Part II
13 The War Changes Its Character
14 The Negotiation preceding War
15 The Bombardment of Pearl Harbor
16 The War after Pearl Harbor
CHAPTER 13
THE key to Japan’s policy was still the China Incident. With this uppermost in mind, Japan approached the matter of its relations with the western countries in the war which was beginning in Europe.
When the Japanese found that Chungking would not make peace with them, they became convinced that it was enabled to continue fighting, and was encouraged to keep up a hopeless resistance, because of the aid given to it by the Western Powers. In fact, China was complaining desperately at the shortage of war supplies. The aid that it received from the western democracies was a trickle, which the Japanese greatly exaggerated. They professed to be convinced, however, that only the severance of China’s link with the democratic Powers would bring an end to the China adventure. The war was telling upon the Japanese, and most groups were anxious to be free of it. Some of them had begun to think that it had been too lightly embarked upon.
The outbreak of the war in Europe in 1939 seemed to give Japan its opportunity to bring pressure to bear upon the countries which persisted in maintaining relations with China. Japan, on the world stage, found itself in much the same position as it had been in the war of 1914–18. To the average citizen reading his daily newspaper in London, Berlin or New York, the direction which Japan might take had suddenly magnified its value greatly: to the guardians of his country’s security and foreign policies, the onset of hostilities in the West by contrast actually diminished the regard which European nations were disposed to give to events in East Asia. The experts agreed that for Britain, especially, whether Japan remained strictly neutral or sided with the Axis Powers remained a life or death matter but there was precious little that the British Empire could do to affect Japan’s determination of its course. Nevertheless, Japan saw that a new bargaining opportunity had opened up. There was an unfamiliar flexibility in its international relations. Out of the international situation, by blackmail or cajolery, Japan could expect to bend the attitude of other Powers in such a way as to place the whole of East Asia under firm Japanese hegemony.
Already from 1938 Japan, partly under the impetus of patriotic parties which increasingly dictated its policies, partly because of the weakening position of its rivals in East Asia, drifted into a steady widening of its powers in the region. The stage was being set for its collision with the United States. It became convinced that it was practicable to clear East Asia of American as well as of European influences. The United States, while avoiding territorial aggressiveness, had no intention of vacating its position and rights.
First, however, Japan sought to apply its growing power to complete the isolation of China, and thus to compel it to bring the China Incident to an end. Japan’s force had, as its immediate objective, the task of cutting off the links which enabled China, though beaten in the field, to refuse peace.
Chiang Kai-shek, in his retreat to Chungking in far-off Szechuan Province, had two lifelines to the West. There was a road through north-west China, occupied by the Chinese communists, down which filtered a little oil from Russia, a quantity of obsolescent weaponry and some Soviet personnel. The Soviet Union’s most important contribution to the defence of Free China was a programme intended to build up the Chinese air forces. The first Russian airmen and ground mechanics had begun to arrive at the end of October or the beginning of November 1937. The Soviets evidently had agreed to sell the Chinese about 300 aircraft immediately and to keep about 200 in flying condition thereafter. It is difficult to put this into proportion, but British air Intelligence experts reckoned that this was about the same order of magnitude as the entire strength of the Czech Air Force, which was then judged to be a fairly formidable force: despite the vast differences in the size of Czechoslovakia and China, air operations over China tended to be concentrated in relatively small zones so the comparison is not unreasonable. In any event, the Soviets continued to maintain a steady supply of about forty aircraft per month to China, and the total number of aircraft supplied had reached around 500 at the first anniversary of the China Incident. At that time, the Soviet air mission in China was estimated by foreign Intelligence experts to include about 150 airmen and 300 ground staff. In combat and in training they suffered heavy losses. Two flying schools were established at Hankow and Lanchow early on, with about 100 aircraft and fifty Soviet instructors. Due to the low efficiency reached by the Chinese trainees, however, the Soviets tended to pilot their own aircraft in special-purpose squadrons, except during the Battle for Hankow and over neighbouring frontline areas where Chinese pilots were preferred.
All in all, the effectiveness of the Soviet aid to China is easy to exaggerate although the size of the Soviet commitment was substantial. Looking on the positive side, French Intelligence reports early on suggested that the Soviet airmen were very accomplished fliers and had proved themselves blindly obedient to orders whatever the consequences. Other western Intelligence officers, however, suggested that the true picture was far from rosy: the officer corps of Soviet air forces as a whole showed a notorious lack of initiative, employed wasteful, inefficient tactics, and disgraced the high morale and fair skill displayed by individual Soviet pilots. The performance of the Soviet air forces at Nomonhan in 1939 had surprised the Japanese. Yet by 1940 reports reaching western air staffs spoke of the uneasy state of relations between Chinese air officers and their propagandizing Soviet ‘friends’. Americans who had seen the Soviet pilots took note of their unclean, unkempt appearance, their now poor flying skills, their obsolete aircraft, their high rates of attrition and their reluctance to press home any attacks against the Japanese. The same American observers were highly impressed by the skill of the Japanese, their discipline and their fighting spirit.
