Pearl Harbor (5 page)

Roosevelt felt he had to take some action, so on July 26, 1940, he agreed to a limited embargo on the export of high-octane aviation gasoline and premium grades of iron and steel. Both Stimson and Ickes felt the limited embargo did not go far enough. They wanted a ban on all gasoline, but FDR preferred a go-slow approach, saying that he wanted “to slip the noose around Japan's neck, and give it a jerk now and then.”
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The two nations were trapped in a cycle of escalation. Japan responded to the limited embargo by occupying the northern portion of Indochina. In September, Roosevelt upped the ante by signing an order banning the export of all iron and steel. He also announced a $100 million loan to China on September 27. Two days later, Japan countered by signing a treaty with Germany and Italy, the so-called Tripartite Pact, in which the three nations pledged to come to one another's help in the event of an attack “by a power not already engaged in war.” Japan designed the treaty to prevent the United States from either aiding Britain in its battle against Germany or opposing its plans to dominate Asia.
Japan hoped that the threat of a two-front war would deter the United States from taking further steps toward confrontation.
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Yet despite Japanese escalation throughout the winter and spring of 1940–1941, FDR largely left the problems in the Pacific on the back burner. Although he liked to think of himself as his own secretary of state, he allowed his foreign policy team to deal with the Japan problem. His civilian and military advisers, however, were deeply divided. Administration hawks continued to press for an embargo on all oil shipments, not just the high-octane oil needed for airplanes. Some military leaders urged caution, warning that cutting off oil would only force Japan to seek it somewhere else, possibly threatening the Dutch East Indies, Burma, and even the Philippines. More worrisome, the military realized that the United States was not prepared to fight a war in Asia and feared a confrontation would drain needed armaments from the European theater.
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Roosevelt wanted to buy time. In early 1941 Tokyo replaced its ambassador to the United States with Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, an advocate of improved relations with America. Roosevelt welcomed the appointment, received Nomura cordially, and made a personal appeal for peace. “There is plenty of room in the Pacific area for everybody,” he reasoned. “It would not do this country any good nor Japan any good, but both of them harm to get into war.”
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Roosevelt suggested that Nomura sit down with Secretary of State Cordell Hull to see how relations could be improved. Hull, a courtly former distinguished senator from Tennessee, had served as FDR's secretary of state since 1933. Tall and thin, with a thatch of white hair, Hull was seventy-one years old, but looked even older. Weakened by the spread of tuberculosis, his health was already failing. The president often bypassed Hull on critical decisions, relying instead on trusted surrogates to conduct his foreign policy. Hull complained to colleagues about “that man across the street who never tells me anything.” FDR hired Hull to sell his foreign policy to Congress, not to make it. While praising Hull publicly, FDR privately dismissed him as “gloomy, sanctimonious,
and unimaginative.” Hull's lisp—he had difficulty pronouncing the
cr
sound—was a source of amusement for the president. “If Cordell says, ‘Oh Chwrist' again I'm going to scream,” FDR whispered to Frances Perkins. “I can't stand profanity with a lisp.”
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Despite meeting fifty times over the next nine months, Hull and Nomura made no progress. Hull, who showed little patience or respect for Japan or its envoys, was convinced that negotiations would do little to slow the drive toward war. Japan, he later told the Joint Congressional Committee investigating the attack on Pearl Harbor, “had a long record of duplicity in international dealings.” He once referred to Tokyo's envoys as “pissants.” Japan had embarked on “a mission of conquest of the entire Pacific,” he claimed. Since Japan was closely tied to Germany, Hull deemed its leaders dishonest and unreliable. Revealing a well-earned reputation for being stubborn and inflexible, he insisted that Japan remove all troops from China and Indochina, renounce its ties to the Axis powers of Germany and Italy, and abandon its strategy of using force to create a sphere of influence in the Pacific.
