Prince Chichibu, Emperor Hirohito’s brother, had urged him to move toward direct rule—in line with the officers’ desire to return to a military shogunate—and many historians pinpoint this movement, called the “Showa Restoration,” as the moment their ideas for a radical syndicate-like state coalesced. Unlike the old shogunate, organized around individual warlords, the new Japanese shogunate would place power in the hands of institutions such as the army and navy, with the emperor’s role greatly reduced. These sentiments came to a head in the February 26, 1936, incident in which more than 1,400 Imperial Japanese troops killed several leading politicians and occupied the center of Tokyo in the name of purging corruption from political life. They succeeded in killing the finance minister, the inspector-general of military education, and the lord keeper of the privy seal, and by mistake killed the prime minister’s brother instead of the prime minister himself. Surrounded by the regular (loyal) army, many of the ringleaders committed suicide; the rest were arrested and nearly two dozen sentenced to death. Several others received indefinite prison sentences.152 The court trying the assassins saw letters of civilian support for the defendants pour in—many signed in blood—“the Gallup poll of public opinion in Japan,” as the contemporary British editor Hugh Byas observed.153 Byas, who attended the trial, noted that one of the defendants, Lieutenant Colonel Sabura Aizawa, opened his defense with a declaration that most Japanese believed: “The Emperor is the incarnation of the great god who made the universe. The Emperor is absolute….”154
In the Bushido system, soldiers’ obedience was regularly tied to death for the emperor. In 1941, an army private, Taro Tanaka, published an article explaining what was expected of those who put on a uniform. “No longer is [the soldier’s] ego his own; it is the Emperor’s.” The ideal death, he wrote, was to turn one’s face toward the Imperial Palace and shout “Long live the Emperor!”155 But Japanese citizens were also trained to routinely submit themselves to the state. A July 1941 handbook for imperial subjects denounced “individualism, liberalism, utilitarianism, and imperialism,” having just a few years earlier declared the emperor a “deity incarnate.”156 Yet the “deity incarnate” had no inclination to get measured for a coffin like so many of his prime ministers, and allowed himself to be substantially marginalized in matters of policy.
Whether any of this emperor worship or submission to an authoritarian, top-down political structure could have been prevented by better diplomatic efforts on the part of Britain or the United States remains a matter of highest speculation. Paul Johnson’s contention that Britain’s interests aligned with Japan’s, and therefore Britain had an incentive to encourage “constitutional propriety and the rule of law,” runs shallow.157 Britain only had an interest in its Far Eastern colonies, not in adopting Japan as an Asian foster child. Instead of viewing itself as one of many important and rising second-tier powers (as illustrated in the Washington Conference and the Nine Power Treaty), Japan typically took offense, especially at America, which alone had resisted some of the colonial land grabs by Europeans in China. Then there was the immigration issue, where both the United States and Australia enacted new restrictions on Japanese immigration in the early 1920s. Like a child unable to retaliate against his parents, the Japanese lashed out against the dog, in this case, the colossal, lumbering, and incapable giant, China. Many Japanese saw China as theirs by divine right: banker Hirozo Mori wrote, “Expansion towards the continent is the destiny of the Japanese people, decreed by Heaven….”158 A more modern authority on Japan, Kurt Singer, explained that Imperial Japan sensed the weakness of the Chinese giant. The Japanese, he noted, seemed to “smell [the] decay…they can smell decomposition….”159
As war clouds in the Pacific gathered, access to raw materials took on greater urgency. A survey by the New York Trust Company in 1940 found that nine of the fourteen strategic raw materials consumed by the United States existed in large volume only in southeast Asia.160 As early as 1937, U.S. secretary of state Cordell Hull informed rubber industry leaders that they needed to start building up their inventories due to a possible war with Japan, and the following year, Senator David Walsh of Massachusetts warned that even to keep trade routes open required raw materials to build battleships. “So,” he concluded, “in very many respects we are in exactly the same situation as Great Britain.”161 The same could be said for Germany, of course, and was. Economic analyst Eliot Janeway wrote in 1939, “it is on the economic front that Japan’s drive threatens us most dangerously: the American economy, and with it American defense, cannot be operated without rubber and tin, which at present cannot be obtained in adequate quantity except from British and Dutch colonies in southeastern Asia.”162 The following year, America’s chief Far Eastern expert in the State Department, Stanley Hornbeck, said, “the United States finds itself so vitally and overwhelmingly dependent on Southeastern Asia that our entire foreign policy must be adjusted to that fact….”163 Even after a concerted attempt at stockpiling, American reserves of tin in December 1941 were adequate for only thirteen months’ worth of consumption.164 But the Dutch oil in the East Indies lay as a glittering black solution to Japan’s needs.
