magruder’s men reported,
The general idea in the United States that China has fought Japan to a standstill, and has had many glorious victories, is a delusion. Japan has generally been able to push forward any place she wanted to. She has stopped mostly because of the fact that a certain number of troops can safely hold only a certain number of miles of front without allowing dangerous holes to exist in it.
The will to fight an aggressive action does not yet exist in the Chinese Army. If the Government of the United States is counting on such intent it should be cautioned against being too sure of any large-scale offensive action at present.… The desire of the Chinese for more modern materiel was not, before December 8th, for the purpose of pressing the war against Japan, but was to make the Central Government safe against insurrection after diplomatic pressure by other nations had forced Japan out of China.31
The U.S. naval attaché in Chungking also warned Marshall about the mirage prevalent in Washington that Chiang was eager to fight Japan: “If such conception is seriously held by those controlling high strategy, it is fatally defective.”32 Added Magruder’s man, “There is very little activity along the front… no contact between Chinese and Japanese troops at front was observed… the interest of the Chinese toward any aggressive action appears to be quite negligible, regardless of their statements that all they need is airplanes, tanks, and artillery in order to drive the aggressor from their shores.”33
General Marshall had done his best to slow down the flow of airplanes for FDR’s secret air war in Asia. In the first week of December, Claire Chennault counted just sixty-two outdated fighter planes at his airfield in Burma.
After Pearl Harbor, Chiang Kai-shek proposed that the U.S., Britain, China, the Netherlands, and Russia establish a war council in Chungking. The way Chiang saw it, airplanes would attack Japanese supply lines, cutting off their forces on the Asiatic mainland, after which his armies would smash the invaders. Chiang’s grand plan did not address supply, logistics, and command and did not acknowledge the inconvenient war raging in Europe. Chiang was clear on one point: the Chungking war council would control “priorities and supplies.”34 The barbarians would fight Japan while Ailing and Chiang handled the foreign loot.
When he heard the news of Pearl Harbor, Prime Minister Ch
urchill sped to Liverpool, boarded a warship bound for the U.S., and arrived at the White House in time for Christmas. Roosevelt informed Churchill that the war would be won by the “United Nations,” a new term at the time. The Big Four of this United Nations would consist of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. Churchill thought Roosevelt mad. China? Churchill later recalled his startled reaction:
At Washington I had found the extraordinary significance of China in American minds, even at the top, strangely out of proportion. I was conscious of a standard of values which accorded China almost equal fighting power with the British Empire, and rated the Chinese armies as a factor to be mentioned in the same breath as the armies of Russia. I told the president how much I felt American opinion overestimated the contribution which China could make to the general war. He differed strongly. There were five hundred million people in China. What would happen if this enormous population developed in the same way Japan had done in the last century and got hold of modern weapons? I replied that I was speaking of the present war, which was quite enough to go on with for the time being. I said that I would of course always be helpful and polite to the Chinese, whom I admired and liked as a race and pitied for their endless misgovernment, but that he must not expect me to adopt what I felt was a wholly unreal standard of values.35
Churchill would have been even more shocked if he had known that when Roosevelt first wrote out a list of the United Nations’ Big Four, he had placed China second, after the United States, followed by the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom. Only later did FDR revise the list, placing the UK second and China fourth. On New Year’s Day 1942, a declaration by the United Nations to fight the Axis powers was officially announced; FDR signed for the U.S., Churchill for Great Britain, and T. V. Soong for China.
The China Mirage Page 27