The Grand Alliance (122 page)

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judge right, which may be very near, you should not say
that “any further Japanese aggression would compel
you to place the gravest issues before Congress,” or
words to that effect. We would of course make a similar
declaration or share in a joint declaration, and in any
case arrangements are being made to synchronise our
action with yours. Forgive me, my dear friend, for
presuming to press such a course upon you, but I am
convinced that it might make all the difference and
prevent a melancholy extension of the war.

Both he and Tojo were already far ahead of this. So were events.

On the 30th, shortly after noon (American time), Mr. Hull visited the President, who had on his desk my cable of the same date, sent overnight.
3
They did not think my proposal of a joint warning to Japan would be any good.

Nor can we be surprised at this when they had already before them an intercept from Tokyo to Berlin, also dated November 30, telling the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin to address Hitler and Ribbentrop as follows: Say very secretly to them that there is extreme danger that war may suddenly break out between the Anglo-Saxon nations and Japan through some clash of arms, and add that the time of the breaking-out of this war may come quicker than anyone dreams.

I received the decode of the telegrams on December 2. It required no special action from Britain. We must just wait.

The Japanese carrier fleet had in fact sailed on the 25th with the whole naval air force which was to attack Pearl Harbour. Of course it was still subject to restraining orders from Tokyo.

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At an Imperial Conference at Tokyo on December 1 the decision was taken to go to war with the United States.

According to Tojo’s testimony at his trial, the Emperor did not utter a word. For the following week a deadly hush settled in the Pacific. The possibilities of a diplomatic settlement had been exhausted. No act of military aggression had yet occurred. My deepest fear was that the Japanese would attack us or the Dutch, and that constitutional difficulties would prevent the United States from declaring war. After a long Cabinet on December 2 I sent a minute to the Foreign Secretary embodying our conclusions:

Prime

Minister

to

2 Dec. 41

Foreign Secretary

Our settled policy is not to take forward action in
advance of the United States. Except in the case of a
Japanese attempt to seize the Kra Isthmus there will be
time for the United States to be squarely confronted
with a new act of Japanese aggression. If they move,
we will move immediately in support. If they do not
move, we must consider our position afresh….

A Japanese attack on the Dutch possessions may
be made at any time. This would be a direct affront to
the United States, following upon their negotiations with
Japan. We should tell the Dutch that we should do
nothing to prevent the full impact of this Japanese
aggression presenting itself to the United States as a
direct issue between them and Japan. If the United
States declares war on Japan, we follow within the
hour. If, after a reasonable interval, the United States is
found to be incapable of taking any decisive action,
even with our immediate support, we will, nevertheless,
although alone, make common cause with the Dutch.

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Any attack on British possessions carries with it war
with Great Britain as a matter of course.

British Intelligence and air reconnaissance, which were vigilant, soon perceived movements and activity showing that “Japan is about to attack Siam, and that this attack will include a seaborne expedition to seize strategic points in the Kra Isthmus.” We reported this to Washington. A series of lengthy telegrams passed between us and our Commander-in-Chief in the Far East, and also with the Australian and American Governments, about whether we should take forestalling action to protect the Kra Isthmus. It was rightly decided, both on military and political grounds, that we should not complicate the course of events by striking first in a secondary theatre. On December 6 it was known both in London and Washington that a Japanese fleet of about thirty-five transports, eight cruisers, and twenty destroyers was moving from Indo-China across the Gulf of Siam. Other Japanese fleets were also at sea on other tasks.

A prodigious Congressional Inquiry published its findings in 1946 in which every detail was exposed of the events leading up to the war between the United States and Japan and of the failure to send positive “Alert” orders through the military departments to their fleets and garrisons in exposed situations. Every detail, including the decoding of secret Japanese telegrams and their actual texts, has been exposed to the world in forty volumes. The strength of the United States was sufficient to enable them to sustain this The Grand Alliance

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hard ordeal required by the spirit of the American Constitution.

I do not intend in these pages to attempt to pronounce judgment upon this tremendous episode in American history. We know that all the great Americans round the President and in his confidence felt, as acutely as I did, the awful danger that Japan would attack British or Dutch possessions in the Far East, and would carefully avoid the United States, and that in consequence Congress would not sanction an American declaration of war. The American leaders understood that this might mean vast Japanese conquests, which, if combined with a German victory over Russia and thereafter an invasion of Great Britain, would leave America alone to face an overwhelming combination of triumphant aggressors. Not only the great moral causes which were at stake would be cast away, but the very life of the United States, and their people, as yet but half-awakened to their perils, might be broken. The President and his trusted friends had long realised the grave risks of United States neutrality in the war against Hitler and all that he stood for, and had writhed under the restraints of a Congress whose House of Representatives had a few months before passed by only a single vote the necessary renewal of compulsory military service, without which their Army would have been almost disbanded in the midst of the world convulsion. Roosevelt, Hull, Stimson, Knox, General Marshall, Admiral Stark, and, as a link between them all, Harry Hopkins, had but one mind. Future generations of Americans and free men in every land will thank God for their vision.

A Japanese attack upon the United States was a vast simplification of their problems and their duty. How can we wonder that they regarded the actual form of the attack, or even its scale, as incomparably less important than the fact The Grand Alliance

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that the whole American nation would be united for its own safety in a righteous cause as never before? To them, as to me, it seemed that for Japan to attack and make war upon the United States would be an act of suicide. Moreover, they knew, earlier than we in Britain could know, the full and immediate purpose of their enemy. We remember how Cromwell exclaimed when he watched the Scottish army descending from the heights over Dunbar, “The Lord hath delivered them into our hands.”

Nor must we allow the account in detail of diplomatic interchanges to portray Japan as an injured innocent seeking only a reasonable measure of expansion or booty from the European war, and now confronted by the United States with propositions which her people, fanatically aroused and fully prepared, could not be expected to accept. For long years Japan had been torturing China by her wicked invasions and subjugations. Now by her seizure of Indo-China she had in fact, as well as formally by the Tripartite Pact, thrown in her lot with the Axis Powers. Let her do what she dared and take the consequences.

It had seemed impossible that Japan would court destruction by war with Britain and the United States, and probably Russia in the end. A declaration of war by Japan could not be reconciled with reason. I felt sure she would be ruined for a generation by such a plunge, and this proved true. But Governments and peoples do not always take rational decisions. Sometimes they take mad decisions, or one set of people get control who compel all others to obey and aid them in folly. I have not hesitated to record repeatedly my disbelief that Japan would go mad. However sincerely we try to put ourselves in another person’s position, we cannot allow for processes of the human mind and imagination to which reason offers no key.

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Madness is however an affliction which in war carries with it the advantage of
surprise.

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12

Pearl Harbour!

Sunday, December
7
, at Chequers
—
My American Guests
—
Nine O’Clock News on the
Wireless
—
Japan Attacks the United States
—
I
Call the President
—
My Message to Mr
.
de
Valera
—
I Rejoice
—
The Certainty of Victory
—
I
Decide to Go to Washington
—
Letter to the King

— The President’s Anxiety About the Return
Voyage
—
British Declaration of War on Japan
—

My Letter to the Japanese Ambassador
—
Parliament Approves the Declaration ofWar Unanimously
—
Mr. Duff Cooper’s Appointment
—
Magnitude
of the American Disaster — The Stroke in the
Philippines
—
Hitler’s Astonishment
—
We
Discuss the Employment of the “Prince of Wales”