In previous posts, we have tried to trace the Japanese strategic commitment to the southern strategy focused on the resource rich Southeast Asia mainland and Pacific Islands. The movements into Indochina brought about increasingly more stringent export controls and licensing for Japanese concerns, ratcheted up and hardened positions inside and outside government – especially within Japan where when the “military coughed, the Japanese cabinet developed pneumonia and collapsed.” With each cycle, the military was increasingly dominant in Japanese policy and strategy. There was a lot going on…

The “roadmap” above is nowhere as complex as the underlying reality and labyrinth pathways. Over the next several posts, the conversation will advance along threads that move from January 1941 until Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Those posts are meant to be part of the buildup of background to understand organizations, factions within organizations, government departments, key persons and personalities, and more – all to set the context as we move ahead.

Back in one of the first posts, I asserted that the August 1941 “oil” (full) embargo did not start the war. The war in the Asia-Pacific region was already underway. One only needed to ask the Chinese, Vietnamese and Mongolians, as well as the Koreans. The full embargo of late July 1941 was a calculated political action by the U.S. in reaction to the Japanese occupation/invasion of French Indochina. It was a political action whose hope was to deter Japan from further expansion even further south to Hong Kong, Malay, Java, Borneo and the rest of the Dutch East Indies. Consider the map below (Sep 1939) and then add Indochina (Vietnam) and one can see Japan’s dagger is clearly aiming south.

To focus on only the oil embargo because Japan’s “economy” needed it, one has to remember it was a wartime economy that had already led to the deaths of 7 million Chinese by July 1941. Even if one chooses to only focus exclusively on the full embargo, one can ask: 

• Was the embargo the decisive reason why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor or just more proximate than a collection of other reasons that was denying Japan unfettered access to war resources? 
• The U.S. understood the goals for Japan southwest incursion, but did the U.S. truly understand the underlying motivations? I would suggest the U.S. perfectly understood Japan’s motivations and disagreed on moral and political grounds. Japan was fascism in the Asia-Pacific region – aligned to the fascist nations of Europe via the Tripartite Act.
• Did the U.S. have a clear understanding of the internal Japanese dynamic that increasingly marginalized any peace/negotiation faction as the military grew in stature and power? This was the shift that was transforming a potential Asia-Pacific trading partner into a deadly rival fixated on status, honor, and establishing its equivalent of the Asia-Pacific Monroe Doctrine.
• Was the embargo a virtual declaration of war hoping to draw Japan to military action so that the U.S. could enter the war in Europe? If so, then why was the U.S. so unprepared to fight any war, much less a two-ocean war?
• Clearly the December 1941 and early 1942 “blitzkrieg” across Southeast Asia, the Southwest Pacific, and Central Pacific regions accomplished the mission of (a) capturing the resource rich nations and (b) setting a “line of defense” west of Hawaii. Was the attack on Pearl Harbor necessary for the plan to access the resource rich lands to the southwest of Japan? Couldn’t they just have moved south and left a “blocking force” against the Philippines and prevented U.S. resupply?
• How did Japan so misjudge the U.S. public’s reaction to Pearl Harbor? Thanks to the movie “Tora!, Tora!, Tora!” we have Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, iconically uttering, “We have awoken the sleeping giant.” He never said that, but he should have because he clearly understood Japan could not win a protracted war.

Most, if not all, of the questions are not simply military moves and political reactions – but they form the milieu in which diplomatic dialogue swims. The external and internal dynamics make the path to diplomatic resolution akin to walking a moonless night in the wilderness with but only a lighted candle to show the way. There is light but its glow only reveals so much of the dark night. And as we will see in a later post, there are lots of things that “go bump in the night.”

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archive. | Mapworks | Original timeline by G. Corrigan

This second phase of the series on the Asia-Pacific War began with a goal of discovering if there was merit to the claims made by some historians that in the summer and autumn of 1941 the United States missed diplomatic opportunities that could have avoided war with Japan and at the same time took a series of economic actions that brought about U.S. involvement in the Second World War. The exploration has taken us from the pre-history to Japan of the early 20th century discovering currents, trends, events, personalities and changes that brought that nation to 1937. Along the way we considered the complex and evolving nature of Japan’s relationships with China, Korea, Russia, and the United States. All of this (and far more) were the ingredients in the mix that formed Japan’s strategic, economic, political, and civil policies.

