by Toland, John
Prince Wan Waithayakon of Thailand took the floor, followed by Chang Chung-hui, Prime Minister of Manchukuo, and then Laurel. The Filipino’s emotions were evident in his voice as well as through his words. “United together one and all into a compact and solid organization there can no longer be any power that can stop or delay the acquisition by the one billion Orientals of the free and untrammeled right and opportunity of shaping their own destiny. God in His infinite wisdom will not abandon Japan and will not abandon the peoples of Greater East Asia. God will come and descend from Heaven, weep with us, and glorify the courage and bravery of our peoples and enable us to liberate ourselves and make our children and our children’s children free, happy and prosperous.”
Ba Maw was fittingly saved for the last. “It is impossible to exaggerate the feelings which are born out of an occasion like this,” he said fervently. “For years in Burma I dreamed my Asiatic dreams. My Asiatic blood has always called to other Asiatics. In my dreams, both sleeping and waking, I have heard the voice of Asia calling to her children.
“Today … I hear Asia’s voice calling again, but this time not in a dream … I have listened with the greatest emotion to all the speeches delivered around this table. All these speeches have been memorable, moving, and—I may be exaggerating, and if so you must forgive me—I seem to hear in them the same voice of Asia gathering her children together. It is the call of our Asiatic blood. This is not the time to think with our minds; this is the time to think with our blood, and it is this thinking with the blood which has brought me all the way from Burma to Japan.…
“Only a very few years back the Asiatic people seemed to have lived in another world, even in different worlds, divided, estranged, and not knowing each other or even caring to know. Asia as a homeland did not exist a few years ago. Asia was not one then, but many, as many as the enemies which kept her divided, large parts of her following like a shadow one or another of these enemy powers.
“In the past, which now seems to be a very long time ago, it was inconceivable that the Asiatic peoples should meet together as we are meeting here today. Well, the impossible has happened. It has happened in a way which outstrips the boldest fantasy or dream of the boldest dreamer among us.…
“I say that today’s meeting is a great symbolic act. As His Excellency the Chairman has said, we are truly creating a new world based upon justice, equality and reciprocity, upon the great principle of live and let live. From every point of view East Asia is a world in itself.… We Asiatics forgot this fact for long centuries and paid heavily for it, for as a result the Asiatics lost Asia. Now that we have once more, thanks to Japan, recaptured this truth and acted upon it, the Asiatics shall certainly recover Asia. In that simple truth lies the whole destiny of Asia.…
“We have once more discovered that we are Asiatics, discovered our Asiatic blood, and it is this Asiatic blood which will redeem us and give us back Asia. Let us therefore march ahead to the end of our road, a thousand million East Asiatics marching into a new world where East Asiatics will be forever free, prosperous, and will find at last their abiding home.”
This was the voice of awakening Asia, and for Tojo these hours were the most satisfying of his career. He dominated the proceedings subtly, beaming paternally upon the representatives. He saw it as more than a military alliance; he too had been caught up in the Pan-Asian spirit—and his military comrades were troubled.
The following afternoon Chandra Bose climaxed the final session with a speech that rivaled Ba Maw’s for emotional pitch. “… I do not think that it is an accident that this assembly has been convened in the Land of the Rising Sun. This is not the first time that the world has turned to the East for light and guidance. Attempts to create a new order in this world have been made before and are being made elsewhere, but they have failed.…
“For India there is no other path but the path of uncompromising struggle against British imperialism. Even if it were possible for other nations to think of compromising with England, for the Indian people at least it is out of the question. Compromising with Britain means to compromise with slavery, and we are determined not to compromise with slavery any more.”
Affected by his own oratory, Bose could not continue. The audience waited, transfixed, until the Indian leader composed himself again. “But we have to pay the price of our liberty.… I do not know how many members of our national army will survive the coming war, but that is of no consequence to us. Whether we individually live or die, whether we survive the war and live to see India free or not, what is of consequence is the fact that India shall be free.”
