All the global forces generated by raw power and resistance, by grand strategies and counter-strategies, by sober staff studies and surprise blows—all were locked in a tremulous world balance. Only some mighty turn of events could upset that balance and release Franklin Roosevelt from his strategic plight.
A TIME FOR WAR
On November 1, 1941, the new leaders of Japan met to decide the issues they had debated since assuming office two weeks before. Should they “avoid war and undergo great hardships”? Or decide on war immediately and settle matters? Or decide on war but carry on diplomacy and war preparations side by side? These were the alternatives as Premier Tojo framed them for his colleagues: Foreign Minister Togo, Finance Minister Okinori Kaya, Navy Minister Shigetaro Shimada, Navy Chief of Staff Osami Nagano, Planning Board Director Teiichi Suzuki. Also present were members of the military “nucleus”: Army Chief of Staff General Sugiyama, the Army Vice Chief of Staff, the Navy Vice Chief of Staff, and others.
It was a long meeting—seventeen hours—and a stormy one. Pressed by a skeptical Togo and Kaya as to whether the American fleet would attack Japan, Nagano replied, “There is a saying, ‘Don’t rely on what won’t come.’ The future is uncertain; we can’t take anything for granted. In three years enemy defenses in the South will be strong and the number of enemy warships will increase.”
“Well, then,” Kaya said, “when can we go to war and win?”
“Now!” Nagano exclaimed. “The time for war will not come later!”
The discussion went on. Finally it was agreed to pursue war preparations and diplomacy simultaneously. The burning issue was the timing of the two and their interrelation. The early deadline, said Tojo, was outrageous. A quarrel broke out so intense that the meeting had to be recessed; operations officers were called in to consider the timing question from a technical viewpoint. The military chiefs conceded that it would be all right to negotiate until five days prior to the outbreak of war. This would mean November 30.
“Can’t we make it December 1?” asked Tojo. “Can’t you allow diplomatic negotiations to go for even one day more?”
“Absolutely not,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Tsukada said. “We absolutely can’t go beyond November 30. Absolutely not.”
“Mr. Tsukada,” asked Shimada, “until what time on the 30th? It will be all right until midnight, won’t it?”
“It will be all right until midnight.”
Thus, as the army records of this session noted, a decision was made for war; the time for its commencement was set for the beginning of December; diplomacy was allowed to continue until midnight, November 30; and if diplomacy was successful by then, war would be called off. The conference then debated two alternative proposals for negotiation. The crucial point of Proposal A was that Japanese troops could be stationed in strategic areas of China until 1966. Proposal B would largely restore the status quo ante the July freeze: the two nations would undertake not to advance by force in Southeast Asia or the South Pacific; Japanese troops in Indochina would move to the northern part of the country; the United States would help Japan obtain resources in the Dutch East Indies and would supply annually a million tons of oil; the United States would not obstruct “settlement of the China incident.” The military preferred A because it posed the crucial question of China and would settle it quickly one way or the other—but fearing that Tojo might resign and topple the whole Cabinet, they agreed also to support the broader, but hardly less severe, terms of B.
On November 5 Tojo presented this consensus to an imperial conference at the palace. All agreed that if the diplomats could not settle matters by December 1, Japan would go to war regardless of the state of negotiations at that time. The Emperor had nothing to offer on this occasion—not even verse.
It was another major step toward war, but the Japanese were still following their two-pronged approach. Nomura continued his discussions with Roosevelt and Hull and continued to receive sermons of peace, stability, and order in the Pacific. Roosevelt was still playing for time, but Hull’s rigidity on principle was hardening as a result of MAGIC intercepts of Japanese coded messages indicating the dominance of the military and its timetable. Each side was now looking to its allies. Japan, which had edged away from Berlin as the Wehrmacht slowed in Russia, was now drawing closer to its partner in case of need. Hull told Nomura that he might be lynched if he made an agreement with Japan while Tokyo had a definite obligation to Germany.
