A World at Arms (52 page)

What could the Germans do to prevent any agreement that would be, they thought, so detrimental to them? They could try to make faithfulness to Germany and Italy appear as attractive as possible to Japan. The early months of 1941 therefore saw a series of directives and moves to assist Japan with intelligence, details on their own weapons, and other practical aspects of warfare.
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Since the Germans would not tell the Japanese that they were about to attack the Soviet Union, and only gave them hints that things were not going well in German–Soviet relations–hints which some in Japan understood–the next major German move had to come after the attack had been launched.
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Hitler had originally
not
wanted Japan to participate in the war against Russia. His view was that Japan, already involved in a conflict with China, could best help by attacking to the south; in fact, he repeatedly explained that making this possible for Japan was a major benefit Germany would derive from attacking the Soviet Union.
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Only if Japan
decided
not
to attack in the south was there a German interest in having her attack the Soviet Union instead. Such an action would bring Japan into the war by the back–door because it would commit her to open hostilities against one of the countries with which Germany was fighting. The Germans were confident of finishing off the Soviet Union on their own–it was precisely when they were most certain of quick victory in the East that Hitler urged Japan to join in the fray. By getting her committed in this fashion, however, the Germans would circumvent the effects of any Japanese–United States agreement, which would necessarily presuppose Japan’s abandoning a move south.
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This effort to draw Japan into the war by the back–door proved both futile and unnecessary. The reaction in Tokyo to the German attack on the Soviet Union was quite different from what the Germans had expected. Even before the German invasion the Japanese had already decided to enter the war through the front door, and the German action and alternative proposal only led them, after brief consideration, to adhere all the more firmly to their prior decision for war against Great Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States.

The definitive Japanese decision to shift from concentrating on war with China to war against the Western Powers came in early June 1941. The hinge of decision was the shift from occupying
northern
French Indo-China, which was part of the war against China because that country could then be blockaded more effectively, to occupying
southern
Indo-China, which pointed in the opposite direction, that is, to war against the British and Dutch to the south and against the Americans in the Philippines and on the Pacific flank of the southern advance. Pressure to take this step had been building in Japanese government and military circles for months.
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A Liaison Conference on December 12, 1940, had considered the move but without examining the danger and repercussions.
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On May 22, 1941, the issues were again discussed; Foreign Minister Matsuoka spoke so extravagantly that the minutes record Navy Minister Oikawa Koshiro asking whether he was sane.
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In early June, 1941, the issue came into final focus. The Liaison Conferences of June 12 and 16 decided in favor of the move into South Indo-China, first with diplomatic pressure and then with troops, and in the clear recognition that this move was looking toward war not only with the British and Netherlands but also with the United States.
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Hardly had this been agreed to when the German invasion of the Soviet Union reopened the issue for at least one key figure, Matsuoka. He now suddenly reversed his earlier advocacy of a push south, shielded by the pact with the Soviet Union which he had himself brought home in triumph two months before, and insisted instead that the sequence
of wars should be reversed. Japan should now strike against the Soviet Union first and then head south. In a few anxious days in Tokyo, these issues were debated in a series of conferences in which the original choice for war with Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States was reaffirmed. There was no time to build up the needed forces in Manchuria for a push into the Soviet Far Eastern provinces since the troops in China had to remain there. An attack on the Soviet Union could therefore be made only if it were obvious that that country was in a state of total collapse. Army and navy leaders agreed with Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro that priority had to be given to the war against Britain and the United States. The way to reaffirm this was to have the Cabinet resign and then reform without Matsuoka. There would be no attack on Russia; South Indo-China would be occupied; and Japan anticipated going to war with Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States.
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There were those in the Japanese government who opposed the suicidal policy of going to war alongside Germany. The ambassador to Germany, Kurusu, had warned his government about the way the war was really going on February 14, 1941 ;
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he had been replaced by General Oshima who could not wait for Japan to get in. The ambassador to the United States, Nomura Kichisaburo, warned Matsuoka’s replacement, Toyoda Teiijiro, on July 19 about aligning Japan with a country “in which a popped up revolutionary tries a great adventure.”
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In the Liaison Conferences, only Minister of Commerce and Industry Kobayashi Ichizo pointed to the likelihood of a Japanese defeat because Japan lacked the resources for a great war (he had obviously done more in the Netherlands East Indies than eat birds’ nests; he had learned something).
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The Lord Privy Seal, Marquis Kido Koichi made the same point in detail to Konoe on August 7, also stressing a point so obvious that others had overlooked it to Japan’s vast disadvantage: if Japan seized the Netherlands East Indies and got into a war with the United States, the oil from the wells in the Indies, after these had been repaired, would still have to be shipped to Japan, which would then be vulnerable to blockade by submarines and planes.
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The self-evident point that conquest would not move the oil wells from Borneo or Sumatra to the Japanese home islands (any more that it would move the rubber plantations or tin mines there) had apparently not occurred to anyone else in Tokyo; it was not about to hold them back now. The Japanese navy, hitherto skeptical, was pushing for war with the United States, preferably soon, and took this view well
before
there was any American oil embargo. The Japanese naval attaché in Washington, who was well informed and warned against this policy, was disregarded like all the others.

It was decided that the conversations with the United States would continue, but even during these negotiations the occupation of South Indo-China went forward.
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The talks with the French began on July 12 and were concluded on July 22; the Vichy authorities had just fought long and hard for Syria but agreed to the Japanese occupation without firing a shot. Now the Japanese military could prepare the next steps, which would be the use of force against Britain, the Netherlands East Indies, and the United States, in earnest.
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While those preparations, which will be reviewed below, were in progress, there could still be talks in Washington in case the United States was prepared to give in on everything. As the Chief of the Bureau of Military Affairs explained it, “Japan must be guaranteed freedom of control in the Greater Far East sphere, both in relation to its security and defense and in relation to future expansion.”
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If the Americans would accept all prior Japanese conquests and also help her future expansion, they might be allowed to live in peace.