But it was clear to anyone who was at Chungking at this time that, following the collapse of German military assistance to China, the channels of communication which were valued most highly were those of the Anglo-Saxon Powers. It was on these – first on a railway through French Indo-China which had its outlet at Hanoi, and later, after it was wrecked by bombing and by Japanese intimidation of the Vichy French régime, on an earth road through Burma, and still later on an air lift from Calcutta direct to Chungking – that Kuomintang eyes were riveted. The Japanese were right in supposing that as long as these remained open China would feel that it was not cut off from support from the West. However little was flowing at the moment, as long as the communication remained open, the hope endured in China that more might be made to flow. But always the hinge of China’s fate depended upon these communications remaining open. (There were still one or two other avenues, too, such as minute quantities of weapons smuggled out of Hong Kong to guerrilla forces operating within Japanese-occupied territories, but these, although much appreciated, were far less important.)
Japan was well aware that the most immediate way to force an end to the war lay in interrupting these tenuous lines of communication. The Japanese put their trust in a turn in events making it appear more a matter of material interest to the West that the western goverments should extinguish their foreign aid to China. The disastrous defeats suffered by France and Great Britain in the spring campaigns of 1940 appeared to give Japan its opportunity.
In the middle of 1940, after the fall of France, when Britain was in its most desperate condition, Japan demanded that Britain should close the Burma Road. Given the European situation, Britain was in no condition to refuse. Churchill demurred but in the end gave way. At the time, expert opinion was divided as to whether Japan would seize upon the issue as a pretext to open hostilities against Britain’s imperial outposts in East Asia. Through well-judged crisis management all that Britain lost and Japan gained was a modicum of prestige, and even that was soon reversed to the discomfiture of the Japanese: the British agreed to suspend traffic on the Burma Road for an indefinite time, then re-opened it after the elapse of only three months, a period which (as British diplomats then lost no opportunity of recounting to the amusement of others round the world) happened to coincide with the monsoon season during which the Road was impassable anyway. After that, the aid again flowed, though scarcely more than a trickle. It was enough to give China hope and helped to restore flagging American confidence in the determination of the British Empire to continue to do its utmost to resist Japanese aggression. As Lieutenant-Colonel Harry Creswell, the long-serving United States Military Attaché in Tokyo, reported in October 1940:
In a practical sense it is difficult to determine how important the Burma Road is to China and whether any large bulk of supplies is being moved over that route. This aside from the fact that it is the last Chinese outlet except through Soviet Russia.
From the Japanese standpoint, however, the road has become the symbol of foreign opposition to the success of Japanese operations in China, and as such has taken on an importance in their eyes at least as great as whatever real value it may have as a source of supply to China.
As in the case of many controversies which were formerly more or less limited to the Orient, since the start of the European War and the alignment of Japan with the totalitarian Axis, the Burma Road issue has become more directly linked with the larger issues involved in that struggle… From this standpoint, what may be the Japanese reaction to a re-opening of this road is difficult to foretell at this time. That it will only serve to worsen both Anglo-Japanese and American-Japanese relations, should both nations use the road for supplying the Chinese, is too trite to deserve mention.∗
Emperor Hirohito, indeed, had been deeply pessimistic about the outcome of the Burma Road Incident even as the crisis was coming to a head. The British announcement of the suspension of traffic on the Road surprised him. On 11 July, a week before, he gloomily told Marquis Kido Kōichi, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, ‘I am inclined to think that Britain will reject our proposal for closing the “Aid-Chiang Route”. In such case, will not the occupation of Hong Kong become necessary, and result in the declaration of war? If so, the USA would probably resort at least to embargo measures.’ Both of them worried lest unrest within the Army should ‘stir up unpleasant incidents’.∗ In the Emperor’s eyes, at least, the British position in East Asia thus far continued to command respect.
This seems, in fact, an appropriate place to observe that Britain’s paramount position in China until the Second World War has been forgotten by the British public – and never was properly appreciated by the American people at large. The Japanese, however, knew of its importance as well as did the Chinese. It is easy to be more impressed by memory of the decline of British influence than by an appreciation of its long persistence.
It is commonly believed that Britain was caught lamentably off-guard by the Japanese attack in Malaya and Hong Kong at the close of 1941. That, however, is simply untrue. The Japanese threat was taken extremely seriously by the British Empire throughout the inter-war years, and until 1939 the position of Singapore was regarded as one of the two keystones upon which the survival of the Empire depended (the other being neither Suez nor Gibraltar but nothing less than the security of the United Kingdom itself). Britain’s system of imperial defence planning, preparations and precautions continued to be as exemplary during the European War as it had been beforehand. The Royal Navy, as it existed at the outbreak of the European War, however, had been designed to fight the Japanese while containing the German fleet. There were no margins for error: until war actually broke out, the best professional advice was that the country could afford nothing more. If the generals and airmen grumbled, it was in part because huge sums of money had been spent on the Navy rather than reserved for ground or air forces. If the Japanese threat could have been ignored, all three of Britain’s fighting services would have been constructed along very different lines. As it was, the British fleet in September 1939 continued to be the largest in the world, as it had been for longer than anyone cared to remember. The war against Germany and Italy made offensive action against Japan impossible throughout most of the Second World War. The loss of Malaya and Singapore, the obliteration of Britain’s naval forces on the China Station, and the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse within a week of the outbreak of the Pacific War may have been events which were still to come but they were not unexpected by Britain’s admirals. They had always warned that the survival of Britain’s defensive position in the East depended upon the immediate dispatch of Britain’s main fleet to Singapore at the outset of hostilities – and that if the fleet that could be spared should prove unequal to its task, the British Empire would wither away. That is not to say that the United Kingdon always shrank away from war against the Japanese. There had been times – notably in December 1937, January 1938 and during the development of the Tientsin Crisis in the summer of 1939 – when Britain was exceedingly truculent and came within a hair’s breadth of responding to Japanese provocations by sending out the fleet, even though knowing full well that such a step would commit Britain to war.
