CHAPTER 5
AT the Washington Conference, Japan had refused to entertain the idea of accepting a 10:10:6 ratio on any categories of naval vessels apart from capital ships and aircraft-carriers. Japan took the position that any agreement as to other classes would have to concede to Japan at least 70 per cent of whatever number the British and United States insisted upon maintaining, especially in heavy armoured cruisers (regarded as the most powerful of the unregulated classes of warships). This determination, together with a protracted dispute between Britain and America over the tonnage and calibre of cruisers which they wanted, unfortunately scuppered any chance of reaching a comprehensive régime of naval arms limitations or reductions – extending to all classes of ships – as part of the Washington Naval Treaty.
In fact, Britain continued to boast the most powerful fleet afloat. The United States Navy failed to achieve its dream of a ‘navy second to none’ because the American taxpayer and United States Congress refused to pay for it. The elected representatives of the American people found better things to do with money than build warships. They nevertheless saw nothing wrong with striving for naval dominance in international relations. American statesmen scarcely would admit it, but the two reasons underlying their demands were first of all an overweening national vanity and, secondly, a strong expectation that there was more likelihood of war against Japan than against any other Power. Thus the United States wanted to reconstruct its Navy with that specific contingency in mind. Having enshrined the Washington standard of naval strength in capital ships and aircraft-carriers, the United States was determined to compel Britain and Japan to accept the same 10:10:6 ratio as a general rule and particularly intended to concentrate upon the construction of a cost-effective number of heavy cruisers designed for fleet work (it had very little interest in routine trade protection duties).
Britain’s Royal Navy, too, regarded the contingency of war against Japan as ‘the general basis on which preparations are made’. War against the United States was ruled out by successive governments as a matter of national policy simply because there was no longer even the remotest chance of British victory in such a war. A war against Japan, however, could be waged and won. No other potential antagonist posed any serious threat to Britain’s mastery of the seas. Thus it was that even before the more turbulent era of the 1930s, the United States and Britain had each examined every aspect of the eventuality of war against Japan in studies which were protracted in length and, one should say, refined to the point of exhaustion, in fleet exercises and war plans.
The British saw the primacy of Japan’s threat to their Imperial security in the context of Britain’s unique dependence upon the preservation of safe sea communications between those constituent parts of the Empire which were its vitals. For this purpose, light cruisers were perfectly adequate to form the connective tissues for imperial defence – and were also the only affordable means for achieving that end, given the large number of vessels (seventy) which the Royal Navy claimed to be necessary. Even that figure of seventy light cruisers related solely to the hypothesis of a single-handed war against Japan, one in which neither side had the benefit of allied naval support. Unfortunately, since light cruisers were no match for heavy cruisers in offensive armament and armour protection, it was plain that the Japanese would require vessels to meet the threat of any new heavy cruisers built by the United States, thereby outclassing the vessels which the Royal Navy wanted to build instead. The only one of the three Powers in a position to give way without compromising genuine national security was therefore the United States.
The Japanese had not neglected their naval reconstruction in the aftermath of the Washington Naval Treaty. Japanese naval construction in the aftermath of the Washington Conference had but one prime objective: Japan’s total ascendency over the United States Fleet in any future contest that might be fought in the waters of the Western Pacific. This was purely a regional, not a trans-oceanic, policy. And so successful were the Japanese naval construction programmes that by the late 1920s, Japanese naval experts recognized that they could afford even to reduce their naval strength for the sake of an agreement with the United States and still retain a modest margin of safety, provided that Britain and the United States did not ask for too much.
At the Geneva Naval Conference of 1927 the United States took the view that ‘Equality with Britain is the sole basis on which a just treaty limitation can be imposed.’ Having said that, they reiterated their demand for the construction of a new generation of heavy cruisers rather than light ones, a position which the Royal Navy was bound to regard as unfriendly if not antagonistic. The Americans’ apparent hostility to Britain was to some extent in surrogation for the thinly disguised paranoia which the United States harboured against Japan. Japan, genuinely desiring international arms reduction, strove mightily to prevent a breakdown between Britain and the United States and did her best to seek a compromise which would benefit all. Unfortunately, the United States remained obdurate and American press reports of private Anglo-Japanese conversations revived all the old paranoia which the United States had exhibited in the run-up to the Washington Naval Conference seven years before. The British and Japanese did succeed in reaching accord, but their efforts to bring the United States into a rational frame of mind proved totally unavailing. It was an experience which embittered naval relations between the British and United States navies for years afterwards.