The paramount issue was still China. When Nomura came back to the White House on November 17, this time with Saburo Kurusu, who had come from Tokyo as special ambassador to expedite the discussions, Roosevelt again urged the withdrawal of Japanese troops from China; once the basic questions were settled, he said, he would be glad to “introduce” Japan and China to each other to settle the details. After Kurusu failed to budge on this question Roosevelt retreated to homilies; there were no long-term differences preventing agreement, he said.
Empty words. It was becoming increasingly clear that there were few misunderstandings between the two countries, only differences. Despite much confusion the two governments understood each other only too well. Their interests diverged. They could not agree. When the Tokyo diplomats in desperation presented Proposal B, now softened a bit but still providing an end to American aid to China, Hull dismissed the contents as “of so preposterous a character that no responsible American official could ever have accepted them”—even though Tokyo meant them only as a stopgap, and Stark and Marshall found them acceptable as a way to stave off war.
Word arrived from Chungking that Chiang was completely dependent on American support and was agitated about reports of temporizing in Washington.
Undaunted, Roosevelt by now was working up a truce offer of his own. Around the seventeenth he had penciled a note to Hull:
6 Months
1. U.S. to resume economic relations—some oil and rice now—more later.
2. Japan to send no more troops to Indo-China or Manchurian border or any place south (Dutch, Brit, or Siam).
3. Japan to agree not to invoke tripartite pact if U.S. gets into European war.
4. U.S. to introduce Japs to China to talk things over but U.S. take no part in their conversations. Later on Pacific agreements.
This was Roosevelt’s most ambitious specific truce formula in the dying days of peace, and its short life and early death summed up the intractable situation. Hull combined Roosevelt’s plan with other proposals, American and Japanese, and cut the period to three months. On the twenty-second a message from Tokyo to Nomura and Kurusu was intercepted; it warned that in a week “things are automatically going to happen.” Cabling Churchill the essence of the American proposal, Roosevelt added that its fate was really a matter of internal Japanese politics. “I am not very hopeful and we must all be prepared for real trouble, possibly soon.” On the same day the Chinese Ambassador, Dr. Hu Shih, objected vigorously to letting Tokyo keep 25,000 men in northern Indochina. Chiang was wondering, he said, whether Washington was trying to appease Japan at the expense of China. The Dutch and the Australians were dubious about concessions.
Churchill was worried, too. “…Of course, it is for you to handle the business,” he cabled to Roosevelt, “and we certainly do not want an additional war. There is only one point that disquiets us. What about Chiang Kai-shek? Is he not having a very thin diet? Our anxiety is about China.” If it collapsed, their joint dangers would enormously increase. “We are sure that the regard of the United States for the Chinese cause will govern your action. We feel that the Japanese are most unsure of themselves.” Perhaps Roosevelt would have persevered. But on the morning of the twenty-sixth Stimson telephoned him an intelligence report of Japanese troop movements heading south of Formosa.
December 2,1941, Rollin Kirby, reprinted by permission of the New York Post
The President fairly blew up—“jumped up into the air, so to speak,” Stimson noted in his diary. To the President this changed the whole
situation, because “it was evidence of bad faith on the part of the Japanese that while they were negotiating for an entire truce—an entire withdrawal (from China)—they should be sending their expedition down there to Indo-China.” Roosevelt’s truce formula died that day. In its stead Hull drew up a ten-point proposal that restated Washington’s most stringent demands.
The whole matter had been broken off, Hull told Stimson. “I have washed my hands of it and it is now in the hands of you and Knox—the Army and the Navy.” Shortly Stimson phoned the President again; the time had come, they agreed, for a final alert to MacArthur.
