Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

by Herbert P. Bix

  Hirohito, knowing the navy’s preparations were by no means sufficiently advanced to fight the United States, which was the main reason opinion within the navy was so divided, was irritated by Nagano’s words at the liaison conference. Neither had he been pleased with the admiral’s recent formal reports to him. He summoned the naval chief of staff on July 30—the same day that he blocked war with the Soviet Union—and expressed his dissatisfaction. According to the Sugiyama memo, Hirohito bluntly told him, “Prince Fushimi said that he would avoid war with Britain and the United States. Have you changed that?” Nagano replied, “I have not changed the principle but if we are going to fight, then the sooner we do so the better because our supplies are gradually dwindling anyway.”36 According to the diary of Vice Navy Minister Sawamoto Yorio, the emperor also asked Nagano, “Do you have any plans for fighting a protracted war?” When Nagano replied that there was no way to be sure of victory in a long war, and also expressed his belief that the Tripartite Pact was harming the adjustment of relations with the United States, Hirohito, unwilling to blame himself for this state of affairs, merely listened.37

  The political crisis produced at the start of the third Konoe cabinet, and intensified by the crisis in Japan–U.S. relations, had revived navy fears that the army, acting unilaterally, might start a war with the Soviet Union. In fact, from late July onward, arguments rekindled within the Army for just that, and for giving primacy to the Tripartite Pact with Germany over the Neutrality Treaty with the Soviet Union. On July 30, however, as noted earlier, the emperor had told Sugiyama to stop the Kwantung Special Exercises, and shortly afterward, on August 9, the Army General Staff shelved its plans for invading the Soviet Union during 1941, though without formally notifying the navy of its decision until late August. But key army planners stuck to the view that the German-Soviet war would be short and end in a decisive German victory. In this situation there developed in the army high command by the beginning of September, an attitude of “let’s finish off down south before beginning operations up north in the spring [of 1942].” Thus, only a month after the American oil embargo, the army came around to wanting a quickly won war against the United States, so that within a year it could turn around and “do the north.”38 All these divisions and disagreements were thrashed out in liaison conference meetings before being informally reported to the emperor on September 5.

  The American economic sanctions, meanwhile, were having their effect on Prime Minister Konoe. Britain had already placed economic restrictions on Japan as an ally of Germany; in late July it followed the American lead and froze Japanese assets. Japan’s negotiations with the government of the Netherlands Indies for oil purchases had collapsed; on July 28 the Dutch authorities also froze Japanese assets. Japan was now forced to draw down its reserves of oil and other stockpiled strategic materials.

  In the spring of 1941 Konoe had hoped to negotiate a friendlier U.S. attitude toward Japan. The secret, unofficial “conversations” between Adm. Nomura Kichisabur and U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, at which Japan had asked the American government to cease supporting Chiang Kai-shek and to furnish strategic materials, continued for several months but got nowhere. Now, because of the Japanese move into southern French Indochina, the talks faced a complete breakdown, and Konoe’s hopes were collapsing.39 In despair, and believing that the man he had earlier appointed as ambassador to the United States was incompetent, Konoe resolved to meet Roosevelt directly and break the deadlock.

  At 11:40 A.M. on August 4, Konoe spoke with the emperor for about forty minutes and probably received endorsement of the idea of a summit meeting. This was because Hirohito had by no means decided on war at this time, and whenever he felt unready to make up his mind, he often liked a substitute reason for postponement. Later that evening Konoe met the army and navy ministers and informed them that a summit of heads of state might serve to reopen the talks.40 Since neither the navy nor the army wanted to take responsibility at that moment for opposing Konoe, especially believing that he had the emperor’s backing, they agreed to his idea.41 Afterward Konoe instructed Nomura to propose to President Roosevelt that a meeting between himself and Roosevelt be held (at Honolulu or at sea in the mid-Pacific) to head off the looming war. Since Hull was cool to the idea of a summit, and the president was then aboard ship, en route to his historic meeting with Prime Minister Winston Churchill off of Argentia, Newfoundland, which would result in the Atlantic Charter, Nomura was unable to convey the message until August 17.