These things develop a momentum of their own. The apparently irreconcilable objectives of the United States and British delegations contributed to what the chief British delegate deplored as ‘mischief, friction and ill-will’. The 1927 Geneva Conference – which like all such so-called ‘disarmament’ or ‘international arms limitations’ negotiations belong to a special category of ‘war by other means’ – produced fresh anxieties and engendered animosity through the very processes of addressing hopes and needs. In this case emotions became so over-wrought in the conflict between naval delegations that certain key officials, admirals and government ministers on both sides began to regard the development of actual hostilities between Britain and the United States as a serious possibility. The Japanese public were pleasantly surprised by reports of this Anglo-United States rivalry at Geneva, for it seemed to lift the threat of Anglo-American collusion against Japan. Their rejoicing turned to dismay a few months later, when the United States announced plans for a huge naval expansion programme.
This came about partly due to the fact that Anglo-American rivalry and antagonism actually worsened still further during the year following the collapse of the Geneva Naval Conference. The immediate occasion was a clash between the two nations during deliberations of the League of Nations Preparatory Commission for the forthcoming General Disarmament Conference scheduled to take place at Geneva. The Americans believed – quite wrongly – that ‘perfidious Albion’ was seeking arrangements with the French against the United States. The Americans, not for the first time, were exceptionally ill-informed and misled by half-baked and malicious press reports, and by efforts of the United States naval establishment to manipulate the zephyrs as well as the prevailing winds of American public opinion. No democratic government finds it easy to separate ‘arms control’ from ‘military appropriations’ and ‘economic priorities’. In naval arms negotiations foreign offices tend to aim at an agreement, any agreement. Admiralties want a limitation but insist upon maximizing their special requirements. Treasuries are invariably interested in economies in naval strength. Nevertheless, the American budget process and military procurement interests are singularly complicated if not ungovernable, and that, perhaps, was the root of the problem.
In fact, there had been nothing underhand in Britain’s negotiations with the French, nor in the earlier discussions with the Japanese. Yet as a result of these affairs, the American and European Governments were driven further apart. Such was the seriousness of the rift and exchange of recriminations that only the exercise of considerable efforts by President Coolidge and Prime Minister Baldwin halted the downhill slide of Anglo-American relations by snatching the issues from the hands of the feuding naval experts and rebuilding political common sense.
By 1930 the Japanese Naval General Staff had good reason to be content with the Washington Treaty system, which had enabled them to concentrate their relatively slender resources on heavy cruiser and submarine development. Thus, unknown to the United States Navy, Japan achieved a qualitative superiority over the United States in these classes of ships and a de facto numerical ratio considerably in excess of that for which they asked at the bargaining table.
Matsudaira Tsuneo, the Japanese Ambassador in London, welcomed Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald’s suggestion of a new naval arms limitation conference and, as a contribution towards ensuring its ultimate success, proposed that it be preceded by a settlement of the parity dispute between Britain and the United States and by agreement between Britain and Japan concerning Japan’s strategic requirements. The need for greater moderation in the American demands was acutely felt, both by Britain and Japan. The United States had eighteen heavy cruisers, and Japan had twelve. Britain had fifteen and wanted no more. But if the United States insisted on increasing her heavy cruiser strength to twenty-one or even twenty-three (as she showed every sign of doing), then Japan would certainly insist on a 70 per cent ratio, thus increasing her number to fourteen. That would leave the Royal Navy dangerously insecure in Far Eastern waters. Accordingly, it was all too clear that unless the Japanese could reach some understanding with Britain beforehand, the British were likely to have no option but to side with the Americans in denying the Japanese the 70 per cent figure which they were so convinced was essential to Japan’s security.
