A World at Arms (51 page)

On the American side, the hope that some way of avoiding war with Japan could still be found encouraged the President and Secretary of State to meet time and again with the Japanese ambassador, and later the special envoy sent to assist him, as well as to tolerate the interference of private persons and irregular channels. It was their hope, furthermore, that the negotiations themselves might enable them to win enough time to rearm to such an extent that eventually the Japanese would give up any projects of new conquests altogether. In this regard, the two-ocean navy program looked to the distant future; for the time immediately ahead, the anticipated delivery of the new B-17 Flying Fortress 4–engine bomber was thought to be a possible deterrent. Quite exaggerated expectations were attached to the small numbers of these planes becoming available in 1941 and 1942, and it was seriously believed that their presence in the Philippines would make it possible to deter a Japanese attack southward–by the implied threat of fire-bombing the cities of Japan–or, if worse came to worse, to defend those islands effectively. Since all prior American planning had been based on the assumption that the islands in the Western Pacific could not be defended in the years before they were to attain independence anyway, this new concept showed how greatly illusions about small numbers of planes affected thinking in Washington in 1941.
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The astonishment Roosevelt wanted to have conveyed to Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka, whom he thought mentally disturbed, about the latter’s failure to visit Washington on his tour of Europe in 1941, reflects the President’s concern about keeping talks active early that year.
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The draft agreement of April 9, 1941, about which such long talks followed for the rest of the year was, as Robert Butow has shown,
concocted by Iwakuro Hideo of the Japanese embassy in Washington and Father James M. Drought without any authority from either the Tokyo or the Washington government.
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What necessarily complicates any understanding of the highly complex negotiations which followed is, on the one hand, that those in Japan who, like Matsuoka, wanted the negotiations to fail, interfered with those who had been misled into thinking the project actually had come from the United States government.
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On the other hand, when Nomura failed to carry out his instructions from Tokyo or did not report quite accurately on his talks, the Washington authorities knew of this from their reading of “Magic,” the decrypts of Japan’s diplomatic messages.

It must, however, be noted that if the Japanese government had figured out that the project under discussion, with its extensive concessions to their position on such issues as the situation of troops in China, the end of United States aid to Chiang, a negotiated peace between Japan and Chiang, and Japan’s position in the Tripartite Pact, did
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represent the official position of the United States government at all, they would very likely have broken off the talks much earlier. They would have saved themselves all the arguments with the Germans which will be mentioned subsequently, because it would have become obvious to Tokyo early in 1941 that their own unwillingness to forego any of their major objectives meant that they would have to fight for them, and then the sooner the better from their point of view.

It was for this reason that the Japanese were pushing forward in East Asia even as they promised restraint to Britain and the United States. Having made their basic decision in the summer of 1940, most arguments in Tokyo thereafter were about details. There was a recognition of deficiencies in economic strength but this in no way restrained the authorities.
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In the face of the unanimous contrary opinion of their naval attachés in the Western Hemisphere, the navy went along with a policy directed toward war with the United States.
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In spite of Japanese complaints, their own steps breaking the promises made to Britain gave the latter a perfect case for reopening the Burma Road at the end of the temporary closing period.
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The Japanese authorities encouraged Thailand to reclaim parts of French Indo-China, a process which led to fighting between the Thais and Vichy France but left both under greater Japanese influence as the Germans restricted French reinforcements.
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While inside Japan the Konoe government moved forward with its program of trying to establish a new political order, a program which led to the creation of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, Japan’s would–be single party,
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the new line in foreign policy was pushed forward vigorously.

In September 1940 the government decided to ally itself with Germany. Now was the time to move in an alignment with Germany to seize all of Southeast Asia, quite possibly adding Burma and India and the islands of the South Pacific. If that meant war with the United States, so be it. Even the navy, at one time reluctant, was now prepared to go along; because of the American naval building program, “now is the most advantageous time for Japan to start a war.”
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Certainly the Japanese struck a tough bargain with Berlin. They made the German negotiators promise them that Japan could decide for itself whether to join in war with the United States and that the former German colonies in the Pacific under British, Australian, and New Zealand’s control would be added to those they had already acquired, a concession the German diplomats kept from their own govemment!
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But the advocates of war against the United States now pushed all before them. In the Imperial Conference on September 19 it was argued that Japan had all the materials, including oil, that it needed for the war with China. And if a long war with the United States had to be fought, Prime Minister Konoe claimed that all would be well. Japan could solve the China problem and get Germany’s help for better relations with the Soviet Union.
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At the Privy Council on September 26, the navy minister explained that the navy was getting ready for a long war with the United States.
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All seemed to be ready for the big push south.