The Samurai and the Dragon
Japan had begun its aggression in China with the Mukden Incident (September 1931–February 1932), then attacked the Great Wall region in 1933. A major invasion, sparking the Second Sino-Japanese War, was triggered by the clash at the Marco Polo Bridge between Japanese troops and Chinese forces on July 7–8, 1937. An unrelenting march south ensued, constituting a continuation of Japanese aggression that the world had refused to confront in Manchuria or even in the League of Nations. Japan then moved rapidly to consolidate her position in Southeast Asia with daring new demands on the Vichy French government (after the fall of France) for military bases in Indochina, particularly the naval base at Cam Ranh Bay. That alone posed a threat to Indonesia and to American supplies of tin, rubber, and other materials. More to the point, American policy makers, including Hull, feared that Indochina was a precursor to further southern moves, especially after an intercepted dispatch from Japan stated flatly, “After the occupation of French Indochina, next on our schedule is the sending of an ultimatum to the Netherlands Indies. In the seizing of Singapore the Navy will play the principal part…. [W]e will once and for all crush Anglo-American military power and the ability to assist in any schemes against us.”165 These attitudes, in fact, were common throughout the Japanese military. Chief of staff from 1923 to 1926 and later vice-minister of war General Shinji Hata, like many Japanese officers, had studied in Germany. He viewed the United States as the inevitable enemy: “America will always obstruct Japan…Against what power America’s armaments are directed is only too plain.”166
An already-convinced Roosevelt did not need Hata’s words to realize the Empire of Japan had no intentions of stopping short of Indonesian oil fields—and perhaps not even then. He froze all Japanese assets in the United States and all trade licenses with Japan on July 25, 1941, effectively shutting off the oil spigots, and the British Commonwealth followed suit. This move did not end all oil shipments to Japan, however. Exports could still be approved on an ad hoc basis by the State and Treasury departments, and American oil companies continued to deliver prepaid shipments for several months. But the writing was on the wall. While it certainly could have—as postwar Japanese apologists insisted—“pushed Japan to war,” the fact is that it certainly didn’t have to. Quite the opposite; a reasonable, truly liberal and democratic government would have stepped back, reined in the warlords, purged the militarists, and regained control of its country. But Japan was not democratic. It was totalitarian, and chose to do none of those things. The “we caused it” mentality, typical of many post-9/11 Westerners, simply ignores the reality that the “other side” has choices—moral choices—and continually decided against doing the right thing, even when confronted with a war it could not win. Indeed, Roosevelt had to explain to Americans why he curtailed domestic con
sumption while continuing to ship oil to the Japanese, noting that it was done in the hope of dissuading Japan from its continued aggression toward Indonesia. Put another way, when Japan moved into Indochina, it signaled to the Roosevelt administration the failure of America’s appeasement policy.
The exact timing of Roosevelt’s move is thought by many historians to reflect FDR’s concern that the Soviet Union, which had been invaded by Germany only three days earlier, would collapse under the Nazi onslaught and leave Britain and the United States to face Germany and possibly Japan alone. Lend-Lease had started only three months earlier, conscription only nine months earlier, and the United States was woefully unprepared for war. Even so, there was no time to waste—the United States needed to get into the war sooner rather than later. World War I had shown that it took the nation over a year to mobilize, and FDR needed to get the American public on board. China, Russia, and Britain needed help to defend themselves, and the only way to invigorate the country into becoming prepared was to ratchet up war fever. Rather quickly, FDR began to maneuver the American public into war.
