The Japanese also struggled to recruit a chief envoy. The mission was considered so toxic and unlikely to succeed that Japanese politicians jostled to propose their rivals for the job. One of the most promising candidates withdrew after remarking that “the position of the Japanese plenipotentiary was to be compared to that of a poker-player possessing an extremely doubtful hand.”23 For lack of a willing alternative, Prime Minister Katsura Taro sent his foreign minister, Baron Komura Jutaro. Forty-eight years old, Komura was a veteran diplomat and an early supporter of the war who had been Japan’s ambassador to Korea, China, Russia, and the United States. As a boy he had been sent to America to Harvard, where he studied law and was a contemporary of Theodore Roosevelt’s. After graduating in 1877, he took a junior position in the Ministry of Justice, where he displayed such promise that he was made secretary of the Foreign Office at the tender age of twenty-nine. Ambitious and headstrong, Komura’s methodical mind and tenacious drive were joined with a gracious spirit. He took naturally to diplomacy and proved himself in a series of increasingly demanding positions. After a brief stint as assistant director of the Translation Bureau, he was sent by the Foreign Ministry to China as secretary of the legation. He was charge d’affaires in Peking at the outbreak of the Chinese-Japanese War before running a province in Japanese-occupied territory and then serving as ambassador in Seoul. From there he was sent to be the Japanese representative to the United States. After Washington, Komura was entrusted with the delicate positions of Japanese ambassador to Russia and then China before his appointment as foreign minister in 1901.
Komura’s chief deputy in the negotiation would be Takahira Kogoro, Japan’s ambassador to the United States. One of Japan’s most senior diplomats, he had been ambassador to Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and vice foreign minister. During his time in Washington, Takahira had impressed Roosevelt with his reliability and integrity. Komura and Takahira were supported by a team whose members included the director of the Foreign Ministry’s Political Bureau, the private secretary to the foreign minister, as well as secretaries and political and military advisers, including the naval attaché to the Japanese Embassy in Washington, who was also President Roosevelt’s private judo instructor.
The Japanese had one other unique human asset whom they employed vigorously as part of the negotiation, although he was not officially a member of the delegation: Baron Kaneko Kentaro, a prominent Japanese aristocrat who served as their cat’s paw when they needed a direct and confidential channel to the president. Kaneko, a former member of the Japanese cabinet, was highly regarded by the emperor and Japan’s governing elite. He had been a classmate of Roosevelt at Harvard, and through the years they had developed a close friendship. As a stealth intermediary, Kaneko would prove invaluable.
Roosevelt tried hard to secure a truce during the negotiation. The Russians were eager for an armistice, but the Japanese saw no reason to surrender their advantage in the field. “I did my best to get the Japanese to consent to an armistice,” Roosevelt wrote, “but they have refused, as I feared they would. . . . The Japanese are entirely confident that they can win whatever they wish by force of arms, whereas they are deeply distrustful of Russia’s sincerity of purpose in these peace negotiations.”24 Although unwilling to declare an armistice, the Japanese military halted its advance on the main front to give the negotiation some breathing room.
After an audience with the emperor, the Japanese delegates boarded the SS Minnesota on the afternoon of July 8, 1905, bound for the United States. Over five thousand people gathered to see them off. The jubilant crowd shuddered in unison with shouts of “Banzai,” and the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun wrote that “the excitement of the people was . . . beyond description.”25 the delegates were in a more sober mood. In the midst of the excitement, Komura turned to Prime Minister Katsura and predicted that “The peoples’ reaction will have changed completely when I return.”26
Two weeks later the Russian delegates boarded the German steamer Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse bound for New York. Witte used the voyage to get acquainted with his team and to plan his strategy, as only two weeks had passed since Witte’s sudden appointment. “During that time,” he wrote, “there had been so much excitement that I had been unable to organize my thoughts and prepare for the dreadful diplomatic battle I would soon face.”27 The Russian negotiators were in a precarious position. Japanese forces lay within striking distance of Russia’s heartland. If the Russian negotiators were to keep Russia from catastrophe, they would have to find a way to make the Japanese agree to terms acceptable to the tsar and to the war party in St. Petersburg. With little of value to offer, the negotiators would have to improvise.