On the whole, however, the general tendencies of British policy in the East throughout this period remained as they had been since the beginning of the China Incident. In his epigrammatic way, Sir Robert Vansittart, the former Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had voiced one strand of opinion quite succinctly in those days: ‘Our policy’, he said, ‘is to let the Chinese win the war for us, but without our help.’ To this the Deputy Director of Military Intelligence at the War Office had retorted, with some truth:
It would be more accurate probably to say, ‘let the Chinese prevent Japan from winning the war’. While this policy appears to have more chance of success than one of making an arrangement with Japan, it will invariably result, I should say, in our becoming heartily disliked by both parties.∗
The Burma Road affair was an occasion during which, in contrast to its handling of the Tientsin Dispute only a year before, Britain lacked any military means to act unilaterally in opposing the will of Japan. Britain’s resort to nothing more than parlour tricks in order to regain the upper hand on the Burma Road issue was admired, and it did gain Britain sufficient time to adjust to the calamitous events which had just taken place in Europe. But the Burma Road Crisis, and the stepped-up American economic pressure upon Japan which counterpointed it, also served notice upon the Government and people of the United States – and Japan – that prime responsibility for the continued maintenance of western influence in East Asia had now passed irretrievably to America.
Throughout these years, indeed, Japan had come increasingly to collide with the other Anglo-Saxon Power, the United States. The clash with the United States, which at first had seemed a passing incident of its China policy, swelled up until it came to dominate all Japan’s foreign relations. The need to free itself from American pressure in its plans for the future of East Asia became an obsession with Japan.
Japanese relations with the United States had been worsening for years. They had taken a steady decline from the days of the Russo-Japanese War, at which time the United States had been very sympathetic towards Japan, and relations had been cordial. In those distant days the United States had the characteristic of not always appearing to base its sentiments in foreign relations so solidly on self-interest as did the other Great Powers. It gave more play to national feelings in favouring and disfavouring countries. America was temperamentally drawn to the underdog; Japan seemed to be a small Goliath.
Afterwards, as we have seen, the relations became less good as Japan became a great naval Power and a target as well as an apparent threat to the United States Navy and those sectors of the American public which sought to extend American domination across the whole of the Pacific. Simultaneously, the American enactment of the Japanese Exclusion Act of 1924, which forbade Japanese emigration to the United States, pursued with the maximum resolution and the minimum regard to sparing Japan’s feelings, made Japan reconsider its sentiments towards the United States. To Japan, the United States had become the most insulting and insensitive of Great Powers, blocking Japan’s path to progress and compelling the country to devote exceptional energies to its effort to escape the forces which seemed to be propelling her towards a collision against twin millstones of American naval and economic might.
When the Manchurian Incident had occurred, the United States had quickly disclosed a policy which it was to follow with remarkable consistency (although the executive branch of the United States Government was not entirely able to overcome temptations to do otherwise). It would have nothing to do with the League of Nations or – except at a uselessly superficial level – with collective attempts at restraining Japan as an aggressor. That was ruled out by the overwhelming strength of American isolation and by the notorious clumsiness of American policy-making machinery. American opinion was behind isolation as the only way of preserving the United States from involvement in war: and it was fondly believed by many that in isolating itself, the United States was cutting itself off from the possibility of influencing the course of world affairs. Many enlightened Americans chafed at this and, often at cross-purposes with one another, involved themselves in international conversations which hopelessly confused and exasperated foreign governments. But it was accepted by most realist Americans that the United States had no alternative in the state to which it had been brought by the many-sided propaganda to which it was subjected.
The United States was unwilling to draw the conclusion from its inactivity that it would acquiesce in the map of the world being redrawn by force. It declared that it would never recognize changes which were being brought about by aggression. There was, it must be admitted, something slightly ridiculous in the spectacle of the United States refusing to recognize the facts brought about by war, but declining to do anything to prevent these changes. It was living in a fool’s paradise. But the policy was calculated to bear fruit in the future. By persistently refusing to recognize Japan’s coups in defiance of international law, but obstinately declining to regard Japan as ever succeeding in closing a door, by leaving open every issue for regulation in the future, and by resisting all efforts made by Japan to equate its actions with those which had been taken by other Powers, including the United States only a few decades before, the United States managed to undermine, with surprising success, Japan’s various steps at building its Empire and establishing its hegemony in adjacent territories.
The United States, however, was peculiarly self-distrustful. It had had, in the First World War, the experience of being drawn into the fighting partly, as it decided afterwards, against its better judgement. Probably, when the war was over, a majority of the people, if their opinion had been tested in a plebiscite, would have opined that the First World War was a mistake. If they had had a second chance, they would have kept out. They believed that America had been over-persuaded by subtle propaganda. And unmindful as they were of the difficult economic circumstances which afflicted their erstwhile allies, the Americans were deeply offended by the reluctance or refusal of those allies to repay wartime loans granted by American institutions and taxpayers. There was more than one way to become victimized by scheming foreigners. There were many in the United States who became intent on warning their fellow countrymen to beware of all plots to make America go further than the American people meant.