Negotiations to take over the Netherlands East Indies had already been started in late August and were now moved forward. But although the Japanese were able to order a great deal of oil, they did not get anywhere with their project of a political treaty binding the Netherlands East Indies to Japan. The Dutch naturally looked on Japan’s joining with their German enemy in the Tripartite Pact most unfavorably, and they simply strung out the negotiations, feeding the Japanese delegation until the Dutch authorities on the spot were “rather short of eatable birds nests.”
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If the Dutch were delaying, the French were not. In the very days of September 1940 that Vichy French forces fought against the British and Free French at Dakar, they agreed to the Japanese demands for the occupation of Northern Indo-China.
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In the following weeks, the Japanese also made another effort to come to an agreement with Chiang Kai-shek, trying both direct contact and pressure on Chiang via Germany, but nothing came of the attempt. The Japanese were not only hopelessly confused among themselves as to how to go about this and how to harmonize approaches to Chiang with their plan to recognize the puppet government of Wang Ching-wei, but their demands for Japanese
long-term control of large parts of China (including Hainan) were unacceptable to Chiang. If there was any chance of agreement, now as before and later, the chaos of conflicting ambitions in Tokyo could be depended on to wreck it.
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Not recognizing either that the Germans had suffered a serious check in their effort to defeat England
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or that they had already decided to attack the Soviet Union, the Japanese decided to improve their relations with the Soviet Union, either directly through a Japanese-Soviet pact or by getting the Soviets to join the Tripartite Pact. Either would clear the Japanese rear of danger when they moved south against the British, Dutch and Americans, and Tokyo worked long and hard on this project. Because the negotiations for Soviet adhesion to the Tripartite Pact were aborted by the Germans, the Japanese worked all the harder on a direct agreement with Russia; and, as previously mentioned, were able to obtain a neutrality treaty with the Soviet Union in April 1941.
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That treaty omitted the more far-reaching demands both sides had raised during the preceding year of talks but assured each of the neutrality of the other in case it were involved in war with other countries. Since the Soviet Union had been unable to join the Tripartite Pact as it would have preferred, this at least assured her of a quiet frontier in East Asia if German-Soviet relations deteriorated; conceivably, it might also lead to better relations. Furthermore, facilitating Japan’s move south would embroil Japan with other powers in 1941 as facilitating Germany’s aggression had done in 1939. From the perspective of Tokyo, an agreement with the Soviet Union might put pressure on the United States, would strike a blow at the Chinese Nationalists since it violated the 1937 Chinese–Soviet Treaty, would clear the way for a move south by securing Japan’s northern flank, and strengthen Matsuoka’s own position in Japan.
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In any case, for the 1941 campaign season, both the Soviet Union and Japan could consider themselves safe from each other. Both followed the advice of the Japanese ambassador in Moscow who had advised his government that “carpe diem should be our motto now.”
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From the perspective of Berlin, a major advantage of the Japanese–Soviet pact was the relief it provided Japan on its northern flank and the encouragement this would give the hitherto reluctant Japanese to move south.
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For months, the Germans had weighed the advantages of Japan’s attacking the British in Southeast Asia, even if that also meant war with the United States. Each time they looked at the prospect, it looked better to them. Time and again the Japanese had shown their caution to be both excessive and at Germany’s expense. There were innumerable German grievances over the failure of the Japanese to assist
Germany in moving raw materials she needed from East and Southeast Asia.
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Unfavorable comparisons were made between what the United States was doing for Britain and what Japan was doing for its German ally. Over and over the Germans urged the Japanese to strike at Singapore: the way to destroy the British empire was to attack it while it was vulnerable, and that time was obviously now.
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To reassure the Japanese that such a move would not be dangerous for them, they provided Tokyo with one of their great intelligence scoops of the war: the capture in November, 1940, of a British Cabinet report which showed that Britain could not and would not send major fleet units to East Asia in case of a Japanese attack.
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From time to time, the Japanese would point out to the Germans that Japan would be ready to move in 1946, the year when the last United States forces were scheduled to leave the Philippines, to which the Germans responded by pointing out that by that time the war in Europe would be over and the American fleet doubled.
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Perhaps more important was the German assurance that if Japan could move against Singapore only if she struck the United States at the same time, then she could count on Germany to join her.

This was a point von Ribbentrop had already made in 1939.
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A detailed examination of the issue by the German naval attaché in Tokyo seemed to show that this would be a good bargain for Germany; Japan as an open ally would more than offset the disadvantages of converting the United States from a tacit to an open enemy of Germany.
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Here is a key point which most analysts of the situation have overlooked and which has led them to puzzle endlessly and needlessly over Germany’s declaration of war on the United States in December 1941. Hitler had long intended to fight the United States. He had tried to begin air and naval preparations for this in the late 1930s. These had been aborted by the outbreak of war in 1939, but on each occasion thereafter, when it looked as if the campaign immediately at hand was over, he had returned to the big blue-water navy program. It was always his belief that Germany needed a big navy to tackle the United States that made him want to postpone war and avoid incidents with the United States; when the right time came he was confident that he would find a good excuse–he always had with other countries.

But if the Japanese, who had hung back so long, took the plunge, then the naval deficit would automatically disappear. He had thought of removing that discrepancy by a German sneak under-water attack on the United States navy in port. Told by his navy that this was impossible, there was the obvious alternative of Japan providing a navy for his side of the war; that the Japanese would do from above the water what he
had hoped to do from underneath was not known to him beforehand, but that made no difference. The key point was that Japan’s joining openly on the Axis side would provide a big navy right away, not after years of building, and hence remove the main objection to going to war with the United States now rather than later. It was therefore entirely in accord with his perception of the issues that he promised Matsuoka on April 4 that if Japan believed that the only way for her to do what the Germans thought they should do, namely attack the British, was also to go to war at the same time with the United States, they could move in the knowledge that Germany would immediately join them.
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This policy was fully understood in German headquarters and would be voiced repeatedly thereafter.
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Because they held this point of view, the Germans were seriously alarmed by what they learned of a possible Japanese-United States accommodation growing out of the negotiations between the two countries. The dangerous converse of tension in the Pacific leading to war and the tying up of the United States fleet there was the possibility of a United States–Japanese agreement freeing the United States fleet for even greater employment in the Atlantic. Like the immediately involved negotiators in Washington and Tokyo, the Germans did not understand that this was all shadow-boxing about an unofficial proposal neither side had originated, and the German government did what it could to discourage any agreement from the sidelines. (Had the Germans actually wanted to avoid a war with the United States, an opposite policy would, of course have been followed by Berlin.) Especially in May 1941, when there appeared to be a slight possibility that something would come of the talks, the Germans were seriously worried.
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