A Future of the Asia Pacific Region

These policies brought Japan and the U.S. to a crossroad each having different objectives and visions of their roles and future in the Asia-Pacific region. The U.S. was committed to its own Westphalian vision of the world as its fundamental principles: democratic government (without kings or emperors), open markets with fair and free trade (at least in theory), respect for national boundaries and sovereignty (with an aversion to classic colonialism but with a Monroe Doctrine), and non-interference with the internal governance of another country (but trade and the Monroe Doctrine were priorities). Without a doubt that is so general a description it suffers in accuracy, but it has points and exceptions. Some of the exceptions are striking: Admiral Perry’s presence in Tokyo Bay ostensibly to open up trade in the western Pacific, the annexation of Hawaii, the territories of Guam and the Philippines, and its business interests in China. What was a fundamental driver of its Asia-Pacific ambitions? Business. The U.S. was a nation of massive natural resources, industrial power, financial wealth, and at least in a business sense, a drive to be a market leader. It was a country with minimal import needs and massive export capacity.

Japan was an island nation of limited key material natural resources, limited land for agriculture, a net importer of strategic raw materials and in the 20th century was over populated and a net importer of basic foodstuffs, even rice. While in its own history Japan had never been successfully invaded it was always concerned to the point of obsession with its vulnerability to invasion and embargo. The fall of the once great China to its state in the 19th and 20th centuries was a clarion call to protect Japan from the grip of the western colonial powers. This gave way to the transformation of the feudal samurai system to a modern army and navy based on European models, ultimately leading to rise in militarism that was only enhanced by Japan’s defeat of China and Russia within a 10 year period. Now it was ready to take its place and be recognized as a world power with a special sphere of influence in the western Pacific – a role and recognition it never received, only enhancing its sense of vulnerability to the western powers.

Colonialism and Racism

Japan abhorred western colonialism yet it had colonial ambitions for Korea (annexed in 1910) and Manchuria (conquered by 1932 and renamed the independent nation of Manchukuo) for both strategic buffer and for emigration of its people and access to food and raw materials. It participated in world trade but with a wary eye seeing what the “Open Market” policy (a U.S. initiative) had done to China. The Meiji Restoration and Constitution’s governance appeared as liberal democracy akin to Britain – and in many ways it was growing into it – but the military had an outsized place in the nation and without civilian control. The military was responsible only to the Emperor.

When modern people consider the 1942 internment of west coast U.S. citizens of Japanese origins, it is commonly held that it was basic racism and unwarranted fear that motivated the action. It was primarily fear and national politics, but that was just the immediate context for the underlying racism in California – which was present elsewhere. The U.S. federal government had to inject itself into California politics when the state passed laws restricting land ownership and segregating schools that applied only to Japanese. But in 1924, the federal government passed the 1924 Immigration Act which specifically excluded Japanese from U.S. and all territories, e.g. Hawaii. In 1924, 40% of Hawaiian residents were of Japanese origin. The U.S.  was just more overt about racism as Japan had its own form.

Japan viewed all westerners as decadent, weak, uncultured and morally inferior. At the same time, this anti-Western racial critique coexisted with hierarchical and discriminatory attitudes toward other Asians, especially Chinese and Koreans, who were frequently described as backward and in need of discipline. The result was a contradictory worldview: Japan opposed Western racism in principle, yet practiced its own racial and cultural hierarchy in Asia, a tension that shaped both its propaganda and its imperial conduct in the 1930s.

A Cautious Eye

These were the two nations that arrived at the crossroads of the 20th century each casting a cautious eye towards the other, each sensing that the other would be the inevitable rival. Early in the century each country, as is prudent, developed “what if” war strategies. Both countries were adherents of Mahan’s theory of naval power (The Influence of Sea Power upon History) and saw in each other threat to their own ambitions. Each nation’s naval war colleges developed and adjusted its Pacific strategies. Virtually every senior naval leader in the Pacific had studied these and contributed to it as new circumstances, technology, and situations arose. As one historian noted: “it was part of their DNA.”