So, when the Second World War broke out, most Americans, though their sympathies were for the most part engaged against Hitler and his supporters, were firmly against American participation in the war. They were bent on saving the United States from itself. Just because they wished for Hitler’s defeat, they were suspicious that the United States would come under pressure to depart from its neutrality: they therefore sought to provide against American force being employed in his overthrow, and urged that the United States should not be officially engaged in war. They went to extraordinary lengths in devising laws which would tie up the American executive, and prevent it from drifting into war. Of the fetters by which the United States bound itself, the most remarkable were the successive Neutrality Acts: laws which aimed at prohibiting the United States from engaging in commerce with either of the belligerents which might involve the country in warlike attitudes. The Neutrality Acts had been passed by successive sessions of the United States Congress in the teeth of opposition by the administration. It was made possible by the American Constitution, which sharply separates the powers and responsibilities of the legislative and executive branches of the United States Government.
Because of this resolution to maintain the peace, because of the peculiar institutions by which the American resolve was enforced, Japan was for some years protected to a large extent from the consequences of its actions. The Neutrality Act was a product of the fear of war with Germany, but Japan derived benefit from it. There had never before in world history been such a strange case of a Great Power deliberately tying itself up, and ensuring that in no circumstances should it act as it would have been natural for it to do. The consequences, the ways that the United States responded to pressure from Japan, were curious. True, it was possible for the American administration to thwart in various ways the intentions of the American Congress, but the laws were rigid, and there were limits to the degree to which they could be transgressed.
One must not forget, however, that few modern nations are as politically volatile as the United States. Its elected officials are quick to follow the whims and fashions of a free but often xenophobic press, which itself is conscious of its need to balance its duty to inform an unsophisticated electorate with its duty to satisfy its advertisers and investors. In this government of the people, by the people and for the people, charismatic national figures with little knowledge of foreign affairs and party hacks with an inadequate grasp of the history of events, wield an uncommon control over generals, admirals and career civil servants, a control which is often undeflected by the weight of professional advice or experience. Given the extraordinary responsiveness of the United States Government to the political will of its people, it may have been as well that by passing the Neutrality Acts the American people effectively curbed for some years their own susceptibility to wild changes of mood and unproductive swings of political direction.
Throughout that time, some powerful American personalities and groups were warning the country that Japan on the march was a threat to the security of the United States. Each Japanese thrust – the rape of Manchuria, the rupture with the League of Nations, the war with China which had spread far and wide since 1937, the blowing of the wind in Japan of a revolutionary assertiveness – caused the warning to be louder. American opinion became troubled. It had reacted with little force to the beginning of the crisis in 1931 when Japan had seized Manchuria; ten years later, Japan’s moves were followed with tense interest by many people in the United States. At first the concern over Japan was largely regional, being found especially on the West Coast, which had trading connections with Asia. Eye-witness reports also began to filter back home from missionaries who told of their first-hand experience of the horrors of life in the Chinese war zones. Gradually concern become more widespread.
Fortifying this group of people who would have liked the United States to take an active role in Asia was the China lobby. This became for some years an influential pressure group in American politics. The active and practical minded found themselves in an open conspiracy to bring pressure to bear in Congress upon all matters in which Chinese interests were engaged. The curious thing was that in the United States this group was so intent and generated so much emotion. Other countries, Britain for example, had had sectional groups which, by the accident of their history, had been equally exposed to the lure of Chinese civilization, a force which habitually proved attractive to minds of a certain type. But a Chinese lobby, in the sense in which it was known in the United States, never operated in British politics.
Japan doubtless failed to give due weight to the importance of the China lobby in the United States. It always mistook American politics: that was one of its features. Japan had, it is true, some experts on the United States who were well-informed: but they were not attended to. Some Japanese, including men of considerable influence among those who made Japanese policies, believed, and acted on the principle, that the United States, whose soul was given up to commerce, could not prevail over a nation of Samurai warriors, whatever material advantages it seemed to possess. They misread American history. They took no account of the fact that, after the compromises and the prevarication of the democratic system, the United States had shown itself from time to time able to go to war, and to wage it with an obsessive stubbornness until its objectives were achieved.
As German soldiers posed for triumphant photographs in occupied Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and France (not to mention countries facing east), there seemed little chance that Hitler’s invasion of Britain would be long delayed. Clear-sighted observers tended to regard his complete conquest of the United Kingdom as a foregone conclusion.
Matsuoka Yōsuke was then the Foreign Minister of Japan. It was a critical period in Japan’s foreign relations; and he was a new and unusual man to handle them. He came from a different background from those who were normally appointed to that office. As an impressionable child of thirteen, he had emigrated to the United States with his family in 1893, when American prejudice against the yellow man was near its height. Seven years later, he graduated from the University of Oregon Law School as the twentieth century dawned. Within twenty years, he had returned to Japan and had risen to become secretary to the Prime Minister of his native land. Afterwards, he had made his reputation as a business executive, working for the South Manchurian Railway. He became a director of the Railway in 1920 and its Vice-President by 1927. In 1930 he had resigned from the Railway to enter a controversial period as the head of the Japanese delegation to the League of Nations. That culminated in the storm which erupted as he led his people out of the League during its condemnation of Japan over the Manchurian Incident. He returned to Japan where he basked in his national popularity and enjoyed a prosperous life as President of the South Manchurian Railway between 1935–9. Never one to shirk his duty as he saw it, however, he accepted Prince Konoye Fumimaro’s offer of the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in September 1940. It was a fateful decision.