One card remained in play to slow down Japan—China. Roosevelt held out hope that China might siphon off so many men and so much fuel that little would remain for the East Indies or Malaya adventures. The MAGIC code-breaking intercepts revealed this to be another failed hope. From July to December 1941, Japan’s inactivity masked a consolidation of troops in Indochina and preparations for war against the United States. The Japanese deflected Hull’s objections to their presence in Indochina as necessitated by food demands and rice supplies. Japanese diplomats staged an effective choreography of delay, pointing to the need to reconcile the “China Incident” (as they termed it) before they could remove troops from Indochina. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Chinese Kuomintang Army, realized his leverage in such a situation. Cleverly using his lobbyists in Washington to obtain ever-increasing levels of aid, he steadfastly refused any demands that he liberalize or moderate his policies. It would be a marriage repeated when the Kennedy administration hitched its star to South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem in 1961, with the “bride” too vital to lose and too powerful to control. Whether Hull and Roosevelt “kept Japan talking” while rearming the United States, or whether FDR had in fact followed systematic appeasement, even if in line with American public opinion—neither policy worked. U.S. preparations needed until the spring of 1942 to reach a reasonable level of military efficiency, but the speed of the German drive into Russia and the fear that Moscow was about to fall called for the earliest possible entry into the war. In November Secretary Hull took a hard line in his negotiations with Japan (surprising the Japanese), and the fat was in the fire.
On December 7, 1941, America was scarcely better prepared for war than it had been in July, particularly in the Philippines, where most analysts thought the brunt of the Japanese offensive would come. Reinforcements had only included the 4th Marine Regiment of 750 men which was removed from China, the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment of 1,700 men, and a pair of tank battalions, with a total of 108 tanks and 838 men, and an ordnance company. The token air force in the Philippines in July was strengthened with 81 fighters and 35 bombers, but by December 8, only 54 of the fighters were operational. A bombardment group’s ground crew and aviators had arrived, but their planes hadn’t. The total American force in the Philippines at the start of the war was close to 20,000, the majority of which were service troops—an anemic force to defend the whole of the Philippines.167
Japanese ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura’s peace offensive of November to Hull reinforced this false dichotomy, insisting that “a cessation of aid to CHIANG…is a most essential condition” for further negotiations.168 Nomura had merely followed the successful negotiating ploys of his counterpart in Germany, Joachim von Ribbentrop: stall and delay official action until the desired result is achieved.169 Nomura continued to emphasize China, the United States, and Southeast Asia. By late November 1941, Roosevelt had a modus vivendi based on four points—partial renewal of U.S. economic relations with Japan, a cessation of all new Japanese troop deployments in southeast Asia, a promise by Japan not to honor the Tripartite Pact if the United States entered the war in Europe, and the United States’ providing a mediator between Japan and China. A further stipulation promised an end to the embargo on the condition of full Japanese withdrawal from Indochina. Naturally, the Chinese expressed concerns.
Shortly after Roosevelt originated the modus vivendi, he was informed of new Japanese troop movements southward from Shanghai, and also that Moscow was expected to fall. Time had run out, and the United States would have to go to war with what it had. Instead of delivering the softer modus vivendi, on November 26 Hull handed Nomura a tougher ten-point plan developed by the State Department. (Later, he admitted he knew this would be rejected, and introduced it only for the historical record.)170 All that remained was to determine where Japan would strike, and all indicators were in the south and southeast, toward the Dutch. Thus the Japanese fleet, known to be at large, was widely considered to be on its way to Thailand or Singapore. It is important to note, in light of later “Roosevelt knew” charges, that analysts thought this fleet, dispatched from Shanghai, was already on its way south-to-southeast and that the other Japanese fleet was in harbor in Japan. Roosevelt then took a most controversial step of personally ordering Admiral Harold Stark to deploy small vessels to form a “defensive information patrol” around the Philippines and off the Indochina coast. Stark knew immediately that stationing such small ships in harm’s way to perform a task that aircraft could do routinely had only one purpose, to provoke an incident that Roosevelt could take to the Congress for a declaration of war.171 One ship, the Lanikai, actually set sail but was recalled.