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While engaged in negotiations with the United States, Japan continued its aggression, sending 125,000 troops into southern Indochina. FDR hoped to avoid a confrontation with Tokyo, but he did not want their belligerence to go unpunished, so he chose to give the noose another “jerk.” On July 26, 1941, Roosevelt signed an order requiring the Japanese to apply for an export license before each shipment of oil and gasoline. FDR, however, made it clear that he planned to continue the shipments; he just needed to send a strong signal to Japan that it was in danger of losing these vital resources if it continued its aggression. He tried to tighten the noose, but not so much that it left him with no further options. When asked specifically by the Treasury Department about how to handle Japanese requests for petroleum, FDR responded that he was “inclined to grant the licenses for shipment as the applications are presented.”
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In this case, however, bureaucratic confusion resulted in a misdirected policy. After issuing the order, FDR left town for a secret meeting with
British prime minister Winston Churchill off the coast of Newfoundland. While he was away, a subcommittee chaired by Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson had the final authority to make decisions about the export licenses. In Roosevelt's absence, Acheson unilaterally made the decision, in clear contradiction of the president's orders, to freeze all exports, including oil. With typical arrogance, Acheson said his action would not provoke war in the Pacific, because “no rational Japanese could believe that an attack on us could result in anything but disaster for his country.”
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FDR learned of the export freeze only when he returned to Washington on August 17. He chose to let it stand, even though it ran contrary to his original order. Roosevelt probably worried that reversing the policy would be perceived as appeasement. By the fall of 1941, American attitudes toward Japan had hardened. A survey in September showed that 67 percent of Americans were willing to risk war with Japan. Now that Japan and Germany were linked, would appeasement of Japan be perceived as weakness toward Germany? At the same time, the Chinese were pressuring FDR to maintain the tough line.
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The embargo shocked the Japanese and reminded them of their economic vulnerability. The action increased the power of hawks who called for dramatic action. One Japanese leader remarked that the nation was “like a fish in a pond from which the water was gradually being drained away.” For now, Tokyo enjoyed naval superiority in the Pacific, but how long would that last, given the naval buildup that Congress had authorized the previous year? The emperor gave Prime Minister Konoye a month to negotiate an end to the embargo. Konoye, who desperately wanted to avoid war, pleaded for a private meeting with FDR. His request was turned down. Hull later claimed that Roosevelt refused the request, but most likely the president was simply consumed with events in Europe.
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FDR was also distracted during this critical period by a great personal loss. On September 7, his mother passed away after a short illness. Eleanor had called Franklin from Hyde Park on September 5 to
tell him that Sara was very sick and that he needed to come immediately. Despite the pressing problems in Washington, he boarded an overnight train, arriving at Hyde Park the following morning. He spent all day by her side and she seemed to improve, but that evening she slipped into a coma. Franklin stayed with her through the night and into the next morning when, near noon, two weeks before her eighty-seventh birthday, Sara passed away.
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A grief-stricken FDR went into seclusion at Hyde Park for days. The
New York Times
reported that he “shut himself off from the world more completely than at any time since he assumed his present post.” A few days later, while sorting through his mother's belongings with his secretary Grace Tully, he discovered a box that Sara had carefully tucked away containing a lock of his hair, toys, and other items from his childhood. As tears started pouring down his face, he asked Tully for a private moment. It was the only time that anyone had ever seen FDR cry.
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When he returned to Washington, the president hoped to send a signal to Japan that he was still open to negotiations. He wanted to avoid precipitating a war with Japan while the situation in Europe remained so precarious. What he really needed to know was: What was Japan's motive? Were they determined to continue their conquest, or was it possible to at least slow down their advance and achieve some temporary truce? At the very least, Roosevelt needed time to build up forces in the Philippines, which had been an American protectorate since the Spanish-American War. According to both European and Asian intelligence, Germany was pressuring Japan to fulfill its obligations under the Tripartite Pact and force both the Americans and the British to transfer valuable resources to the Pacific theater.