By temperament Matsuoka was rather like the type of man who, in an earlier generation, had made the Meiji Restoration. He was abrupt, conceited, gauche, and impatient of the respect for old men which Japanese civilization, being partly Confucian, has usually shown. He was exaggeratedly westernized, or at least he had adopted wholeheartedly the characteristics which he and other Japanese thought to be the essence of western culture. At the same time, in keeping with his lifelong love-hate relationship with the English-speaking world of his youth, he was exaggeratedly xenophobic, and opposed to the limit what he saw as an increasingly dangerous Anglo-American conspiracy to encircle Japan as a step towards the consolidation of Anglo-American hegemony in East Asia.
He began his ministerial career by negotiating Japan’s adherence to a Triple Alliance with Germany and Italy. The Treaty, signed in September 1940, was subtly conceived. It was primarily directed against the United States: it was intended chiefly to immobilize the United States and to deter it from too active intervention in East Asia and in Germany’s wars in Europe. It stipulated that if any Power – and the United States was particularly intended – attacked one of the three signatories or, by giving economic aid, should threaten to affect adversely to them the conflict then taking place, the other two should come to its aid. The United States rightly interpreted this as an attempt to put fetters upon its freedom of action, and a Japanese withdrawal from the Pact became one of its demands upon Japan. Superficially, to the western democracies, the pact was aggressive: but on the whole, it was intended by the Japanese Government and the European Axis as a means to prevent the spread of war. In that sense, the Japanese and their European Allies regarded the Tripartite Agreement as defensive: it was therefore consistent with that view that Matsuoka and his followers interpreted the vociferous American condemnation of the pact as a proof that the ultimate purpose of United States policy was nothing less than to overthrow the New Orders in East Asia and in Europe by force of arms at a favourable opportunity.
Matsuoka conducted his foreign policy on the principle of sacro egoismo. In the spring of 1941, filled with this spirit, he made a tour of Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union. Before he went he had been in favour of committing Japan up to the hilt for Germany, giving it his warm support and leading it to suppose that it would have Japan’s military backing if it attacked Russia. He was convinced that Germany was the winning Power, and that only by being among Germany’s associates would Japan gain in the eventual share-out of the world at a peace settlement. He was restlessly aware that Japan could pluck great profit from the disorders of the world, and he feared that if it sat still it might fail to gain them. The world would have shaken itself to pieces – to no avail, if Japan did not set itself to win advantage from the outcome.
In his travels, Matsuoka was reassured by the Germans that Hitler harboured no intentions of attacking the Soviet Union: Berlin was not in the habit of confiding its innermost thoughts to its friends. When Matsuoka afterwards arrived in Moscow, therefore, the natural cynicism of this archetypal capitalist found the cynicism of Stalin irresistibly congenial. Conversation with him left Matsuoka convinced that Stalin was the wily man who would sit by Hitler’s grave, and was the statesman whose combinations of policy were the most impressive he had met. (Unfortunately, the extraordinary lengths to which Shigemitsu Mamoru, his sagacious Ambassador in London, went in efforts to persuade Matsuoka to visit Winston Churchill in war-torn Britain on the eve of the trip to Moscow were unavailing.) The meetings of Matsuoka and Stalin were especially fateful. They resulted in a genuine change of policy by Japan, one of the Great Powers of the world. Matsuoka, behind his front of self-assurance, proved more volatile than is usually the case with foreign ministers; and he was able to communicate his erratic intentions to the Japanese state. So impressed was Matsuoka with what he deemed to be Stalin’s superior power that he proposed that Japan and Russia should sign a Neutrality Treaty. Stalin, who was already alarmed at German intentions towards himself, and would in the coming days find Japanese neutrality a pearl beyond price, was much gratified, and closed with the offer at once: through his highly placed agents in Japan, Stalin knew that he could count upon the Japanese to keep their promises to him (as indeed they did). Matsuoka, for his part, chose to ignore the fact that the record of the Russians in keeping to treaties was somewhat poor.
Stalin played on the rather crude imagination of this brash man. When Matsuoka left Moscow, Stalin the oriental potentate surprised everyone by coming to the railway station to take farewell of him. Stalin hugged him, and used a phrase about their both being Asian which was taken to mean that, as a result of the western countries’ collective suicide in the war, the future hegemony, at least in Asia, belonged to Japan and Russia. Matsuoka was flattered.
The Neutrality Pact signed by Japan and Russia on 13 April 1941 caused surprise. It was one of the sensational events of the war. The Japanese Government, confronted with this astonishing decision by its Foreign Minister, had to take stock of the new position. Events – the dying down of tension on the Russo-Japanese border – had, it is true, been running in this direction; but it was a different matter for the Japanese Government to recognize that its antagonism to Russia, the most cherished and traditional part of its foreign policy, should be formally suspended. Previous diplomatic negotiations between Russia and Japan had been characterized by nit-picking over fine details, demands and counter-demands. There had been Russian claims concerning Sakhalin, disputes over offshore fishing rights, arguments over the boundaries of Mongolia. All of that was swept under the carpet: the Pact covered only the broadest of issues. In a joint declaration appended to the Treaty, the two countries even guaranteed to protect the status quo in Manchukuo and the People’s Republic of Mongolia. And most curious of all, no reference was made to the continuance or otherwise of Soviet aid to China. None of the real differences between the two countries had been resolved. Under these circumstances, the durability of this Treaty was probably understood by both sides to be less important than its general tone and moral effect. The truth of the matter is that the Russo-Japanese Non-Aggression Past had no real foundation except in mutual expedience.