Between the absence of long-range reconnaissance in Hawaii in the summer of 1941 and General Walter Short’s reversal of the alert codes (moving 3 as the highest level to lowest, and vice versa—and not informing Washington), Pearl Harbor was even more of a sitting duck than the one the Japanese expected to find on December 7, 1941. Japan’s sneak attack turned what would have been a debilitating strike into a full-blown, humiliating, bloody disaster, but one that would rouse the American colossus from its slumber.
The bombs that fell on Pearl Harbor on December 7 ended the hope among many Americans that the United States, somehow, could avoid the world conflagration. Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States on December 11 extinguished the last embers of optimism that America could contain its fight to Asia. That a rearmed and more powerful U.S. military would have affected many calculations made from 1932 to 1941 by the Axis seems unlikely given the widespread isolationist sentiment in the United States. But it is certain that a better-prepared America would have shortened the war. In one of the ironies of history, for all his strengths, Calvin Coolidge had allowed the Japanese war machine to gain its footing while at the same time permitting the American military to atrophy; and for all his egregious faults, Franklin Roosevelt would over the next four years work tirelessly to rein in the Japanese and rebuild the U.S. armed forces.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Hounds Unleashed
Time Line
1940: Russia annexes part of Finland; Katyn Massacre in Russia of Polish POWs; German occupation of Denmark, invasion of Norway, conquest of Holland, Belgium, and France; Vichy government established; Dunkirk evacuation; USSR occupies Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia; Battle of Britain; Italy attacks Greece; Britain and Italy clash in North Africa; American rearmament begins; United States initiates draft; Destroyers-for-bases deal between United States and Great Britain; Roosevelt gives “Arsenal of Democracy” speech; Japan occupies part of Indochina
1941: Lend-Lease begins; Erwin Rommel and Afrika Korps go to North Africa; Germany attacks Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete; Germany attacks Russia; Rommel defeats British in North Africa, besieges Tobruk; Battle of Moscow; Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Philippines, Southeast Asia
1942: Japan conquers Phil
ippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and Burma, and occupies Thailand; Doolittle Raid; Battle of Midway; Battle of Guadalcanal; Battle of Stalingrad; Battle of El Alamein; Operation Torch (Allied invasion of North Africa); Germany occupies remainder of France
1943: Americans advance in Solomon Islands, New Guinea; North Africa falls to United States, Britain; Battle of Kursk; Allied victory in Sicily; Italy invaded; Tarawa invaded
Has any conflict in history so severely reoriented all of the civilizations on the planet as the Second World War? Not only did many consider it unfathomable that a war of such epic proportions could follow just twenty years after another devastating conflict had torn the world asunder, but the reasons why this happened are still pondered by historians. Nonetheless, many of the outcomes of World War II are irrefutable and their effects last to this day. Fascism in the Hitlerian model as an ideology was permanently crushed; Japan as an expansionist military power was vanquished; Britain and France lost massive imperial holdings; untold numbers of African, Asian, and Middle Eastern states were born into chaos and bloodshed; and in the end only the United States and the USSR remained standing as genuine superpowers.
Yet it is the First World War that history labels “the Great War,” while (to Americans at least) World War II was “the Good War.” These descriptors in part reflect the fact that, however noble its causes, the Second World War left Europe in second-tier status. Much of its power loss emanated from the separation of the world into two armed camps headed by superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and Europe’s impending loss of its empires as a result of wartime destabilization and liberation. This hardly explains Europe’s characterization of the conflict. For Americans, who saw themselves as “rescuing” both Europe and Asia (or, at least, parts of it) from tyranny, the fight had brought out the finest in American ideals. Europeans, on the other hand, emerged from the war with well-deserved guilty consciences: the Germans for allowing the Nazis to seize power; the French for their dismal military performance followed by the Vichy regime’s cowardly subservience to Hitler; and the British for their consistently bad assessments of military capabilities of friend and foe alike. Piled on top of the guilt was the gnawing reality that Britain and Continental Europe owed their survival to either the crude Americans (with their money and manpower) or the brutal Soviets and their unrelenting, high-cost offensives. Although the British Empire could point to a handful of successes in North Africa (Medenine, El Alamein) and India (Imphal), the bulk of the war effort after 1942 was carried by Yanks and Reds.
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