  No Roosevelt-Konoe meeting ever took place. On October 2, the U.S. government indirectly rejected the summit proposal on the ground that Tokyo’s negotiating position had yet to be clarified. To this day some Japanese conservatives and right-wing apologists for the “War of Greater East Asia” continue to see this rejection as proof that Roosevelt sought to “provoke Japan into a war.”42 But Konoe was only prepared to say that Japan would withdraw its troops from French Indochina after the China Incident had been resolved. On all the key issues that had crystallized after the oil embargo—the problem of how to resolve the China war, the withdrawal of Japanese troops from China, Japan’s alliance with the Axis, and its southern advance—his negotiating draft was silent. Konoe had approved of Japan’s aggression in China and the privileges it had secured there by force and had incorporated into the basic treaty with the Wang Ching-wei regime in Nanking; he intended to ask the United States to advise Chiang Kai-shek to stop resisting Japan. If a summit meeting had taken place, Konoe’s set of stale positions, already proven inadequate, could never have led to a modus vivendi, and might even have hastened the coming of war.43 Or, one may speculate, perhaps Konoe was calculating on deceiving Roosevelt—the master dissimulator—by leaving issues vague.

  Japan’s leaders could either capitulate to the pressure of the anti-Axis coalition led by the United States and Britain—or continue the course they had set. As the shock of the American sanctions spread, disagreements emerged within the court group and among the senior statesmen (jshin) over how to respond to the crisis. The “mainstream” of the Court group, centered on the emperor and Kido, tended to place their trust in the hard-line senior leaders of the army and navy, and to take a more positive attitude toward war with the United States and Britain. Konoe, Okada, and those around them constituted an “antimainstream” group. They had turned away from their prior infatuation with Nazi Germany, they were supportive of the army’s Imperial Way faction, they did not accept the premise that further delay in the southern advance would mean certain defeat, and they wanted to continue the talks with the United States as long as possible. These differences within the court group were fermenting in September but would not emerge clearly until after Konoe stepped down in mid-October.

  III

  Meanwhile the rapidly rising tension in relations with Washington following the oil embargo had clarified the choices facing Japan’s leaders. The Takagi Skichi papers offer a glimpse how the Konoe government, the navy, and the palace framed the risks of war during early autumn 1941. They could capitulate under economic pressure, which would give them a breather, or they could take some other course to end, neutralize, or escape the pressure. War, if they chose to wage it, had to supply the resources needed to make the empire invincible. During a dinner on August 4 with Hosokawa Morisada, Konoe’s private secretary, Admiral Takagi was asked by Hosokawa if it was true that “war must be waged against the United States [emphasis added].” Takagi, replying, in effect contrasted the U.S. with Japan in several respects: the Americans had more domestic raw materials, their navy was undergoing “strategic development,” and they were strengthening their Pacific defenses. Admiral Takagi also mentioned “relations of mutual assistance among Britain, the United States, and the Netherlands.” The United States was growing stronger vis-à-vis Japan, he stressed. “As time passes and this situation continues, our empire will either be totally defeated or forced to fight a hopeless war. Therefore we should pursue war and diplomacy together. If there is
no prospect of securing our final line of national survival by diplomatic negotiations, we must be resolved to fight.”44

  Admiral Takagi’s auditor knew exactly what he meant by “final line of national survival”—that strategic configuration of naval and army outlying island bases, garrisons, airfields, fortifications, colonies, which could provide protection of the sources of the raw materials Japan did not possess internally, and protect also the sea lanes for transportation of those essential materials. The “line” also involved home island defenses, and on the continent certain coastal areas stretching southward, from which enemy aircraft could attack the sea lanes linking the resource-rich colonies of Southeast Asia to Japan.