Japan’s army faced west and northwest to expand its colonial ambitions on the Asian mainland. Japan’s navy faced south to the oil rich regions of the Pacific island nations as it also faced east to the U.S. its current major supply of oil and ship building materials. The U.S. navy had missions in the Atlantic and Pacific but only enough assets for a “one-ocean navy”. After World War I, the U.S. interest was controlling navies and the status quo. This led to the 1922 Washington Conference that established limits on capital ships. It also ultimately led to deep divisions with the Imperial Navy. One faction knew it could never match U.S. industrial power and wanted to avoid a naval arms race and was satisfied that the limits were within the Mahanian theory in that the U.S. would have to transit the Pacific Ocean. The other faction was more driven by an ideology of the Navy as the ocean guardian of the Imperial destiny of a greater Asia led by the Emperor. The Washington treaty was a barrier and worse, an insult to national honor.

Key Figures at the Crossroads

By 1937 it seems fair to say that Japan was a nation with an amazing degree of disunity within – and a single key to the unity of the nation as a whole: the Emperor and the idea of kokutai – and these were not clear to West nor it seems to Emperor Hirohito himself as to the role he could play.

Historians do not agree on the role Hirohito played in the path to the Asia Pacific War.  He was the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, yet his Kwantung Army in Manchuria feels free to do what it wants, not expecting and not receiving punishment for their actions. Emperor Hirohito’s response to incidents such as the Marco Polo Bridge affair was to “fire” the Prime Minister but not to take any action within Army ranks. This does not seem to indicate Hirohito feels he should be an absolute monarch or even the “buck stops here” commander-in-chief.  The range of views includes Herbert Bix’s assessment that Hirohito was an active, knowledgeable, directive monarch and had a key role in strategic military decisions. There is historian Stephen Large’s idea of “self-induced neutrality” in which Hirohito knew his power and authority but withheld its use to allow others to lead. The historian Peter Wetzler’s version is that the Emperor periodically put his thumb on the scale but he did not see himself responsible for the result. This version sees Hirohito aware of Japanese atrocities but taking no action to intervene but in the end it was Hirohio’s “thumb on the scale” that ended the war.

And yet the man and his role in Japanese governance was unclear at best to 1940 Washington leaders. But hardly less clear were key government positions. Between July 1937 and December 1941 there were nine different people serving in the role of Foreign Minister. There were six different Prime Ministers in that same period although Prince Konoe served for a total of 12 months and during critical periods.

In that same period Roosevelt was President and Cordell was Secretary of State – but they were not always on the “same page.” Hull was very territorial of his role and believed the role of the President was to set macro-level policy and everything else was the purview of the Secretary of State. But Roosevelt dabbled in foreign policy from time to time. Hull’s irritation with Roosevelt’s “dabbling” in Japan policy between 1937 and 1941 stemmed from the president’s habit of personal, informal, and sometimes contradictory diplomatic initiatives, which Hull feared undercut coherence, leverage, and credibility.

Roosevelt was noted and preferred back-channel and personal diplomacy. Most notably, FDR repeatedly encouraged or entertained the idea of a personal summit with Japanese leaders (especially Prince Konoe in 1941), sometimes through intermediaries or informal messages, without firm preconditions. Roosevelt also floated tentative peace feelers, exploratory trial balloons, and hypothetical compromises often orally, ambiguously, or indirectly rather than through formal diplomatic notes. In addition, FDR occasionally made public statements or private assurances that suggested flexibility (or restraint) that had not been fully coordinated with the State Department.

Hull’s experience was that Japan used negotiations tactically to buy time while consolidating aggression in China and preparing for further expansion. Roosevelt’s informal probes, in Hull’s view, risked sending mixed signals about U.S. resolve and principles, weakened bargaining leverage by suggesting concessions before Japan changed behavior, undermined State Department control over a carefully constructed, principle-based negotiating position, and encouraging Tokyo to believe that persistence or pressure might extract a deal from the president personally

Hull favored clear, written, multilateral, principle-driven diplomacy (non-aggression, territorial integrity, Open Door), whereas Roosevelt favored personal flexibility and strategic ambiguity. To Hull, the president’s “dabbling” threatened to turn diplomacy into improvisation at precisely the moment when clarity and firmness, he believed, were essential.

Even though our “cast of characters” was consistent, Hull was concerned the “message” was not. This added a degree of uncertainty to any dialogue that was compounded by the frequent changes in Japan. As one might imagine this was the tip of the iceberg.  More details were provided in the post American Diplomacy in 1937 which describes a lack of unified thinking with the State Department.