Diplomatic exchanges continued for a while, like running-down tops. On November 26 Hull presented Nomura and Kurusu with his ten points; Kurusu said that Japan would not take its hat off to Chiang—the proposals were not even worth sending to Tokyo. November 27—the President warned the two envoys at the White House that if Tokyo followed Hitlerism and aggression he was convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that Japan would be the ultimate loser; but he was still ready to be asked by China and Japan to “introduce” them for negotiations, just as he had brought both sides together in strike situations. November 28—Nomura and Kurusu received word from Tokyo that they would soon have an elaboration of its position and the discussions would then be “de facto ruptured”; but they were not to hint of this. November 29 (Tokyo time) at the liaison conference: Togo: “Is there enough time left so that we can carry on diplomacy?” Nagano: “We do have enough time.” Togo: “Tell me what zero hour is. Otherwise I can’t carry on diplomacy.” Nagano: “Well, then, I will tell you. The zero hour is”—lowering his voice—“December 8.” November 30—at Warm Springs for a belated Thanksgiving with the patients, the President took a telephone call from Hull urging him to return to Washington because a Japanese attack seemed imminent; he left immediately. December 1—Premier Tojo at the Imperial Conference: “At the moment our Empire stands at the threshold of glory or oblivion.” The Chiefs of Staff asked the Emperor’s permission to make war on X day. Hirohito nodded his head. He seemed to the recorder to be at ease. December 2—Roosevelt, through Welles, demanded of Nomura and Kurusu why their government was maintaining such large forces in Indochina. December 3—Tokyo handed Berlin and Rome its formal request for intervention; Mussolini professed not to be surprised considering Roosevelt’s “meddlesome nature.” December 4—the President concluded a two-hour conference with congressional leaders with the request that Congress not recess for more than three days at a time. December 5—some in the White House were still considering reviving the ninety-day truce proposal, if only to gain time. December 6—Roosevelt worked on an arresting message to Hirohito urging a Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and the dispelling of the dark clouds over the Pacific.
Almost a century before, he reminded the Emperor, the President of the United States had offered the hand of friendship to the people of Japan and it had been accepted. “Only in situations of extraordinary importance to our countries need I address to Your Majesty messages on matters of state.” Such a time had come. The President dwelt on the influx of Japanese military strength into Indochina. The people of the Philippines, the East Indies, Malaya, Thailand were alarmed. They were sitting on a keg of dynamite. The President offered to gain assurances from these peoples and even from China—and offered those of his own nation—that there would be no threat to Indochina if every Japanese soldier or sailor were to be withdrawn therefrom. Clearly the President was not engaging in serious negotiation here; it was one more effort to stall off a showdown.
“I address myself to Your Majesty at this moment in the fervent hope that Your Majesty may, as I am doing, give thought in this definite emergency to ways of dispelling the dark clouds….”
It was like a gigantic frieze in which all the actors move and yet there is no motion. While diplomats were deadlocked, however, the military was acting with verve and precision. In September Japanese carriers and their air groups had started specific training for Pearl Harbor, with the help of a mock-up as big as a tennis court. On October 5 one hundred officer pilots of the carrier air groups got the heady news that they had been chosen to destroy the American fleet in Hawaii early in December. On November 7 Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto set December 8 as the likely date because it was a Sunday. During mid-November the striking force of six carriers, two battleships, two cruisers, and nine destroyers put out from Kure naval base and rendezvoused in the Kuriles. On November 25 Yamamoto, from his flagship in the Inland Sea, ordered the advance into Hawaiian waters, subject to recall. On December 2 he broadcast the phrase “NIITAKE-YAMA NOBORE” (Climb Mount Niitaka)—the code for PROCEED WITH ATTACK! Meantime, other Japanese fleet units and scores of transports were moving into positions throughout the southern seas.