  On August 8 Admiral Takagi had another conversation with a palace representative—Matsudaira Yasumasa, Kido’s chief secretary, which once again reflected views about Japan’s options that would emerge during the next imperial conference:

  Matsudaira: The other day I got the impression from the briefing that the chief of the Naval General Staff [Adm. Nagano Osami] gave to the emperor that it is now too late to avoid war with the United States even though it will be a most bloody war.

  Takagi: Absolutely not. I don’t know what [Nagano] said, but I can’t imagine him reporting that. In my view, if Japan lets time pass while under pressure from lack of materials [the oil embargo], we will be giving up without a fight. If we make our attack now, the war is militarily calculable and not hopeless. But if we vacillate, the situation will become increasingly disadvantageous for us.

  Matsudaira: Prince Takamatsu said the same thing.45

  Locked in a desperate struggle with Britain, the United States, and the Dutch regime in Batavia, all of whom were concerting to develop barriers to further Japanese expansion, the Konoe cabinet publicly complained of an “ABCD encirclement.” The prowar Takagi blamed Japan’s predicament on the oil embargo and the deadlocked Japan–U.S. negotiations. So too did the emperor, who understood technical, qualified arguments, supported by statistical data, and liked clear-cut, detailed analysis by competent specialists. Hirohito sided with Takagi and the navy, and showed no understanding that Japan owed its quandary to the bankruptcy of the Konoe cabinet’s policies of relentless aggression against China and now Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, he wanted, in Kido’s words, “to have more assurance of victory before he was willing to [take] the nation into war.”46

  Following Hirohito’s ratification of the drive into Southeast Asia, the liaison conference, which now had fully usurped the cabinet’s decision-making function, met on more than a dozen occasions. After each meeting Hirohito received briefings on the progress of the crisis from the prime minister and his chiefs of staff.

  His brother Prince Takamatsu, serving on the Navy General Staff, also added his private views on the situation. In late August he warned the emperor that “October is crucial for our oil reserves.” Hirohito answered (according to Takamatsu), “we will have nothing to bargain with when the time comes to make peace if we don’t leave the fleet intact.” The prince retorted, “I told him his idea was useless, taking the example of the German fleet at the time of the Great War in Europe. Or maybe I said that oil from northern Karafuto is not enough.”47

  Throughout the month of August, Hirohito became very familiar with the navy’s argument that an early opening of hostilities was desirable because the American oil embargo would gradually sap Japan’s military power. Soon he too came to believe that a decision to initiate a new war should ultimately be based on tactical and technical grounds offered by military specialists and supported by map drills conducted by the navy.48 Those grounds included the size of the Imperial Army and Navy, the quality of their armaments, their considerable combat experience and readiness, their esprit de corps, their anticipated relative rates of consumption and resupply of war matériel, and their forward deployment in China and Southeast Asia.

  Significantly absent from the calculations of Hirohito and the high command was any assessment of the enormous nonmaterial political power that Roosevelt also had in reserve and was rapidly mobilizing for possible war against the Axis. With the newly expanded American draft army in the process of completing its largest-ever “war games,” the American public was gradually becoming supportive of the government and more martial in its own sense of national identity.

  In Tokyo the navy’s leaders were making the case for an early opening of hostilities while also pushing for continuation of diplomatic talks in order to persuade the United States to change its stance. At this stage, however, the navy’s arguments were not being turned into national policies, for the main players in the drama—the ministers and vice ministers of the army and navy, the chiefs and vice chiefs of the two general staffs, Foreign Minister Toyoda, and Prime Minister Konoe—could not reach consensus. Unwilling to withdraw from China or to defect from the Axis, which most of them believed would emerge victorious over Britain and the Soviet Union, the decision makers kept incorporating changes in the international situation as the key element in their scenarios for war or diplomacy, but never once carefully examined the full range of policy choices open to them. Even Prime Minister Konoe, the main advocate of continued negotiations with the United States, was saying, “[W]e must be very cautious about procrastinating [diplomatically] or we may end up being forced to fight at the same time we are sliding into ‘gradual decline.’”49