Toshi Go of the Nippon Times (until recently the Japan Times & Advertiser) called the conference a “soul-stirring reunion of blood brothers” and one of the most momentous gatherings in the history of the world.
Here, I felt, all were my brothers, not merely in a figurative sense, but literally as sons of the same Mother Asia. Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Manchukuoan, Filipino, Burmese, Indian—Asiatics all, and, therefore, brothers.
He believed, as did Ba Maw, that no matter how polite individual Westerners were to him personally, they could never really understand what it was to be an Asian.
I too have felt that only Asiatics could really understand and work effectively for the welfare of Asiatics, and I too have longed for the day when all Asiatics would be able to push aside the artificial barriers which Western intruders had set up between us and work together hand in hand for the common well-being of Asia. As I looked upon the Assembly Saturday, I felt that that day had at last come, that the ties of blood had prevailed at last, that as long-lost brothers who had found one another again we were about to restore the fortunes of our one Asiatic family.
As I noted the obvious sincerity and fervor with which all the speakers stressed this realization of oneness, which all of them apparently realized with overwhelming force, the conviction became solidly implanted in me that never again would this unity be broken. Whatever the fortunes of war, whatever the strains future problems may create, whatever the form future world organizations might eventually take, the consciousness of blood brotherhood which this Assembly had crystallized could never be dissolved. The oneness of Asia is a fact so fundamental, so elemental, so natural, and hence so inevitable that once realized, it could never again be lost.
The Joint Declaration, unanimously adopted by the conferees, called for an order of common prosperity and well-being based on justice, respect for each other’s independence, sovereignty and traditions, efforts to accelerate economic development on a basis of reciprocity, and an end to all racial discrimination.e
It was the Pacific version of the Atlantic Charter, a promise of the dream long held by Asians. Those who came to Tokyo may have been puppets but, born in servitude, they now felt free and had jointly proclaimed for the first time a Brave New World for Asia.
5.
Two weeks later the leader of Asia’s largest nation, Chiang Kai-shek, met with Roosevelt and Churchill in Cairo to determine, he hoped, an entirely different kind of continent. Churchill did not welcome Chiang’s presence, certain it would increase Roosevelt’s interest in the Far East.
Indeed, the China problem was the first item on the agenda—not, as Churchill and Brooke had hoped, the last. But Churchill, who had not met Chiang Kai-shek before, was favorably impressed by the Generalissimo’s “calm, reserved and efficient personality.” However, the Prime Minister couldn’t seriously regard China as a great power and resented the attention Roosevelt gave Chiang. “To the President, China means four hundred million people who are going to count in the world of tomorrow,” Churchill’s physician, Lord Moran, wrote in his diary, “but Winston thinks only of the colour of their skin; it is when he talks of India or China that you remember he is a Victorian.”
The Chinese delegation left Cairo in a cheerful mood, since Roosevelt, despite Churchill’s objections, had promised an amphibious assault across the Bay of Bengal within the next few months and, moreove
r, left the impression he was going to back up the Generalissimo massively.
The three Allies disagreed not only on military priorities for China but on the political future of Asia. Each waged a separate war for different reasons. Churchill had no thought of dismembering the British Empire; Chiang Kai-shek was primarily interested in eliminating the Communists and setting himself up as the sole leader in his country; and Roosevelt was intent exclusively on bringing about the surrender of Japan as soon as possible.
Roosevelt did realize that Asia could not emerge unchanged from the war but he could not appreciate, except to a limited degree, the admonition of such Americans as Pearl Buck and Wendell Willkie that Asia was determined to free itself from Western domination.
On November 27 Churchill and Roosevelt left Cairo separately, the debate on the Far East still at issue, to fly on to Teheran to meet Josef Stalin. The Prime Minister was apprehensive as he was driven slowly through the streets of the Iranian capital and people began to press up to his car. Assassins with pistols or bombs would have an easy time, he thought, and it was with great relief that he finally entered the British legation, a ramshackle structure very close to the elaborate Soviet embassy.