Seeking to strengthen his hand, Prime Minister Hamaguchi arranged for a review of Japanese defence policy at the official residence of the Navy Minister, attended not only by his entire Cabinet but also by leaders of the less liberal opposition Seiyū-kai (literally, the ‘Party of Political Friends’) and members of the Privy Council. Even some of his friends, however, had serious misgivings about the extent to which the 70 per cent ratio had become non-negotiable. When Navy Minister Takarabe suggested that an Imperial Conference be called to decide upon Japan’s aims and then unite public opinion, Court circles initially favoured the idea. But the last of the Genrō, wise old Prince Saionji Kinmochi, succeeded in quashing it: ‘Do nothing of the kind,’ he told Takarabe. ‘In diplomacy, one does not burn his bridges or show his hand.’ Nevertheless, Hamaguchi won a great deal of credit at the time when he held a press conference and revealed his Government’s determination to adhere to the 70 per cent ratio in heavy cruisers at the very least. Addressing the Diet, he declared:
Our claim… is based upon the practical necessity to make our defence secure against foreign invasion. We offer no menace to any nation, we submit to menace from none. On that fundamental principle, it is our desire to seek a naval agreement satisfactory to all the parties concerned.∗
This was not hyperbole. It was pre-eminently sane, the minimum to which any nation aspires if it possesses the wit and means to survive as an independent state. It did not go down well in Washington, DC, however, where the United States Government was equally determined that the Japanese must submit to an extension of the Washington Conference’s 60 per cent ratio in all classes of warship. What the United States feared was that it might someday find itself unable to enforce its will upon Japan if the Japanese were to run amok in China (or even the Philippines). The American position, as Gregory Bienstock pointed out in the mid-thirties, was that ‘unless America is able to carry the war into Japanese waters, she will lose it’.† But to put it another way, unless America could carry the war into Japanese waters, there was most unlikely to be any resort to war in the first place.
At the London Naval Conference of 1930, Britain and the United States finally found ways to overcome their most serious difficulties. They then joined in common cause against Japan. Although Britain did induce the United States to moderate the xenophobic and unreasonable attitude of the United States to a slight degree, the Japanese were the only participants who, for a second time, sought a reduction rather than merely a limitation in naval armaments. Moreover, as Captain C. Varyl Robinson, the British Naval Attaché assigned both to Tokyo and to Peking, privately observed shortly before his return to England, Japan alone among the naval powers had based her policy solely on her minimum defensive requirements rather than leaving a margin sufficient to pursue a successful naval offensive. Baron Shidehara, confirmed internationalist though he was, reportedly likened America’s behaviour to that of a rich ‘spoilt child’, who could afford to squander unlimited resources on armaments if it should please it to do so. Nevertheless, once the British and American delegations had reached agreement, the Japanese could make little headway in protecting their own interests. Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald afterwards reported to King George V that ‘From beginning to end, the two delegations [Britain and the United States] worked in complete harmony. To all intents and purposes they were one team.’∗ Even allowing for exaggeration, this nevertheless shows the very real dangers to which the Conference exposed the Japanese. When a compromise was reached in the end, it therefore came as a relief to the Japanese as well as to the British and American delegations – and privately most circles within the Japanese Government admitted that they had achieved more than for a time had seemed possible.
In some respects it can be argued that the 1930 London Naval Conference actually reduced the real security of each of the major naval Powers. France, who attended the Conference but tried to wreck it, and Italy, who also found herself in an untenable position, both refused to sign the Treaty. So far as Britain was concerned, the effect of the Treaty was that she was able to adhere to her present strength of fifteen eight-inch calibre cruisers while building an additional 90,000 tons (fourteen ships) of light cruisers and at the same time increasing her strength in auxiliaries and conducting an extensive modernization programme for her existing fleet. The United States increased its strength by three eight-inch gun cruisers and five light cruisers, although it was agreed that construction of these vessels would be deferred until the mid-thirties. More importantly, the Americans became entitled to construct 346,811 tons of new vessels, including seventeen heavy cruisers, to replace older ships. Japan, by contrast, was not permitted to construct a single new heavy cruiser and was permitted only 50,769 tons of new construction in all other categories of warship put together. Thus although Japan gained a 70 per cent ratio in six-inch calibre (light) cruisers and in destroyers together with parity in submarines, she was restricted to 60.02 per cent of the American heavy cruiser strength. These figures gave Japan an overall entitlement to 69.75 per cent of the American gross tonnage figure but the appearance of an improvement in ratios over Washington Conference levels was illusory. The real effect of the London Naval Treaty was that Japan had to concede in principle her right to a hegemony in the Western Pacific which she had enjoyed in practice since 1905. After agreement was reached, the Head of the Japanese Delegation, Wakatsuki Reijirō, sadly but soberly remarked, ‘Suspicions and misunderstandings will only be deepened. This is what the Japanese Government views with the most serious concern.’∗ Indeed, the bullying tactics of the American Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, towards the Japanese during the Conference begs comparison to that of Adolf Hitler towards the Austrian Chancellor, Dr Kurt Schuschnigg, on the eve of the Austro-German Anschluss.