And Roosevelt? In this time of diplomatic stalemate and military decision he was still waiting, now almost fatalistically. “It is all in the laps of the gods,” he told Morgenthau on December 1. As late as December 6 he would tell Harold Smith that “we might be at war with Japan, although no one knew.” The President was pinioned between his hopes of staving off hostilities in the Pacific and his realization that the Japanese might not permit it; between his promise to avoid “foreign” wars and his deepening conviction that Tokyo was following Nazi ways and threatened his nation’s security; between his moral and practical desire to stand by the British and Dutch and Chinese and his worry that thereby he might be directly pulled into a Pacific war. He was pinioned, too, between people—between Hull, with his curious compound of moralizing and temporizing, and the militants, such as Morgenthau, who was pleading with the President not to desert China, and Ickes, who was ready to resign if he did; between the internationalists in the great metropolitan press and the isolationists in Congress; even between the “pro-Chinese” in the State Department and the “pro-Japanese,” including Grew, and finally between the polled citizens who said he was going too far in intervening abroad and those who said he was doing too little.
Pinioned but not paralyzed. The President’s mind was taken up by probabilities, calculations, guesses, alternatives. By the early days of December he felt that a Japanese attack south was probable. It was most likely to come, he thought, in the Dutch East Indies; next most likely in Thailand, somewhat less likely in the Philippines, and least probable—to the extent he thought about it all—in Hawaii. If the Japanese attacked British territory he would give Churchill armed support, the nature and extent depending, much as in the Atlantic, on the circumstances; if the Japanese attacked Thailand or the East Indies, Britain would fight and Roosevelt would provide some kind of armed support; if the Japanese attacked China from Indochina, he would simply step up aid to Chungking.
At this penultimate hour Roosevelt was extending his Atlantic strategy to the Pacific. It was not a simple matter of “maneuvering the Japanese into firing the first shot,” for the Japanese were probably going to fire the first shot; the question was where the United States could respond, how quickly, and how openly and decisively. What Roosevelt contemplated was a replica of his support of Britain in the Atlantic, a slow stepping-up of naval action in the southern seas, with Tokyo bearing the responsibility for escalation. He had asked and received permission from the British and Dutch to develop bases at Singapore, Rabaul, and other critical points—a repetition of his acquisition of Atlantic bases the year before. He did not concentrate on the Atlantic at the expense of the Pacific; he did not leave things unduly to Hull. He could not; the pressures were too heavy. But he did apply to the Pacific the lessons of his experience in the Atlantic.
It was a dangerous transfer, for it fostered Roosevelt’s massive miscalculation as to where the Japanese would strike first. Since he had reason to believe that he was confronting another Hitlerite nation in the East, he assumed that Tokyo would follow the Nazi method of attacking smaller nations first and then isolating and encircling the larger ones. He told reporters, off the record, on November 28 that the Japanese control of the coasts of C
hina and the mandated islands had put the Philippines in the middle of a horseshoe, that “the Hitler method has always been aimed at a little move here and a little move there,” by which complete encirclement was gained. “It’s a perfectly obvious historical fact today.” But Roosevelt was facing a different enemy, with its own tempo, its own objectives—and its own way with a sudden disabling blow.
When general plans fail, lesser plans, miscalculations, technical procedures, and blind chance have a wider play. During the evening of December 6 the Japanese carriers reached the meridian of Oahu, turned south, and amid mounting seas sped toward Pearl Harbor with relentless accuracy. In Tokyo a military censor routinely held up the message from Roosevelt to Hirohito. If it had been in plain English he would not have dared hold up such an awesome communication; if it had been in top-priority code he would not have known enough to; but Roosevelt had sent it in gray code to save time, and it finally arrived too late. In the Japanese Embassy in Washington a many-part message began to come in from Tokyo; the parts were sent down to the coding room, but the cipher staff drifted off to a party, the fourteenth section was delayed, and the embassy closed down for the night. At the War and Navy Departments, signals experts received the first thirteen parts through their MAGIC intercept and swiftly decoded them; copies were rushed to the White House and to Knox and Navy chiefs, but not to Admiral Stark, who was at the theater, nor—inexplicably—to General Marshall, who was understood to be in his quarters.
At 9:30 P.M. a young Navy officer brought the thirteen parts to the oval study. The President was going over stamps, meanwhile chatting with Hopkins, who was sitting on the sofa. The President read rapidly through the papers. All day he had been receiving reports of Japanese convoy and ship movements in the Southwest Pacific.
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