Roosevelt (29 page)

“Can’t we make it December 1?” asked Tojo. “Can’t you allow diplomatic negotiations to go for even one day more?”

“Absolutely not,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Tsukada said. “We absolutely can’t go beyond November 30. Absolutely not.”

“Mr. Tsukada,” asked Shimada, “until what time on the 30th? It will be all right until midnight, won’t it?”

“It will be all right until midnight.”

Thus, as the army records of this session noted, a decision was made for war; the time for its commencement was set for the beginning of December; diplomacy was allowed to continue until midnight, November 30; and if diplomacy was successful by then,
war would be called off. The conference then debated two alternative proposals for negotiation. The crucial point of Proposal A was that Japanese troops could be stationed in strategic areas of China until 1966. Proposal B would largely restore the
status quo ante
the July freeze: the two nations would undertake not to advance by force in Southeast Asia or the South Pacific; Japanese troops in Indochina would move to the northern part of the country; the United States would help Japan obtain resources in the Dutch East Indies and would supply annually a million tons of oil; the United States would not obstruct “settlement of the China incident.” The military preferred A because it posed the crucial question of China and would settle it quickly one way or the other—but fearing that Tojo might resign and topple the whole Cabinet, they agreed also to support the broader, but hardly less severe, terms of B.

On November 5 Tojo presented this consensus to an imperial conference at the palace. All agreed that if the diplomats could not settle matters by December 1, Japan would go to war regardless of the state of negotiations at that time. The Emperor had nothing to offer on this occasion—not even verse.

It was another major step toward war, but the Japanese were still following their two-pronged approach. Nomura continued his discussions with Roosevelt and Hull and continued to receive sermons of peace, stability, and order in the Pacific. Roosevelt was still playing for time, but Hull’s rigidity on principle was hardening as a result of
MAGIC
intercepts of Japanese coded messages indicating the dominance of the military and its timetable. Each side was now looking to its allies. Japan, which had edged away from Berlin as the Wehrmacht slowed in Russia, was now drawing closer to its partner in case of need. Hull told Nomura that he might be lynched if he made an agreement with Japan while Tokyo had a definite obligation to Germany.

The paramount issue was still China. When Nomura came back to the White House on November 17, this time with Saburo Kurusu, who had come from Tokyo as special ambassador to expedite the discussions, Roosevelt again urged the withdrawal of Japanese troops from China; once the basic questions were settled, he said, he would be glad to “introduce” Japan and China to each other to settle the details. After Kurusu failed to budge on this question Roosevelt retreated to homilies; there were no long-term differences preventing agreement, he said.

Empty words. It was becoming increasingly clear that there were few misunderstandings between the two countries, only differences. Despite much confusion the two governments understood each other only too well. Their interests diverged. They could not agree.
When the Tokyo diplomats in desperation presented Proposal B, now softened a bit but still providing an end to American aid to China, Hull dismissed the contents as “of so preposterous a character that no responsible American official could ever have accepted them”—even though Tokyo meant them only as a stopgap, and Stark and Marshall found them acceptable as a way to stave off war.

Word arrived from Chungking that Chiang was completely dependent on American support and was agitated about reports of temporizing in Washington.

Undaunted, Roosevelt by now was working up a truce offer of his own. Around the seventeenth he had penciled a note to Hull:

6 Months

1. U.S. to resume economic relations—some oil and rice now—more later.

2. Japan to send no more troops to Indo-China or Manchurian border or any place south (Dutch, Brit, or Siam).

3. Japan to agree not to invoke tripartite pact if U.S. gets into European war.

4. U.S. to
introduce
Japs to China to talk things over but U.S. take no part in their conversations. Later on Pacific agreements.

This was Roosevelt’s most ambitious specific truce formula in the dying days of peace, and its short life and early death summed up the intractable situation. Hull combined Roosevelt’s plan with other proposals, American and Japanese, and cut the period to three months. On the twenty-second a message from Tokyo to Nomura and Kurusu was intercepted; it warned that in a week “things are automatically going to happen.” Cabling Churchill the essence of the American proposal, Roosevelt added that its fate was really a matter of internal Japanese politics. “I am not very hopeful and we must all be prepared for real trouble, possibly soon.” On the same day the Chinese Ambassador, Dr. Hu Shih, objected vigorously to letting Tokyo keep 25,000 men in northern Indochina. Chiang was wondering, he said, whether Washington was trying to appease Japan at the expense of China. The Dutch and the Australians were dubious about concessions.

Churchill was worried, too. “…Of course, it is for you to handle the business,” he cabled to Roosevelt, “and we certainly do not want an additional war. There is only one point that disquiets us. What about Chiang Kai-shek? Is he not having a very thin diet? Our anxiety is about China.” If it collapsed, their joint dangers would enormously increase. “We are sure that the regard of the United States for the Chinese cause will govern your action. We feel that the Japanese are most unsure of themselves.” Perhaps Roosevelt would have persevered. But on the morning of the twenty-sixth Stimson telephoned him an intelligence report of Japanese troop movements heading south of Formosa.

December 2,1941, Rollin Kirby, reprinted by permission of the New York
Post

The President fairly blew up—“jumped up into the air, so to speak,” Stimson noted in his diary. To the President this changed the whole situation, because “it was evidence of bad faith on the part of the Japanese that while they were negotiating for an entire truce—an entire withdrawal (from China)—they should be sending their expedition down there to Indo-China.” Roosevelt’s truce formula died that day. In its stead Hull drew up a ten-point proposal that restated Washington’s most stringent demands.

The whole matter had been broken off, Hull told Stimson. “I have washed my hands of it and it is now in the hands of you and Knox—the Army and the Navy.” Shortly Stimson phoned the President again; the time had come, they agreed, for a final alert to MacArthur.