All of this contributed to the gradual determination of Japanese ruling circles to turn away from such negotiations in future, or at least not to subject themselves to the likelihood of such humiliating consequences. At the same time, the London Naval Treaty had left the British and United States navies inadequately prepared to meet their very real national defence requirements in the decade ahead. In the short term, however, the worst effects of the Treaty were visited upon Japan. In particular it brought about the resignation of the Chief and Vice-Chief of the Naval General Staff, the retirement of the Navy Minister and Vice-Minister, an assassination attempt upon the life of Prime Minister Hamaguchi (who suffered a lingering death as a result of wounds inflicted by a right-wing fanatic) and the political ruination of his Minseitō (Democratic Party). These events all cast a shadow over the ensuing years. As the gifted Admiral Katō Kanji told Prince Saionji’s ubiquitous secretary, Baron Harada Kumao:
It’s as if we had been roped up and cast into prison by Britain and America. When I and my kind have gone, it will be you [Harada] and your kind who must bear the brunt of it. Since there’s no fixed national policy, it follows that the programme for national defence will also vacillate. This is indeed disturbing… What has caused me the gravest concern recently has been the activity of those about the Throne.†
At this point we must digress momentarily to explain that the Japanese Navy had become a house divided against itself. In Japan, the Emperor exercised ‘Supreme Command’ (Tōsui) through the Army and Naval General Staffs together with the Supreme War Council (a kind of panel of elderly umpires who, when requested to do so by the Army or Naval General Staffs, advised the Emperor on important military and naval policy issues). On the other hand, the Emperor exercised his organization and administration (Hensei) of national defence through the War and Navy Ministries. The Army and Naval General Staffs, according to Dr Minobe, the distinguished Japanese constitutional scholar to whom the ruling élite now turned for guidance, were entitled to participate in defence planning and rightly ‘should be given every serious consideration by the Government’.∗ Nevertheless, Dr Minobe continued, the General Staffs ‘do not at all have the right of decision’. Traditionally, the Naval General Staff had far less power than the Army General Staff. Executive power in the Navy rested almost exclusively with the Navy Minister in time of peace. Senior members of the Naval General Staff chafed at being condemned to a position of perpetual inferiority to the ‘prima donnas’ of the Navy Ministry. They envied the far greater power of their Army counterparts. Thus while the Navy Ministry had broad powers as the ‘administrative’ side of the Navy, the Naval General Staff was confined to ‘operational’ or ‘staff’ duties defined in the narrowest possible sense. The Naval General Staff tended to be less moderate than the Navy Ministry, just as the Army General Staff was more imbued with an offensive spirit than the War Ministry. All of these organs experienced difficulty in resisting the influence of more radical elements within the officer corps, but clearly the Navy Ministry was far more fortunate in this respect than the others.