The Crosses

There are cross purposes, crossroads, crossed messages and more. In July 1940, the United States initiated significant export restrictions against Japan by passing the Export Control Act which allowed the President to license or prohibit the export of essential defense materials. Roosevelt restricted licenses for high-grade aviation gasoline, lubricating oil, and certain iron and steel scrap. These measures aimed to curb Japanese aggression, specifically in response to pressure on French Indochina, without triggering an immediate, total war-inducing oil embargo. In general, they were also intended to impact Japan’s aggression in China. These actions followed earlier 1938–1939 “moral embargoes” on aircraft and raw materials. All this complicated any foreign policy dialog between nations that were only going to become more difficult.

In November of 1940 retired Admiral Nomura was assigned as Ambassador to the United States. When Emperor Hirohito was in his teens, Nomura was one of his private tutors. He also served as Naval Attache in Washington DC when Franklin Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. They were friends and so it was hoped that the connections to the leaders of the two nations would help communications. But neither the Foreign Ministry nor State Department wanted such channels open and required formal communications through the usual chain.

Ambassador Noruma was also not in the mainstream of senior naval officers as he was known to be a supporter of the 1922 naval treaties. He understood that the U.S. was the nexus between industrial power and ultimate sea power. He was also one of the few senior people who understood that the American public would see any Japanese-U.S. conflict as a battle of fascism vs. democracy, and also if Japan moved against British interests in the Pacific, Britain would be fully supported. 

He recognized that the only bulwark to prevent Japanese-US conflict would be if senior naval leadership acknowledged that Japan could not prevail in a protracted war with the United States nor would there be the “decisive battle” that caused the U.S. to negotiate a peace. Once bloodied, the U.S. could bring its industrial power to bear and in the interim the American public would give enduring support to war efforts. All of these positions were mixed at best among senior naval leaders. Among mid and junior naval officers these were discarded as weak thinking. This group was very positive about the Tripartite Pact with Germany and sought distinction in a naval move into the Southwest Pacific.

Nomura made his views known to Navy Minister Oikawa and Fleet Admiral Yamamoto who agreed. Yet former Prime Minister Yonai (a naval officer) warned Nomura that he was being sent as the scapegoat. He warned that Foreign Minister Matsuoka would take credit for any success and blame Nomura for setbacks and failures. At best Matsuoka would sweep into Washington DC with a separate agenda and negotiate as he had done in Berlin and Moscow.

As one dedicated in service to his nation, he accepted the position. And in a harbinger of things to come he was sent without specific policy instructions. 

When he arrived in Washington DC his naval attache was Capt. Yokoyama with whom he had served in the Military Mission in Britain years before. Yokoyama shared Nomura’s ideas and perspectives. But the American concerns in that time period were not Japan. The administration was focused on Europe having established a “Europe First” policy. The goals were munitions and supplies to Britain and convoy escort and protection.  U.S. Chief of Operations Stark (the title was actually different) bluntly told Nomura that war with Japan was “when, not if.”

This is the diplomatic milieu facing Japan and the United States at the beginning of 1941.

Stay tuned…

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. 

The Japanese – U.S. relationship was difficult, ambiguous, conflicted at times and never seemed to find a “spot” where simple co-existence had any endurance. There were many actors in this drama, but one actor is often overlooked in the popular understanding of the dynamics leading up to Pearl Harbor: Prince Fumimaro Konoe. Prince Konoe was one of the most influential, and in a way, one of the most tragic figures in Japan’s descent into total war from 1937 until 1945.

A scion of one of Japan’s oldest aristocratic families, Konoe served three times as prime minister (1937–1939, January–July 1940, and October 1940–October 1941) and occupied a unique position at the intersection of civilian politics, imperial authority, and an increasingly autonomous military. Although he often recognized the dangers of war, most notably with the United States, his actions and indecisions ultimately contributed to Japan’s expansion in China, its southward advance into Southeast Asia, and the breakdown of diplomacy with the Western powers.