There are in existence the minutes of the Liaison Conferences and the Imperial Conferences held during 1941, at which the new situation was exhaustively debated. These conferences were a unique feature of the Japanese Constitution. The Japanese Government had been so much split up, particularly the Service Ministries which had been freed from civilian control, that special conferences were needed to achieve the unanimity of conclusions which alone made the Japanese mode of government possible. The Liaison Conferences became the centre at which the vital decisions of policy were made: representing the Cabinet there were present the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Service Ministers and sometimes other key Ministers such as the Finance Minister and the Director of the Cabinet Planning Board; the fighting services were represented by the Chiefs and Vice-Chiefs of Staff of the Army and Navy. In support of them the Chief Secretary of the Cabinet, together with the Chiefs of the Military and Naval Affairs Bureaux of the respective defence ministries, acted as secretaries and ‘explainers’. General Mutō Akira, an enlightened and rather virtuous Chief of the Military Affairs Bureau whose ultimate fate was to be hanged as a war criminal by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, struggled to convey to that court some impression of what the Liaison Conferences were like: he spoke of the harmony that these comparatively informal meetings were expected to produce. After frank exchanges of views, compromises would be agreed so that both the rational development of government policy and the independent operational control of the services could be accommodated without any impairment caused by misunderstanding or crossed purposes. Mutō recalled that members sat in a circle around the Prime Minister:
There was no presiding officer, and every member spoke freely. And, therefore, at times there might be occasions when two men would start talking at the same time, for one member to be whispering to another while another one was speaking. Secretaries were constantly leaving and entering the room on such business as making telephone calls, to call in explainers, or to bring in documents.∗
The Imperial Conferences, which were held more rarely, were much more formal meetings of the Liaison Conference in the presence of the Emperor and the President of the Privy Council (who acted as a moderator): these were held when especially momentous decisions were being placed on record. The Emperor sat enthroned upon a dais in front of a gold screen while below him, ranged round a rectangular brocade-covered table, the members sat facing one another: the Prime Minister, followed in turn by the Foreign Minister, the War and Navy Ministers, other Cabinet Ministers in attendance, and then the Chiefs of Staff, would each read prepared statements. The President of the Privy Council would then direct questions to individual members.
[Each member] speaking at the Conference stood up in front of his chair and spoke, after bowing to His Majesty. During the Conference no one would enter or leave the conference room. Conferences were held in a very solemn manner.∗
The Emperor normally remained silent throughout the proceedings and afterwards gave its conclusions his sanction, which were tantamount to inscribing the outcome on tablets of stone, once and for all.
The notes of these meetings during 1941 are fascinating to read. They show the bewilderment of high Japanese officials at Matsuoka’s radical new policy – which was the virtual designation of Japan’s hereditary enemy, Russia, as the successor of Britain as the traditional friend of Japan. They show their constant confusion in the kaleidoscope of the contemporary world, always casting round for a dependable ally, always disappointed in the search. They reveal their experimentalism, which is very Japanese. The discussions took place under the urgent sense that at the time the world map was being re-made, and that a golden opportunity had arisen for Japan to share in the general loot – an opportunity which Japan, by its ineptitude, might lose.
The sense is conveyed that the Japanese were out of their depth (in fairness one must add that so were all the other great nations of the world, truth to tell). Here are generals, admirals and high diplomats ruthlessly planning how to further Japan’s interests at the expense of the rest of the world: and, though later it was found that this ruthlessness could bear heavy consequences, their deliberations occasionally seem oddly light-weight. The Governments of most other countries, however, fare no better when the records of their inner councils are examined under the historian’s microscope.
For the immediate period, the main preoccupation of the Japanese Government was to get rid of Matsuoka. Clearly some Ministers and officials felt embarrassed by this colleague, who spoke with such unaccustomed and uncomfortable directness, not taking advantage of the ambiguities and vagueness of the Japanese language. The Japanese are accustomed to convey their meaning by indirect hints and innuendoes, and the whole of life is in consequence strangely inexact, not as if they did not dare to face the truth but rather that they appreciated that life itself, whether a bed of roses or weeds, is far from cut and dried. In the case of Matsuoka, the Japanese dignitaries, already thinking of an enterprise which was so audacious that they hardly dared acknowledge it, were constantly embarrassed by a Foreign Minister who called a spade a spade.
This is not to imply that Matsuoka’s colleagues were reluctant to cut him to ribbons, even to the point of excoriating his recommendations in front of the Emperor: listen to what Hara Yoshimichi, President of the Privy Council, for instance, had to say on 19 September 1940, when Matsuoka sought approval from an Imperial Conference concerning the Tripartite Alliance which he had negotiated with Germany and Italy:
This Pact is a treaty of alliance with the United States as its target. Germany and Italy hope to prevent American entry into the European War by making this Pact public. Recently the United States had been acting as a watchdog in Eastern Asia in place of Great Britain. She had applied pressure to Japan, but she has probably been restraining herself in order to prevent Japan from joining Germany and Italy. But when Japan’s position becomes clear with the announcement of this Pact, she will greatly increase her pressure on us, she will greatly step up her aid to Chiang, and she will obstruct Japan’s war effort. I assume that the United States, which has not declared war on Germany and Italy, will put economic pressure on Japan without declaring war on us. She will probably ban the export of oil and iron, and will refuse to purchase goods from us. She will attempt to weaken us over the long term so that we will not be able to endure war. The Director of the [Cabinet] Planning Board has said that all available steps will be taken to obtain iron and oil, but the results are uncertain. Also, the Foreign Minister’s statement shows that we cannot obtain iron and oil right away, and that in any case the amount will be restricted. You cannot carry on a war without oil. The capital in Netherlands East Indies oil is British and American, and the Dutch Government has fled to England, so I think it will be impossible to obtain oil from the Netherlands East Indies by peaceful means. I would like to hear the Government’s views on this.∗
In reply, of course, Matsuoka robustly defended his policy. But the criticism which he endured made no difference anyway, for at the close of the Conference Hara was obliged by custom to give Matsuoka the ceremonial approval which was required.