  So the decision makers plowed ahead as if they were wearing large blinders and compelled to follow the furrow they were creating. On September 3 the liaison conference met and adopted a short document stating first, “The empire, for its existence and self-defense, shall complete war preparations by about the latter part of October with the resolve not to hesitate to go to war with the United States (Britain, and The Netherlands).” The second item read, “In tandem with this [decision], the empire shall endeavor to achieve its demands vis-à-vis the United States and Britain through diplomatic means.” The third item indicated the degree to which Japan would “not hesitate to go to war” and was designed to meet the army and navy’s need for time to prepare. It stated, “In the event there is no prospect for achieving our demands by about early October, we shall immediately decide to initiate war with the United States (Britain, and The Netherlands).”50

  The time element had now been moved into the policy-decision-making process. If the emperor approved these time-lines, the government would continue its negotiations with the United States while also continuing to prepare for war; and if its diplomatic wishes were not granted “by about early October,” there would be another imperial conference to make the final, fateful go-or-don’t-go choice for war.

  At 5 P.M. on September 5, Prime Minister Konoe came to the palace to brief the emperor on this newest “national policy” document of the liaison conference, which the cabinet had rubber-stamped late the previous day.51 Forty-four-year-old Hirohito already knew the approximate burden of the document and could hardly have been taken aback by its arrival, or by the request for an imperial conference. The high command had kept him informed in detail about the steadily worsening crisis and the military plans for dealing with it. According to Kido’s diary, he knew he would soon be called upon to make “a truly grave decision if the United States does not simply and straightforwardly accept our proposal.”52

  Now the moment had arrived for him to focus on the most important decision of his entire life. He was going to be asked to break Japan free of its own deadlocked foreign policy by resorting to a war strategy against a vastly superior adversary and continental giant, the United States, which Japan could not possibly defeat militarily.

  A Japan–U.S. war was not predetermined. Hirohito did not have to hurry to accept the high command’s introduction of a time limit on diplomacy with the United States; nor did he have to agree to subordinate diplomacy to war preparations. With the German invasion of Russia in its sixth week and far from producing a decisive victory, and with Britain and its empire still in the war, a man with his well-trained s
kepticism might have reasonably anticipated that Germany would not easily triumph over either of its enemies. Recently returned ambassador to Britain, Shigemitsu Mamoru, a strong supporter of the new order movement, had told him exactly that in both a private audience and a court lecture. Japan could maintain its great power status and exert influence in postwar politics if it stayed out of the European war. All he needed to do was call for “a reexamination of current policy.”53

  Hirohito clearly had options at this moment. He could have slowed the momentum to a new war by choosing to concentrate on the one already in progress. He could have thown into China Japan’s huge army along the Manchuria-Soviet border area. He could have opted to profit commercially from the war in Europe by staying out of it, for the time being, as London and Washington were warning. This would have meant halting the southward advance and withdrawing troops from colonially partitioned Southeast Asia, thereby losing the chance to seize the Dutch East Indies. Some of the navy’s top officers had deep misgivings about going into Indochina, and all of them would have acceded to such a decision had the emperor made it.

  An untitled document in the Takagi Skichi papers describes the briefing of the emperor on the night of September 5. When this account is collated with other contemporary evidence, an interpretation can be made of what actually transpired on the eve of Hirohito’s formal ratification of the decision to initiate war under certain conditions. Unlike the postwar diaries of Kido and Konoe, or the Sugiyama “notes,”54 this Takagi version contains not only the emperor’s angry scolding of Sugiyama but also, at the end, his all-important exchange with Konoe: the only person in the room with a constitutional responsibility for advising him.