After the oppressive heat of Cairo, Teheran, lying just below the Caspian Sea, felt colder than it was. The countryside was bleak and dusty, studded with mud huts that had not changed for a thousand years; Teheran itself, though an oasis in the midst of a vast desolation, struck many of the conferees as an artificial, modern and uninteresting city.
The following morning, a Sunday, the Soviets warned Roosevelt that Axis agents might be in the city to assassinate him, and offered to have his headquarters transferred to a building on their own embassy grounds. Here conferences could be held without risky travel back and forth through the streets. Harry Hopkins and Averell Harriman discussed the matter with Churchill’s chief of staff, General Hastings Ismay, and though they agreed it was probably a Russian trick, they all advised Roosevelt to make the move.f A heavily guarded caravan of cars left the American legation, followed moments later by a single car carrying the President, Hopkins and Admiral Leahy. The driver, a Secret Service man, took a roundabout way but drove so fast that he beat the decoy presidential caravan to the Russian embassy. It was a welcome diversion to Roosevelt, and he was in an expansive mood when, fifteen minutes later, Stalin called on him. It was their first meeting. “I am glad to see you,” Roosevelt said through his interpreter, Charles (“Chip”) Bohlen. “I have tried for a long time to bring this about.”
Through his own interpreter, M. Pavlov, Stalin apologized for not meeting the President sooner; it was his fault but he had been very busy with military matters. He was a rather slight, low-slung man who appeared stockier than he was because of his square-cut, loose tunic; with his discolored teeth, pockmarked face and yellow eyes, he reminded George Kennan of “an old, battle-scarred tiger.”
They talked of Chiang Kai-shek and the Burma offensive. Stalin didn’t think much of Chinese soldiers or their leadership; Roosevelt said there was a great need to educate the people of Indochina, Burma, Malaya and the East Indies in self-government. He boasted about America’s good record in helping prepare the Filipinos for freedom, confidentially adding that India was a sore point with Winston—and cautioned Stalin not to bring it up.
The Big Three met a few minutes later for the first time at the initial plenary session of the conference. Roosevelt proposed that Stalin “make a few opening remarks.”
“No,” Pavlov interpreted, “he would rather listen.”
Roosevelt welcomed the Russians as “new members of the family circle”; the Big Three meetings would be friendly and frank and the co-operation of the three nations would outlast the war by generations. “He beamed on all around the table and looked very much like the kind, rich uncle paying a visit to his poorer relatives,” Churchill’s interpreter, A. H. Birse, recalled.
The Prime Minister had a feverish cold and his throat was so sore that he could barely talk, but his eloquence was unimpaired. The people around the table, he said, “probably represented the greatest concentration of worldly power that had ever been seen in the history of mankind” and that in their hands “lay perhaps the shortening of the war, almost certainly victory, and, beyond any shadow of doubt, the happiness and fortunes of mankind.”
Once more Roosevelt turned to Stalin, suggesting that, as host, he would undoubtedly like to say a few words. Stalin conferred briefly with Pavlov, who rose, looked at his notes and said, “I take pleasure in welcoming those present. I think that history will show that this opportunity which we have, and the power which our people have invested in us, can be used to full advantage within the frame of our potential collaboration.” Pavlov hesitated and then added with some embarrassment, “Marshal Stalin says, ‘Now let’s get down to business!’ ”
Roosevelt reviewed the war in the Pacific, saving his most dramatic announcement to the end for Stalin’s benefit: an immense invasion of Normandy, Operation Overlord, had been set for May 1, 1944.
“We Soviets welcome your successes in the Pacific,” Stalin replied. “Unfortunately we have not been able to help because we require too many of our troops on the eastern front and are unable to launch any operations against Japan at this time.” But once Germany had been defeated, reinforcements could be sent to eastern Siberia. “Then,” he said, “by our common front, we shall win.” It was the first promise that the Soviets would join in the fight against Japan.