The Navy as a whole was a much more moderate service than the Army. On most issues even the Navy General Staff felt some temptation to seek a form of compromise. It did not really identify itself with the arcane feudalistic ethic which had proved so attractive to the Army. At one time the Navy had been administratively subordinate to the Army. In ancient times its prime functions were to transport the Army, to maintain the Army’s lines of communication, and to preserve the Army’s freedom of manoeuvre. But the modern Japanese Navy cherished its independence from the Army. It had adopted western values as well as European practices with far less modification than its elder brother service. It was also much more élitist. It drew its officer corps not from poorly educated peasant youth but from upper- and middle-class young men straight from the universities, and it was susceptible to the same kind of class consciousness as that which afflicted the officer corps of the United States Navy and Royal Navy. The naval officer was typically far more familiar with international affairs, more technologically sophisticated and, generally speaking, more cosmopolitan than his Army compatriots. At the same time, the Navy was much smaller. Its officer corps was only a fifth, the size of the Army’s, and its political influence, rarely more than, say, a third of the Army’s, shrank further still during the London Naval Treaty controversy. In the past, the Navy had prided itself on its internal cohesion. The disciplines of life at sea helped to preserve the Navy from the ravages of political storms and social upheaval ashore. In any case the Navy lacked traditional ties with the agrarian-cum-revolutionary radicalism so deeply implanted within the Army. And looking across the horizon and in foreign ports of call, the Navy had reason to know and greatly respect the strength of the Royal Navy and United States Navy, understood the economic capacity of their respective countries and saw little advantage in entangling Japan in China at the expense of good relations with the western democracies. Perhaps equally significant, there were as yet no foreign naval Powers towards whom any Japanese naval officer could look for assistance if unbridled national passions should erupt into war.
These considerations particularly affected the older generation of naval officers: Admiral Ōkada Keisuke, Navy Minister in the preceding Cabinet and a future Prime Minister; Admiral Count Yamamoto Gonbei, also a former Navy Minister, who had twice been Prime Minister; Admiral Saitō Makoto, three times Navy Minister, now Governor-General of Korea for the second time, subsequently another Prime Minister: all of these and others were strong supporters of the Treaty faction. The talents of men like these were considerable, and so was the esteem in which they were held by the Genrō and palace officials. Yet the fact remains that the most able men of the Naval General Staff were bitterly resentful of their continuing subordination to the Navy Ministry, and in that sense the London Naval Treaty came as merely the last straw. As Katō Kanji complained:
Before the Government dispatched the instructions to the delegation in London, they ought to have listened to our views on this matter; and yet when I wanted to present explanations at meetings of the Cabinet, I was prevented from attending… They are altogether defiant of the General Staff. It would have been acceptable if they had allowed me to have my say and then had given me to understand before the instructions were sent that there was no alternative after considering the matter from various angles. But they didn’t even do that. The very issuance of the instructions shows a disregard for the Navy General Staff and is equivalent to ignoring the prerogative of Supreme Command. Can I stand by and allow decisions on the national defence to be made in this way?∗
It is scarcely surprising that this sense of genuine grievance struck a responsive chord outside the confines of the Navy. The main parliamentary opposition party (Seiyū-kai), Hiranuma’s Kokuhonsha, the Naval Reservist Organization and the combined services’ Military Club, all joined the band-wagon. This mésalliance could not stop the Treaty but it forced the ‘moderates’ into adopting means which only reinforced the determination of the dissidents to redress the balance.
It is within this context, then, that we may note the sentiments expressed by one of ‘those about the Throne’ in reply to the efforts by the Navy’s diehards, Admiral Katō Kanji in particular, to throttle the London Naval Treaty before it could be ratified: the venerable Grand Chamberlain, Admiral Suzuki Kantarō, drily commented,
It behoves the Chief of the Naval General Staff as the Emperor’s chief staff officer to be more discreet and circumspect. It is highly reprehensible to drum up popular support for his own notions and then to try to push them through because of the public opinion thus aroused. Only the mediocre could clamour for 70 per cent or nothing. He who is Chief of the Naval General Staff must be able to utilize whatever strength is allotted to him; whether it be 60 or even 50 per cent that may be decided upon. It may be that Katō is too obstinate and emotional. So it seems to me.∗
Prime Minister Hamaguchi’s successors, alas, were not nearly so prepared to brave the demands of Japan’s fighting services. Baron Wakatsuki, who took charge after a short caretaker period during which Baron Shidehara was Prime Minister pro tempore, had to yield to the expedient of promising to consult more closely with the Army and Navy General Staffs in any future matters affecting national security. After the London Treaty crisis, the right of ‘supreme command’ was much more jealously guarded than before – and was upheld by the preponderance of Japanese public opinion. Moreover, the Naval General Staff had learned the lesson that it would need to maintain the support of public opinion against the bureaucrats and officials who, having outmanoeuvred them in securing ratification of the Treaty, could no longer be trusted. Meanwhile the Japanese, like other top-class naval Powers, secretly bent their backs to the task of planning ways of circumventing the régime of naval limitation treaties to prepare for the likelihood that no satisfactory arrangements would be achieved by the time that all the existing agreements were due to expire at the end of December 1936.