Diplomatic exchanges continued for a while, like running-down tops. On November 26 Hull presented Nomura and Kurusu with his ten points; Kurusu said that Japan would not take its hat off to Chiang—the proposals were not even worth sending to Tokyo.
November 27
—the President warned the two envoys at the White House that if Tokyo followed Hitlerism and aggression he was convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that Japan would be the ultimate loser; but he was still ready to be asked by China and
Japan to “introduce” them for negotiations, just as he had brought both sides together in strike situations.
November 28—
Nomura and Kurusu received word from Tokyo that they would soon have an elaboration of its position and the discussions would then be “de facto ruptured”; but they were not to hint of this.
November 29
(Tokyo time) at the liaison conference: Togo: “Is there enough time left so that we can carry on diplomacy?” Nagano: “We do have enough time.” Togo: “Tell me what zero hour is. Otherwise I can’t carry on diplomacy.” Nagano: “Well, then, I will tell you. The zero hour is”—lowering his voice—“December 8.”
November 30—
at Warm Springs for a belated Thanksgiving with the patients, the President took a telephone call from Hull urging him to return to Washington because a Japanese attack seemed imminent; he left immediately.
December 1
—Premier Tojo at the Imperial Conference: “At the moment our Empire stands at the threshold of glory or oblivion.” The Chiefs of Staff asked the Emperor’s permission to make war on X day. Hirohito nodded his head. He seemed to the recorder to be at ease.
December 2
—Roosevelt, through Welles, demanded of Nomura and Kurusu why their government was maintaining such large forces in Indochina.
December 3—
Tokyo handed Berlin and Rome its formal request for intervention; Mussolini professed not to be surprised considering Roosevelt’s “meddlesome nature.”
December 4—
the President concluded a two-hour conference with congressional leaders with the request that Congress not recess for more than three days at a time.
December 5
—some in the White House were still considering reviving the ninety-day truce proposal, if only to gain time.
December 6—
Roosevelt worked on an arresting message to Hirohito urging a Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and the dispelling of the dark clouds over the Pacific.

Almost a century before, he reminded the Emperor, the President of the United States had offered the hand of friendship to the people of Japan and it had been accepted. “Only in situations of extraordinary importance to our countries need I address to Your Majesty messages on matters of state.” Such a time had come. The President dwelt on the influx of Japanese military strength into Indochina. The people of the Philippines, the East Indies, Malaya, Thailand were alarmed. They were sitting on a keg of dynamite. The President offered to gain assurances from these peoples and even from China—and offered those of his own nation—that there would be no threat to Indochina if every Japanese soldier or sailor were to be withdrawn therefrom. Clearly the President was not engaging in serious negotiation here; it was one more effort to stall off a showdown.

“I address myself to Your Majesty at this moment in the fervent
hope that Your Majesty may, as I am doing, give thought in this definite emergency to ways of dispelling the dark clouds….”

It was like a gigantic frieze in which all the actors move and yet there is no motion. While diplomats were deadlocked, however, the military was acting with verve and precision. In September Japanese carriers and their air groups had started specific training for Pearl Harbor, with the help of a mock-up as big as a tennis court. On October 5 one hundred officer pilots of the carrier air groups got the heady news that they had been chosen to destroy the American fleet in Hawaii early in December. On November 7 Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto set December 8 as the likely date because it was a Sunday. During mid-November the striking force of six carriers, two battleships, two cruisers, and nine destroyers put out from Kure naval base and rendezvoused in the Kuriles. On November 25 Yamamoto, from his flagship in the Inland Sea, ordered the advance into Hawaiian waters, subject to recall. On December 2 he broadcast the phrase
“
NIITAKE-YAMA NOBORE
”
(Climb Mount Niitaka)—the code for
PROCEED WITH ATTACK!
Meantime, other Japanese fleet units and scores of transports were moving into positions throughout the southern seas.

And Roosevelt? In this time of diplomatic stalemate and military decision he was still waiting, now almost fatalistically. “It is all in the laps of the gods,” he told Morgenthau on December 1. As late as December 6 he would tell Harold Smith that “we might be at war with Japan, although no one knew.” The President was pinioned between his hopes of staving off hostilities in the Pacific and his realization that the Japanese might not permit it; between his promise to avoid “foreign” wars and his deepening conviction that Tokyo was following Nazi ways and threatened his nation’s security; between his moral and practical desire to stand by the British and Dutch and Chinese and his worry that thereby he might be directly pulled into a Pacific war. He was pinioned, too, between people—between Hull, with his curious compound of moralizing and temporizing, and the militants, such as Morgenthau, who was pleading with the President not to desert China, and Ickes, who was ready to resign if he did; between the internationalists in the great metropolitan press and the isolationists in Congress; even between the “pro-Chinese” in the State Department and the “pro-Japanese,” including Grew, and finally between the polled citizens who said he was going too far in intervening abroad and those who said he was doing too little.

Pinioned but not paralyzed. The President’s mind was taken up by probabilities, calculations, guesses, alternatives. By the early days of December he felt that a Japanese attack south was probable.
It was most likely to come, he thought, in the Dutch East Indies; next most likely in Thailand, somewhat less likely in the Philippines, and least probable—to the extent he thought about it all—in Hawaii. If the Japanese attacked British territory he would give Churchill armed support, the nature and extent depending, much as in the Atlantic, on the circumstances; if the Japanese attacked Thailand or the East Indies, Britain would fight and Roosevelt would provide some kind of armed support; if the Japanese attacked China from Indochina, he would simply step up aid to Chungking.