So we see that Japan’s policy to ensure the neutrality of the United States and to end the China Incident on acceptable terms had two legs while Matsuoka directed the Japanese Foreign Ministry: the Tripartite Alliance and the Russo-Japanese Neutrality Pact which closed the back door to Japan. It was therefore inevitable that Matsuoka’s days in office were numbered once the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. In the end, to get rid of him, the Prime Minister Prince Konoye, and the whole Cabinet, had to resign; and it was thus reformed in July 1941 without him, but with a Foreign Minister who spoke the diplomatic language, and rescued his colleagues from contemplating too directly the stark realities of the world as it was being made by their policy. More significantly, it was hoped that the new man would give Japan a better chance of success in negotiating a successful compromise in the diplomatic negotiations underway with the United States.
During Matsuoka’s tenure as Foreign Minister, Japan had decisively altered course and set sail towards the Pacific War. Yet while the Tripartite Pact of September 1940 was his initiative and creation, the fundamental changes of direction sprang from circumstances that Japan either had nothing to do with or policies which it seemed only prudent to take in Japan’s self-interest. Among the most influential of the external factors affecting Japan’s perceptions of its opportunities was the success of the German spring offensive in 1940 leading to German mastery over the whole of Western Europe from Norway to the Pyrenees. And among the objectives which it seemed thoroughly rational for the Japanese Army to take at this juncture were the efforts which were made to establish Japanese military strength in French Indo-China so that Japan would be enabled to cut the Burma Road by force if necessary at the end of the Burma Road Agreement. Similar efforts were made by the Japanese Navy to ensure access to the natural resources of the South Seas. All of these objectives were supported by a wide cross-section of opinion in Japan.
By the summer of 1941, opinion in Japan had veered round to the view that Japan should strike south. No Japanese leader, military or civilian, truly believed that Japan could withstand a prolonged attack by the combined might of the British Empire and the United States, far less achieve total victory over the Allies in a struggle to the death. But the Japanese Government and people felt that they had little option but to take whatever steps were necessary to force the great Western democracies to accept the wisdom of leaving East Asia to attend to itself. Almost by definition that meant that sooner or later – and well-informed Japanese fervently hoped it would be sooner – Japan and the Western Powers would have to reach a negotiated settlement which would re-shape the political map of Greater East Asia and the Western Pacific. These ideas were by no means incompatible with Japan’s progressive steps towards a Southern Advance.
To the south lay the vastly rich resources of oil, tin, rubber and other valuable commodities. This was the area of colonies: British, Dutch, French and American. If it seized them, Japan could hope for three results. First, it would free itself from the economic pressure of the western countries, which had shown themselves ready to threaten Japan with strangulation by economic sanctions intended to control Japanese expansion. Second, by making deadly war on these Powers, if that became necessary, it would crush the last hopes of Chungking and make it sue for peace. And finally, if Japan’s western adversaries could be brought by successive shocks to acknowledge that the pursuit of victory over Japan made no sense in terms of western values, the Japanese would build up a new Greater Asia, a solid overseas buttress to the Japanese Empire which would guarantee future Japanese security and become the principal monument of the war. And there was the added advantage that Japan would no longer have to take account of the feeling of its Allies in Europe, whose influences had dangerously distorted the development of Japanese domestic politics over the years.
The birth of these new conceptions about Japan’s Southern Advance was guided by the plan being presented, not as a military operation or crude imperialist activity, but as being a beneficent, world-regenerating liberating force in the East which was to be called ‘The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’. It was to be a great enterprise, summoning under the protection of Japan the people of South-East Asia and of China, in which justice would reign and the needs of each would be promoted by what was done for the whole. The pride of Japan, the welfare of the world, would be satisfied in equal measure. The mixture of moral ideas, reinforced by a popular Confucianism, made a powerful appeal to the Japanese mood of the hour.
These ideas had been for some time in parturition. As early as 1938, as we have seen, Prince Konoye had proclaimed solemnly that the aim of the China Incident was not to conquer China but to win its cooperation. Looking at East Asia, seeing it threatened by Communism, he said that Japan hankered after a ‘New Era’ in the territory: a ‘New Order’ marked by harmony, universal cooperation, and, it was taken for granted, by the benevolent, organizing presence of Japan. Individualism, materialism, the power struggle, everything to do with Communism, were to be ruled out.