In his instructions to Witte, the tsar said he did not feel that Russia’s position required her to make peace, and made it clear that if Japan insisted on unforgiving terms he would resume the war. “I am ready to terminate by peace a war which I did not start,” he wrote, “provided the conditions offered us befit the dignity of Russia. I do not consider that we are beaten; our army is still intact, and I have faith in it.”28
The delegates arrived in Portsmouth on August 8. “I have brought them to a cool spring,” Roosevelt told a friend. “It remains to be seen whether they will drink of it or not.”29 The president observed, “I know perfectly well that the whole world is watching me, and the condemnation that will come down on me, if the conference fails, will be world-wide too. But that’s all right.”30 The town of Portsmouth was draped with banners, and people crowded around the delegates’ carriages. Over one hundred and twenty news organizations from around the world were represented, and one delegate complained the reporters were like “mosquitoes from which there is no escape.”31 The delegates stayed at the Hotel Wentworth, a grand Victorian summertime resort on the crest of a hill overlooking a bay that had recently been renovated and expanded with the addition of a golf course, tennis courts, and a swimming pool. The hotel was full with over five hundred guests, so the Russian and Japanese representatives were spread out on different floors, mixed in with the tourists, journalists, and vacationers.
Witte described his feelings the evening they arrived: “It was an agonizing and depressing time. I felt myself under a heavy responsibility, understanding full well that if I did not return to Russia with an olive branch, fighting would be resumed. And I knew from official sources that if fighting were renewed we could expect new disasters. All Russia would condemn me if I did not make peace.”32
On Thursday, August 10, two days after both delegations arrived at Portsmouth, Witte and Komura held their first meeting. The participants rose early that morning, surrounded by journalists and well-wishers who had gathered to see them off for the short trip from the Wentworth to the Navy Yard. After the formalities, an “ominous silence”33 came over both sides. With a Sphinx-like expression, Komura took out a paper containing the Japanese terms and declared that they had come hoping “to restore peace between Japan and Russia for the sake of world peace and humanity,”34 and expressed the hope for a lasting peace “which will preclude future conflicts.”35 depended on the terms, Witte replied. If they were reasonable, he wished to see a “firm friendly relationship established between our two countries,” but if Japan’s terms were “motivated merely by the desire for a temporary settlement,” he felt “it would rather be desirable not to reach agreement, since a continuation of hostilities would most likely bring about a situation for the establishment of better relations between the two countries.”36
There were twelve articles, which called for Russia to recognize Japanese dominion over Korea, relinquish its holdings in Manchuria along with railways and the strategic city of Port Arthur, grant Japan fishing rights along Russia’s coast, surrender Russian warships that had been interned in neutral ports, permanently limit its navy in the Pacific, surrender Sakhalin Island, and reimburse Japan for the cost of fighting the war. Before leaving Tokyo, Komura had received instructions that ranked the Japanese opening terms according to thr
ee categories: items that were indispensable, those that were desirable, and the rest, which were opportunistic and essentially disposable. The first category included Japanese control over Korea and the removal of Russian forces from Manchuria, which were Japan’s original war aims. The second consisted of granting fishing rights to Japan along the Russian coast, the surrender of Russian naval vessels that had fled to neutral ports, the payment of a large war indemnity, and the transfer to Japan of Sakhalin Island. Last were throwaway terms, points of nominal value to be bargained away for other concessions, including a permanent reduction of Russian naval forces in the Pacific and the demilitarization of Vladivostok. Believing that the government’s instructions fell short of what Japan deserved, on their own initiative Komura and Takahira had made several decisive changes, resolving to make Sakhalin Island and a cash indemnity non-negotiable, even at the price of renewed war. The severity of the terms shocked the Russians. “The Japanese conditions,” lamented Anton Planson, a junior Russian delegate, “were more heavy than anything it was possible to suspect.”37
Witte believed that Komura and Takahira were bluffing. He was convinced the Japanese could not afford to let the war continue and were in a much weaker position than they appeared. In this, Witte was largely alone. The consensus among the popular media as well as disinterested observers such as President Roosevelt was that Russia would have to come to terms with Japan’s superiority on the ground. In the teeth of the Japanese victories and prevailing opinion, Witte adopted a posture of brinksmanship and defiance.