Entering the Political Realm

Konoe emerged from the prewar aristocratic elite with a troubled family history, his father dying when Konoe was 12 and his step-mother a distant and aloof person. But he was taken under the wing of Prince Kinmochi Saionji, one of the genro, who had guided Japan into the Meiji era. Saionji took the 27 year old Konoe to the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919. After the conference he wrote an essay denouncing the Conference as an “Anglo-American Peace.” In that essay, Konoe’s world view was evident: the division of nations into “haves” and “have-nots.” He viewed Versailles as the Western Powers rigging an international system to protect the status quo and their privileged position. This world view was present in his later basic approach to foreign affairs. The essay did not mention that Japan, an ally in WW I, was also the beneficiary of all of Germany’s Asia-Pacific colonies and territories from China’s Liaodong Peninsula to the Mariana, Marshall and Carolina Islands. This experience shaped his enduring belief that Japan must assert itself as a great power independent of Western dominance.

Konoe – Prime Minster

As a prince he gained a place in the House of Peers, the upper chamber of Japan’s parliament, and took his place in Japanese politics. His ascent in political stature was flamboyant, not without mistakes, and while he gained popularity in many circles, his mentor, Saionji, began to suspect Konoe’s judgment. Nonetheless, his bon vivant and youth stood in contrast to the drab, older political figures around him. His sense of courtesy engendered wide public support and confidence as well as within some political circles. He was the “John F. Kennedy” of his day, the new hope to lead Japan out of its many problems. As already noted, he ascended to the role of Prime Minister in 1937. There he discovered his charm only went so far. He discovered being Prime Minister was akin to herding cats: it was difficult to impossible to control the various factions. It is also important to know that Japan’s Prime Minister was not like Britain’s. The word in Japanese translated as Prime Minister basically means “head of the meeting” which was an apt description for the role that lacked direct control over cabinet ministers.

Konoe garnered a reputation for indecisions, short-sighted decision making, and seemed to believe he could control or at least shape forces beyond him: namely, the Japanese military. He recommended two of his cabinet appointments as a means to show favor to the military and exert increased influence in that sector. It proved to be fateful. Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka and Army (War) Minister Hideki Tojo. Yosuke, a supremely confident peer although low born, was a favorite of the Army. Tojo was a career Army officer, who served as a military attaché in Germany in the early 1920s, promoted to general in 1934, was assigned as chief of staff of the Kwantung Army leading military operations against the Chinese before eventually joining Konoe’s cabinet. He was known as the ultimate loyalist to the Emperor and an officer respected by all the factional divisions within the Army.

Yet, Konoe was never a militarist ideologue. He distrusted the army’s radical factions and feared Japan’s industrial inferiority relative to the United States. His dilemma was structural: as prime minister, he lacked constitutional authority over the armed forces, which answered directly to the emperor and were protected by custom and political intimidation – hence the two appointments.

The first goal of Konoe’s cabinet was establishing a comprehensive war economy with two goals in mind: resolution of the China quagmire and to position Japan for the coming change of the international order. 

Foreign Policy

Yosuke’s role – which in itself is a fascinating story – was highlighted by the signing the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy and then later negotiating the Russian-Japanese Neutrality Act. The Tripartite Pact was viewed extremely positively within Army circles as it aligned itself with the country where Japanese officers served as attaché (none served in Britain or the U.S.). It was equally unpopular with naval officers, most of whom served in the U.S. or Britain, fearing that such a pact would eventually draw them into naval combat with the U.S. – a war they did not believe they could win.

Interestingly, the Tripartite Pact was written in English possibly to signal the target of the agreement. The agreement was an absolute commitment to attack any nation who attacked a member of the Pact. Japan had reservations specifically about how this would apply to the United States. Yosuke and Germany’s Foreign Minister Eugen Ott devised a “side deal” that effectively gave Japan the option to engage or not engage the U.S.  This was a nod to the Navy’s concerns. However, the German requirement was that the “side deal” remain secret. After signing, Ott did not deliver the agreement to Germany. While Yosuke viewed the agreement as the means to acquire allies – those allies were half a world away. When the Pact was made public, all Japan really gained was potential enemies (U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands). They already did not trust Japan and this did not improve their view. Although Yosuke imagined and promoted himself as the “grand master” who would reshape Japan’s place in the world, the first “act” of a diplomacy whirlwind was not his idea. He admitted that the Army was the “playwright” and he was but the “actor.” This relationship would reappear again as regards Indochina.