There were many within the Army as well as the Naval General Staffs who were alarmed by the success of the bureaucrats and party politicians in railroading the London Naval Treaty through the Supreme War Council, the Cabinet, the Privy Council and the Imperial Diet. The whole affair had raised constitutional issues of the gravest importance, unresolved issues which struck at the heart of the military’s independence and direct responsibility to the Throne on matters relating to Army as well as Navy control over the means available to them in the execution of national defence policies in the widest sense. When Prime Minister Hamaguchi had advised the Emperor to sign the Treaty against the wishes of his Naval General Staff, he tugged at the lynchpin which enabled the military and civil arms of government to work together, and his actions were thus contributory to a natural reaction, the sabre politics of the 1930s. Nor can one overlook the significance of the fact that the political ferment surrounding the London Naval Conference had coincided with the world depression. This increased pressure on governments to find solutions but it also added to the xenophobic sense of grievance which the ignorant, foolish and mad felt against foreign Powers.
Finally, it is worth stealing a last look at the Army’s key role during these ‘disarmament’ controversies, for it not only helps to illuminate the constitutional relationship between the defence services but also may help to dispel the common misapprehension that the Japanese Army was invariably hamfisted in relation to the affairs of other government departments which affected the ‘national polity’. Had the Army taken strong exception to the London Naval Treaty, it lay within the power of both War Minister Ugaki Kazushige and the Army General Staff to force the issue by his resignation, at one stroke bringing down the Cabinet and the Treaty. At the time, Ugaki was seriously ill in hospital. The pressures exerted upon him to resign were great. For a very long time, he stoutly resisted these pressures, confiding to Navy Minister Takarabe (another courageous man), ‘This disarmament is a Navy matter and the Army has no share in or knowledge of it. A joint Army-Navy meeting would be quite superfluous. The Navy alone must handle it.’∗ As the matter dragged on for months, it began to appear that Ugaki would have to yield to the mental and physical strains. His Cabinet colleagues and Prince Saionji then prevailed upon him to appoint his Vice-Minister to deputize for him as War Minister ad interim. Constitutionally, this was another unprecedented step, but another hurdle had been surmounted. Whatever may have been Ugaki’s motives (and there were many who felt that he would one day make a first-class premier), the Japanese Army General Staff as well as Ugaki had resisted a marvellous opportunity to join forces with the rank and file of the Naval General Staff in seeking to bring about the collapse of the Government and possibly to establish in its stead a new political order based upon the apocalyptic and hyper-nationalistic authoritarian principles which Katō Kanji and many of his adherents held dear. Whatever the dangers on the horizon (and they were manifold) Prince Saionji’s voice tells us how determined were those who struggled against the rising tide of pessimism: while ratification of the London Naval Treaty was still far from assured, he declared:
Today, when new impetus has been given to peace through the new agencies devised after the Paris Peace Conference, agencies based on a spirit of peace for the promotion of human welfare, no nation should have offensive armaments. In a word, then, may we talk of weapons for defence, but nowhere can anyone today talk of weapons for aggression. These may seem to be wholly new schemes and principles, but if we go back a little further, we find they have a long and splendid history. This is what Jean Jacques Rousseau advocated so long ago. Men are not beasts; hence they should cease chewing each other up. For the welfare of mankind, let us preserve peace: this is the spirit that has come forth as the new principle today since the Peace Conference. Both the disarmament treaties and the Anti-War [Kellogg-Briand] Pact stem from a fine long-developing tradition. There’s no intention of using treaties to threaten or reduce a particular nation’s armaments. On the contrary, these treaties should be considered as undertaken for the sake of human happiness which can come from a spirit of the love for peace.∗
His words express the well-nigh universal aspirations of the human race, but the tensions and accidents of history are no illusion, and the breadth of his vision is mocked by the horror and torment of the years that were still to come.