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Unable to reach an agreement to end the embargo, Konoye resigned his post on October 16 and was replaced by the hard-line war minister General Hideki Tojo. “I am a bit worried over the Japanese situation,” Roosevelt wrote King George VI on the day Konoye resigned. “The Emperor is for peace, I think, but the Jingoes are trying to force his hand.” He had reason to be worried. Tojo told the Japanese privy council
that “a policy of patience and perseverance was tantamount to self-annihilation.” Japanese leaders agreed that negotiations with the United States would continue until November 25. If no settlement could be reached, Japan would likely resort to war.

In early November, the Japanese government announced that it was sending a special peace envoy, Saburo Kurusu, to Washington. At the weekly cabinet meeting, Hull warned that “relations had become extremely critical and that we should be on the outlook for an attack by Japan at any time.” The cabinet was unanimous in its belief that the American people would support going to war if Japan attacked British or Dutch possessions in Asia. FDR seemed less convinced. He understood that war with Japan was likely, but he hoped that peace negotiations between the two nations could, at the very least, delay hostilities until a time when the United States was in a better military position to fight a two-front war. Although Hull held out little hope of finding a peaceful settlement, Roosevelt instructed him to keep the talks going as a means of preventing conflict. “Do not let the talks deteriorate,” he told his secretary of state. “Let us make no more of ill will. Let us do nothing to precipitate a crisis.”

Official peace talks commenced on November 10 and continued over the next eleven days. There was little hope of any breakthrough in the discussions. Hull was rigid and patronizing to Japan's envoys. He was less interested in the details of the discussion, instead using the occasions to lecture his counterparts on the importance of moral principles. It did not help that Hull had a mild speech impediment, while Nomura, who insisted on holding the discussions in English without a translator, was partially deaf.
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Once again, Roosevelt was distracted at a critical time in the process. On November 15, John L. Lewis, the fiery head of the United Mine Workers, ordered a strike that paralyzed the entire steel industry and threatened FDR's rearmament plans. Although generally sympathetic to organized labor, FDR eventually took a hard line, threatening to send in troops if the miners did not return to work. On November 22, Lewis
backed down, agreed to compulsory arbitration, and ended the strike. The whole affair consumed the president's energy and attention at a time when he could least afford it.

Two days earlier, on November 20—Thanksgiving Day—the Japanese representatives made their “final effort” at averting war. The proposal called for a six-month cooling-off period that would return relations to what they were before the embargo. In return for an end to the oil embargo, Japan would agree to no further expansion. But Japan refused to end its occupation of China, which had been a key stumbling block. In Hull's mind, to accept the Japanese proposal was “unthinkable.” “It would have made the United States an ally of Japan and Japan's program of conquest and aggression and of collaboration with Hitler. It would have meant yielding to the Japanese demand that the United States abandon its principles and policies. It would have meant abject surrender of our position under intimidation,” he told the Joint Congressional Committee.
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Roosevelt continued to search for a compromise. He seized on the idea of a modus vivendi in which the two nations would make mutual pledges that their policies were directed toward peace. The United States would also make a major concession. Instead of making Japanese withdrawal of China a precondition of any agreement, it would simply state that the conflict between Japan and China be “based upon the principles of peace, law, order, and justice.” The agreement would remain in force for three months. At the very least, it would delay what almost everyone saw as the inevitable.
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Roosevelt scribbled out the main points of the compromise on a piece of paper and gave it to Hull. But his conciliatory response never made it back to the Japanese. It ran into strong opposition from the hawks in his cabinet and from America's allies.
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On November 26, Hull issued the formal response to the Japanese, sticking close to his hard line. He informed the envoys that the U.S. oil embargo would continue and demanded that Japan “withdraw all military, naval, air and police forces from China and from Indochina.”
The note omitted any reference to a truce or to the conciliatory language that FDR had initially suggested.