China

Konoe’s first term coincided with the outbreak of full-scale war with China following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in July 1937. Initially, Konoe hoped the conflict could be localized and resolved quickly. Instead, he presided over a dramatic escalation. He sanctioned military expansion in China, despite limited strategic objectives and no clear exit strategy and approved the capture of major Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing. His distrust of the more radical elements of the Army proved valid as he and Tojo were unable to restrain the army’s operational autonomy, culminating in atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre, which severely damaged Japan’s international standing. Perhaps his most significant failure in judgment was issuing the 1938 declaration rejecting negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek, effectively committing Japan to a prolonged war of occupation.

In late 1938 Konoe endorsed and announced the idea of a “New Order in East Asia” (Tōa Shin Chitsujo). While vague, it implied Japan would reshape China politically, not merely extract concessions; existing treaty-based diplomacy was obsolete; and peace would not come through compromise. Konoe’s rhetoric boxed him in and closed off any path to negotiating with Chiang Kai-shek, the symbol of resurging Chinese nationalism and sovereignty. Any return to conventional diplomacy would look like retreat.

It wasn’t just his rhetoric that boxed him in. The army did as well. They were clear that they did not view Chiang Kai-shek as a legitimate negotiating partner, demanded that the “new order in East Asia” be under Japanese leadership, and insisted that only total political restructuring of China could secure Japan. Going against them risked the resignation of the army minister which would automatically collapse Konoe’s cabinet. Given recent history, potential violence or coup threats by radical officers was to be feared. In addition Konoe feared a loss of imperial confidence in his ability to govern.

In Japan’s political culture, seeking peace too early after the army’s string of victories could be seen as implying that Japan’s enormous sacrifices had been unnecessary. He would lose popular support, internal support and be accused of betraying the “spirit” of the imperial mission. Konoe was also concerned that he lacked “strategic air cover” that while Hirohito expressed concern about the war’s direction, he did not explicitly order Konoe to negotiate. Without such a directive, Konoe was reluctant to challenge the army directly.

Konoe did not initiate the war in China but he legitimized it politically and foreclosed diplomatic solutions. His initial belief that Japan could force a settlement through military pressure proved catastrophically wrong as he and others misread Chinese resilience and the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. As a result they locked Japan into a conflict that further radicalized domestic politics and moved the nation towards authoritarian controls by nationalist/militarists.

Resignation

The Konoe cabinet collapsed on January 4, 1939 when Konoe resigned. The immediate cause was a political deadlock over how to end or even manage the war in China, combined with Konoe’s loss of control over the army. Konoe recognized the war was becoming open-ended and economically draining, but lacked the authority to impose negotiations. At the same time cabinet unity broke down as the army and navy pushed very different strategic postures for the nation (the North vs. South Expansion). Facing the risk of being blamed for an unwinnable war, Konoe chose to resign.

In what would prove to be another questionable judgement, after resigning in 1939, Konoe remained politically influential. He came to believe that party politics were obsolete and that Japan required national unity to survive in a hostile world. This belief culminated in his sponsorship of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (IRAA), designed to replace competitive party politics with a mass mobilization structure under elite guidance (meaning him). With this Konoe abandoned even the remnants of liberal constitutionalism in favor of a vague, authoritarian leadership, one that ultimately empowered the very forces he feared.

Konoe was reappointed Prime Minister in July 1940 because Japan’s leadership wanted a prestigious, non-party figure who could unify the nation, manage the military, and stabilize foreign policy at a moment of deep crisis without provoking the army. As a prince of the ancient Fujiwara line, Konoe carried symbolic authority acceptable to both the emperor and the military, there was a political vacuum, and Konoe promised to transcend party politics via the IRAA. In essence, Konoe was brought back not because he had solved Japan’s problems before, but because he seemed the least dangerous compromise. He was a figure who could command legitimacy without challenging the military head-on.

Indochina

The Army had aligned Japan with Germany via Matsuoka, the Foreign Minister, and the Tripartite Pact. The fall of France in 1940 “orphaned” French Indochina and left it under the control of the Vichy French government – an ally of Germany. The local French governor understood only too well what this meant. Even before formally asked by Japan he suspended all trade and arms traffic to China. But the Army wanted more. They wanted to be the enforcement of suspended trade and wanted to position and move troops through Indochina to attack southern China.  The Army General Staff wanted an immediate invasion. The Army Ministry wanted diplomacy. Diplomacy won the day and French Indochina agreed to terms and conditions acceptable to Matsuoke and Army Minister Tojo. But not to the Army General Staff.