The Japanese grew impatient, and on August 12 the New York Times ran an article under the headline “Oyama Awaiting Order to Strike,” describing preparations for an assault led by the Japanese commander in chief, Field Marshal Oyama Iwao, against the main Russian front. Six hundred thousand Japanese troops faced a slightly larger number of Russian soldiers across a distance in some places of only a thousand yards, spread out over a line stretching almost a thousand miles from Korea across Manchuria to Vladivostok. The Times reported that “The battle which, it seems likely now, will be fought will unquestionably be the greatest in the history of the world.” According to the article, it was in the hands of the negotiators: “The plans of the Japanese Commander in Chief are perfected, his armies are ready, and he only awaits the news that a rupture has occurred at Portsmouth to launch his attack.”38
Witte and Komura at first made headway. In the smoke-filled conference room, as electric fans hummed in the background they methodically worked their way through the Japanese points, disposing of the first four articles and building momentum. They promised to respect the principle of open commerce and agreed to Japanese control over Korea, which it already occupied, with a guarantee protecting Russian interests there. Control of Korea was vital to Japan’s security and had been one of the main reasons Japan started the war. They agreed mutually to withdraw their forces from Manchuria, which had been the center of so much of the fighting, and return it to Chinese sovereignty.
The first obstacle they faced concerned the fate of Sakhalin, a barren, mountainous island brimming with natural resources. Roughly the size of Ireland, covering almost thirty thousand square miles, it lies at the mouth of the Amur River, five miles off the Russian coast, separated from the northernmost island of Japan by a thirty-mile strait. In addition to a commanding strategic position, it contains extensive forests and fisheries, significant deposits of coal and iron, and some of the largest untapped reserves of oil and natural gas on Earth. Russia and Japan had long held competing claims over the island, and Japanese forces had seized it in the opening days of the peace conference. Witte refused to recognize Japanese ownership, asserting that under international law, occupation did not confer rightful title, and reminding Komura that Japan had given Sakhalin Island to Russia thirty years earlier in exchange for the Kurile Islands, a chain of smaller islands off the Japanese coast. “I cannot agree to the deprivation by force of territory which Russia has possessed for a long time based on a legitimate treaty right,” he insisted.39
Komura responded that Sakhalin was uniquely important to Japan: “Its possession is for Japan essential for her security but for Russia it is merely of colonial and economic interest. . . . For Japan it is indispensable to her national security.”40 He pointed out that Russia had only to acknowledge an accomplished fact, but Witte replied that he viewed the Japanese occupation of Sakhalin as a circumstance of fact and not of right. Neither would yield, and after several days they agreed the differences appeared irreconcilable. They moved on to the other articles.
In the meantime, the mood was changing in St. Petersburg. The war party had grown in Witte’s absence and its stiffening resolve had influenced the tsar. Across Russia outrage swelled as the people learned about Japan’s terms from newspaper reports. Ironically, Witte had leaked the Japanese terms to the press in order to influence American opinion by showing how unfair they were, but the Russian press picked it up, and the harshness of the terms quickly fueled indignant disbelief among the Russian people. The British ambassador in St. Petersburg reported that “the publication of the Japanese demands had aroused a storm of protest and that public opinion appeared unanimous that it would be preferable to continue the war than to submit to such humiliating demands.”41
With the discussion on Sakhalin stalled, the negotiators made progress on other questions, agreeing to transfer to Japan the portion of the Manchurian railway it already held, to refrain from using their railroads in China for military purposes, and to recognize the Japanese occupation of the strategic city of Port Arthur. But these were minor points.