The ideas fructified in the next years: and as European imperial Powers all appeared to be toppling one by one, Japanese ideologues, economists and military strategists adapted, and came to apply, the ideas to a steadily widening territory. The ‘New Order’ was enlarged into the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’. In this the countries of Asia would reorientate, even reconstruct, their economic relationships for their common good, escape from western domination, and be governed by what were thought of as essentially the ideas of eastern civilization. This meant an end to the long night in Asia during which western ideas had prevailed. It meant that an end would be put especially to everything which favoured Anglo-American ideas and the British and American business presence. Reflecting as it did the aspirations of all the peoples of East Asia for independence from the West, it was to be an essentially cooperative movement. Naturally, given the circumstances of the day, East Asia would find itself for an indefinite period of time under strong Japanese leadership if not hegemony, perhaps in a closely linked federation of East Asian states; and everyone who accepted the ‘New Order’ more or less accepted this. It was marked by a recognition of the arrangements which Japan had organized, such as the quasi-state of Manchukuo, and the special zone of close Sino-Japanese collaboration.
One of the fascinating things learnt about the war by inquiries afterwards is the butterfly-mindedness of many of the imperialists in Tokyo. They were not dogged, implacable men, tied down to a single idea. They were resilient and receptive. Contrary to the general opinion, they did not make their plans far ahead, and in pursuit of short-term gains they were not unwilling to shift the immediate object of their enterprises and to change the details. So, in 1941, there took place the great movement which determined the course of the war: the shift of mental concentration from a land campaign against Russia, with armies locked together to see which would prevail, to a sea strategy, a joint operation of Army and Navy, which should have as its object the putting of western imperialism to its death, and which would be directed against the Anglo-Saxon Powers, not against the Soviet Union.
In 1941 the decision was not taken: what had happened was that the willingness had appeared to take a decision when a great crisis should happen. A great mental revolution was lived through. New possibilities were envisaged and welcomed by many but not by all. Emperor Hirohito summed up his understanding of the deep divisions of opinion that existed within the Government and Japanese High Command:
Premier Konoye seems to consider that the China Incident will not be settled easily, and favours advancing to the South at the cost of [a] reduction of the occupation area of China. In other words, he seems to be trying to divert the people’s dissatisfaction, arising from the unsuccessful China Incident, to the South. The Army seems intending to advance to the South upon a good opportunity, leaving the China Incident as it is now. The Navy’s opinion seems to be that unless the China Incident is settled first, we should not resort to force in the South.∗
In the end the Government dithered but more or less came down on the side of the Army.
The Japanese people responded to this policy. Quite honestly and sincerely, many saw themselves, in opposing western activity in Asia, as emancipators fighting a battle against the dead hand of old-fashioned imperialism. They genuinely believed that the Japanese Government was altruistic, and that the Asian people, who objected to being saved by Japan, were simply misguided. There was little need for propaganda to prepare Japan for the war which it was risking with the United States. If ever a people has gone to war thinking it a just war, if ever a war has been thoroughly popular, so it was to be in 1941. There was little trace of an elaborate misleading of the people, save in estimations of Japan’s slim chances of victory. In this, as in so much else, there were parallels between the thoughts of those who held power in London, in Paris and in Tokyo.
Having taken for granted the addition of Manchukuo and China Proper within its compass, which already stretched from Korea and Karafuto to Taiwan, the next territory which Japan was tempted to bring in to the Co-Prosperity Sphere was Indo-China. Its Government had been left helpless by the collapse of France. The only Power to which it could have looked for aid was Britain, but Britain, especially since Dakar, had become the enemy of France. Siam, now called Thailand by the Pan-Asian zealots who seized power there from elements who had been well disposed towards western countries, was incited to present ultimatums to France. Throughout 1940 and 1941, Japan was able to extract larger and larger concessions from French Indo-China for not swallowing it up entirely. By 1941 it had reduced the northern part of Indo-China to a protectorate; presently Japanese garrisons were admitted to the key areas further south; they came to occupy the centres from which they could strike at Malaya, Borneo and the Philippines.
Japan pressed on with this new policy regardless of the fact that on 22 June 1941 a separate war started between Russia and Germany. The German attack on Russia certainly did not take Japan completely by surprise; but Germany, in this as in several other matters of great consequence to Japan, acted without any consultation with the country which, since signing the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936 and the Tripartite Pact of September 1940, was formally its ally. Seldom had an alliance been operated by a country with quite such painful, humiliating lack of confidential deliberation (although in fact Germany’s disdainful treatment of Italy was just as bad). Apart from the psychological and political shock which news of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union produced in Japan, the Japanese had not made sufficient military provision to enable them to enter such a war at that time. Proper mobilization against the Soviet Union would have taken time and, as Kido Kōichi pointedly told American interrogators after the war, ‘if these preparations built up to a certain necessary point, it would [have] become a winter campaign for which Japan was not prepared’. Moreover, there was some doubt as to whether there was anything to be gained by redeploying Japanese forces for an offensive against the Soviet Union: ‘The Germans were constantly informing the people here that the war against Russia could be completed within a very short time – a matter of three months or so.’∗
Germany now began to press Japan to throw in its forces against the Soviet Union. It had previously indicated to Japanese diplomats, in boastful language, that should it at any time attack the Soviet Union, the campaign would be largely a police operation since Russian resistance would be swiftly overcome. The Japanese Government was inclined now to wait and see. The Kwantung Army, bogged down in China, was not in a mood to venture further afield without the prospect of specific advantage in the overriding aim of bringing China to its knees. Moreover, the pull of the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was now being strongly felt. In South Asia its opportunity and its natural sphere seemed to lie.