The meeting ended at seven-twenty—they had been at the large round table for three hours and twenty minutes—and the Russians served tea and cakes. The Americans were reassured by Stalin’s quiet and unassuming manner, but not so the British. Admiral Leahy, who had regarded him merely as a bandit leader, admitted he was wrong; Stalin was obviously an intelligent man whose approach was direct, agreeable and considerate, if occasionally brutally frank. General Ismay, on the other hand, still felt he was “completely ruthless and devoid of the milk of human kindness,” and was thankful he was “neither his enemy nor dependent on his friendship.”
“This conference is over when it has only just begun,” Brooke told Lord Moran. “Stalin has got the President in his pocket.” Churchill, too, was glum, and when Moran asked if anything had gone wrong, he replied curtly, “A bloody lot has gone wrong.”
That night at dinner the Big Three talked of many things—of France, Poland, Germany, Hitler—and unconditional surrender. Stalin questioned the wisdom of the vague pronouncement made at Casablanca; leaving it unclarified would unite the German people. “Whereas drawing up specific terms, no matter how harsh, and telling the German people that this is what they have to accept would, in my opinion, hasten the day of German capitulation.”
The next day after lunch Stalin again called on Roosevelt and was handed several memoranda. One was a request for establishing bases in Siberia for a thousand American heavy bombers, and another suggested further preliminary co-operation in the war against Japan. Stalin promised to study the requests and summarily closed the subject.
The plenary that afternoon concentrated on Operation Overlord. It was Churchill against Stalin, with Roosevelt mediating, cigarette holder clenched between teeth, and often getting in the last word, even if it was irrelevant. It was bad, Brooke thought, from beginning to end. After listening to the arguments of the last two days, he felt “like entering a lunatic asylum or nursing home.”
Stalin peered at Churchill across the vast table and said he wanted to pose a very direct question to the Prime Minister. “Do you really believe in Overlord, or are you stalling on it to make us feel better?”
The reply was pure Churchill. “Provided the conditions previously stated for Overlord are established when the time comes, it will be our stern duty to hurl across the Channel against the Germans every sinew of our strength.” On this rolling sentence the session ended.
That evening Stalin, the host at dinner, mercilessly teased Churchill. At first the Prime M
inister didn’t realize his leg was being pulled. “Fifty thousand Germans must be killed,” Stalin said with a straight face. Churchill pushed back his chair and stood up. “I will not be a party to any butchery in cold blood. What happens in hot blood is another thing.”
“Fifty thousand must be shot!” Stalin repeated.
Churchill flushed. “I would rather be taken out into the garden here and now and be shot myself than sully my own and my country’s honor by such infamy.”
Roosevelt tried to smooth Churchill’s ruffled feathers. “I have a compromise to propose,” he said facetiously. “Not fifty thousand, but only forty-nine thousand should be shot.”
Churchill stamped out of the room, with Stalin trailing behind saying it was just a joke. Churchill was persuaded to return to the table but was still suspicious. Stalin, grinning, again began to bait him. “You are pro-German,” he said. “The Devil is a Communist, and my friend God a conservative.” This time Churchill took it good-naturedly and before the end of the evening Stalin had an arm draped around the Prime Minister’s shoulder as if they were fellow revolutionaries.
At midnight Lord Moran went to Churchill’s room to see if his services were needed and found the Prime Minister talking to Anthony Eden about the postwar world. “There might be a more bloody war,” he was saying in an exhausted voice, eyes closed. “I shall not be there. I shall be asleep. I want to sleep a billion years.” He lit a cigar and said he had told Stalin that Britain wanted no new territory. “He rather pressed the point. You see, it would make it easier for Russia if we took something. When I asked what Russia wanted, Stalin said, ‘When the time comes we will speak.’ ”