One of Komura’s central demands was for a large war indemnity, which Russia categorically refused. Two factors drove this contention, one financial and the other cultural. Japan had exhausted its resources to pay for the war and gone heavily into debt. Taxes and inflation had spread the effects across all segments of Japanese society, and politicians had encouraged a widely held belief that much if not all of the war cost would be reimbursed by Russia as a condition of peace. Naturally Russia had no such intention, and it did not occur to the Japanese government that the conflict had left the Russian treasury just as empty as its own.
At a deeper level, the problem stemmed from cultural differences. In Asian diplomacy indemnities were common, and the Japanese were keenly aware that in every major war in East Asia in the previous century the losing party had paid an indemnity. Given the course of the conflict and the facts on the ground, the Japanese expected an indemnity as their right according to the customs of war, and from where they stood, the Russians’ refusal to pay, given Japan’s victories, was an unspeakable insult. The Russians held a different perspective. Until the recent construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Russia had been oriented westward and drew its experience from Europe, where indemnities were rare and humiliating events that occurred only when a country had been overrun and its capital occupied. Russians saw themselves not as defeated, but as having suffered a series of losses in a remote theater far from home. Russia had spent more on the war than Japan and saw no reason it should pay for the conflict twice.
More than a week of meetings failed to produce movement. The negotiators returned to the same points over and over, but neither Witte nor Komura gave ground. President Roosevelt grew anxious. “I wish to heaven,” he wrote his sister, “I could make these peace conferences meet under my immediate supervision, or else turn the matter over to me.”42 He blamed Witte’s unwillingness to compromise and noted tartly in a letter to a British friend, “The Russians, having been unable to make war, seem now entirely unable to make peace.”43
With the negotiation going nowhere, Komura cabled Prime Minister Katsura that he planned to make minor concessions and asked Baron Kaneko to meet at once with President Roosevelt. Kaneko rushed to Sagamore Hill, the president’s summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, the next morning. He showed Roosevelt a telegram from Komura explaining where things stood and asked the president’s o
pinion. “According to the latest developments, the situation appears to have become extremely difficult,” Roosevelt told him. “One cannot tell whether the peace negotiations will fail or not. If you should have any idea as to how this difficulty might be overcome, I should like very much to hear it.” Kaneko replied, “Komura will not withdraw his demand for the cession of territory and the reimbursement of war expenses, while Russian Plenipotentiary Witte will insist on his position and will not give way. In the present situation there seems to be no way out than to ask Your Excellency to turn to his last resort.” Roosevelt agreed. “I feel the same way,” he told the Japanese representative. “My last resort would be to dispatch a personal telegram to the Tsar of Russia. However, before I go that far I must urge Witte to make concessions to Japan. Witte is the Tsar’s special delegate. If I were to address a telegram directly to the Tsar, without having first made any approach to Witte, his feelings would be hurt. Therefore, I should like first to telegraph Rosen or some other person in Witte’s confidence to come here so that I might make recommendations to him.”44
Roosevelt summoned Baron Rosen, who caught a morning train to Boston on Saturday, August 19, and made it to Oyster Bay early that afternoon. Rosen found the president in white flannels on the tennis courts in the middle of a game. Between volleys, Roosevelt traced out the contours of a compromise. If Russia would not surrender its claims to Sakhalin perhaps it might consider paying a negotiable amount to Japan for the northern half. The reparations question could be referred later to international arbitration. This would allow some cover for Russian pride while offering Japan the cash it needed to break the logjam. Witte rejected Roosevelt’s compromise outright, arguing that the tsar would never accept it.
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