In a series of events, as byzantine as it comes, with orders, counter-orders, forged orders and flagrant insubordination and refusal to follow orders, an armed invasion crossed the border on September 23, 1940. Combat operations continued after direct orders to stop but did not. When the dust settled the Kwantung Army had invaded (unnecessarily) and occupied Northern Indochina. General Tojo took immediate measures to restore chain-of-command and discipline.  Offending officers – including the one who forged imperial orders – were dismissed and transferred to other duties, but no court martial actions were taken. The junior officers remained in place but were warned next time severe punishment would follow. All the senior officers eventually returned to important wartime commands. This all followed the pattern of the Mukden Incident that started the Sino-Japanese War.

Southern Expansion

Facing resource shortages exacerbated by the China war, Konoe endorsed the “southern expansion” into Southern French Indochina and Southeast Asia (he was again Prime Minister). These moves were intended to secure oil, rubber, and strategic depth but they directly challenged American and British interests. In July 1941, Japanese forces entered and occupied Southern Indochina (South Vietnam). The reaction was decisive as the U.S. froze Japanese financial assets and slow-rolled approval of required export licenses for oil, gasoline and other critical supplies. It was a de facto oil embargo. The details of this were covered in “The Financial Freeze.”

Final Attempt at Peace

In the late spring and summer of 1941 quiet negotiations – of a sort – were being conducted between the U.S. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull and Japan’s Ambassador to the U.S., Admiral Kichisaburō Nomura. This will be covered in a later post, but in short the talks were fruitless. This was also approaching the time when “Plan A” and “Plan B” were proposed by Japan (also covered later) as a way to forestall war. Meanwhile in Japan, it had already been decided to initiate combat in the Southwest Pacific and against Pearl Harbor – with one caveat. The Emperor insisted that there be one more attempt at some diplomatic solution to forestall war. With approval of the Emperor, Konoe made a genuine, if belated, effort to avoid war with the United States. He sought a personal summit with President Roosevelt, hoping imperial prestige and personal diplomacy could break the deadlock. The summit was opposed by Hull and in the end was never acted upon by Roosevelt.

Konoe resigned in October 1941, clearing the way for Army Minister Tojo to become Prime Minister and at the same time continue as Minister of the Army (now increasingly called “War Minister”). 

Why this long post?

There are a number of revisionist historians (meaning later working with newer sources) who hold that the U.S. was culpable for what followed by not taking the summit with Konoe. There is an argument to be made that given both sides felt they were rapidly approaching the threshold of war that any dialogue was better than no dialogue at all. But by this time the U.S. had broken “Code Purple”, the diplomatic code (sometimes referred to under the general rubric “MAGIC”). We were able to “look behind the words.”

By late September 1941 we knew that Japan was repositioning military assets to move on the Southwest Pacific and the moderate wing of government had no leverage to change the tide of war. If these were reason enough to prepare for the inevitable, it must be remembered that Konoe “came to the table” with a history.

Konoe had never been able to enforce civilian control over the military. In addition, Kanoe was the author of the “New Order in East Asia” (Tōa Shin Chitsujo) which at its root was, from the U.S. perspective, the core problem. Kanoe had not started the war in China, but he had expanded the war. Later he was unable to stop the occupation of Southern Indochina. In the view of the State Department – “new boss, same as the old boss.” Japan was still not considered trustworthy given their history of vague diplomacy, military aggression apart from civilian control, and a habit to ask specific current actions of the U.S. while pinning their commitments to future events that might or might not happen. There was nothing in Konoe’s resume that indicated there would be anything new.

And finally, intercepted diplomatic cables made clear, Japan would not offer anything new not already considered in Plan A and Plan B.

And now they were proposing Konoe as the new voice of diplomacy and he could not offer a coherent negotiating position before the summit. In the end the summit came to nothing. Konoe resigned in October 1941, clearing the way for General Tōjō, whose government would authorize war.

In his book, Tower of Skulls, historian Richard B. Frank describes part of Konoe’s story in a chapter rightly called “Japan’s Prince of Self-Destruction.” Prince Kinmochi Saionji, his early mentor, was prescient in wondering if Konoe possessed a keen sense of judgment.

Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archive. | Source credit: Tower of Skulls by Richard B. Frank notably the chapter “Japan’s Prince of Self-Destruction”