The American government observed these developments with great anxiety. The shipping war in the Atlantic was drawing more and more attention, and now there would need to be aid to the Soviet Union as well as Britain. The fact that the Tokyo government had decided not to attack the Soviet Union was known in Washington by July 3.
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The key issue now was whether Japan, as Washington feared, would move south. Japanese diplomats alternately denied and affirmed that the Japanese were about to move into South Indo-China, and the American government made a last-ditch effort to urge them not to. Washington tried both the stick and the carrot; the Japanese were warned of the dangerous repercussions of such a move, and Roosevelt personally promised economic commitments if they agreed to neutralize the area.
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The Japanese government was uninterested then as it was subsequently in receiving oil from the United States and its other potential victims if such deliveries were at the cost of giving up the South Indo-China base for attacking them. They had long thought it likely that there would be a complete embargo on petroleum.
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This possibility was now raised in the administration in Washington. The President did not want to do this as he was concerned that such a measure would push the Japanese even further forward when freezing their assets and controlling their oil purchases on a continuing basis might restrain them more effectively. The application of the July 1941 freezing order by the Foreign Funds Control Committee made it into an embargo in effect, and thereby kept the Japanese from buying oil to stockpile for an attack on the United States.
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Roosevelt still hoped that the new proposals he was making to
Nomura would get the Japanese to hold back, but he proved to be mistaken.
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Against the possibility that Japan was still determined to go ahead, the American government tried yet another way to get them to reconsider. United States contingency planning for any war in the Pacific with Japan, the so-called Orange Plan, had always presupposed that it would be impossible to defend the Philippines, an assumption reinforced by the Tydings-McDuffy Act of 1936, which called for independence for the islands in 1944 and the withdrawal of the last American forces in 1946. Only following a defeat of Japan in a war brought across the Pacific by the United States navy could the islands be freed from Japanese occupation. Former U.S. army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur had gone to the Philippines to help the Commonwealth government begin to build up its own defense for the day of independence. Now, on July 26, 1941, MacArthur was recalled to active duty and the United States War Department began to build up his forces, especially with the supposedly so useful B-17s in order to deter a Japanese attack. Perhaps the time gained by negotiations between Washington and Tokyo could be used to strengthen the islands to such an extent as to make a Japanese attack on them appear too risky and a Japanese move south which avoided them as also too dangerous in the eyes of policy makers in Japan.
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All these projects, including the continuing negotiations in Washington, made no real difference because those in Tokyo had already decided to go to war. There would be all sorts of talks, including a project for Konoe to meet Roosevelt in person,
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but on the central issues the Japanese had made up their minds. They did not intend to attack the Soviet Union, and the continuing fighting on the Eastern Front served to reinforce this determination. Perhaps on the basis of their own prior bloody defeats at the hands of the Red Army, perhaps depressed by a spectacular Soviet sabotage operation in Manchuria on August 2, 1941,
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the Japanese recognized quite early that the Soviet Union would not collapse.
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From this, they drew two conclusions: that they themselves had best move south while the Soviet Union was still pre-occupied with fighting the Germans, and that it would be a good idea if the Germans thought seriously of making peace with the Soviet Union so that both Germany and Japan could concentrate their forces on fighting their most important and most dangerous enemies, Britain and the United States.
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The Germans neither then nor in subsequent years listened to this Japanese advice, but its thrust was always clear: war against the Western Powers had the highest priority in Tokyo. What
the Japanese wanted and received from Moscow was an assurance that her enemies, in particular the United States, would not be allowed bases in the Far Eastern portion of the Soviet Union.
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Reviewing the situation in a series of meetings between August 16 and September 6, 1941, the Japanese decided to go forward with war. They would seize Southeast Asia, talking with the United States but going to war with her if she did not give in on all points. The sooner war came once the Japanese army and navy were ready, the better. Germany and Italy were likely to come in on Japan’s side while the Soviet Union could not move against her when engaged in bitter fighting with Germany. The expectation was that in the early stages of war Japan would win great victories and that there would then be a stalemate and a new peace acknowledging her gains. All the key figures, including the Prime Minister, the army and the navy, were in agreement. Only Emperor Hirohito had doubts, but in the face of unanimous advice, he could only assent.
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Because of the insistence of the United States government on continuing negotiations and the desire of the Japanese ambassador in the United States (who was not informed about his government’s intention) to do so also, the authorities in Tokyo had to reexamine the issues several times in October and November, always coming back to the same conclusion: now was the time to fight. In the process, Konoe became tired of the discussion of a policy he had himself launched and was replaced by War Minister Tojo Hideki, but there was no inclination within the government to reverse the course for war.
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The new Foreign Minister, Togo Shigenori, and Finance Minister Kaya Okinori had doubts but were overridden by the others. The Japanese would demand control of Southeast Asia, the end of American aid to Chiang Kai-shek and guarantee of American oil deliveries with more demands to come if these were accepted. War would come in early December, and once the Western Powers had been defeated, Japan would attack the Soviet Union. Germany and Italy would be asked to join in. With all at the end of the discussions again in agreement, the Emperor’s plaintive asking of questions (probably inspired by Kido), such as how could Japan justify invading Thailand and how would Japan cope with airplane and submarine attacks on oil transports, were brushed aside. The course was set for war.
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