Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (100 page)

That same day Hirohito ventured a surprise proposal to T
j
. Develop an action plan for ending the war, he told him, so that the last act could be controlled and foreseen. Make contact with the “Roman pope” in the Vatican!
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T
j
acted quickly, demonstrating his trustworthiness. However, his plan to move from war to peace, duly adopted at the liaison conference on November 15, was no more than a scenario for seizing opportunities for concluding a war not yet begun (and projected as likely to conclude no better than a draw) once Japan and Germany had already triumphed.
⁸²
Still, it pleased Hirohito.

On November 8 Hirohito received detailed information about the Pearl Harbor attack plan. On the fifteenth he was shown the full war plan, in all its details.
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The single most important feature
of this final, perfected plan was its hypothesis that an “impregnable” military system to defend economic self-sufficiency, needed for waging a protracted war, would be established following the completion of the first stage of the oceanic offensive in the South Pacific. Apart from that, no long-term, concrete plan for guiding the war through its protracted stage existed. The army and navy had different strategic concepts—and goals—for the offensive stage. Just as situational thinking had pervaded the policy-making process leading to the war decision, so now unknown future conditions and circumstances would determine the war strategy. Nor did the plan specify where and when to end the initial offensive. Despite this glaring flaw, Supreme Commander Hirohito confirmed it. The stage was set for Japan's fatal delay later in shifting to defense in the Pacific.

Worth noting are the following lines in the explanation of the full plan: “This surprise attack operation, comparable to the Battle of Okehazama, is extremely bold. Of course its success will largely depend on the luck of the battle. However, so long as the enemy fleet is anchored there on the day of the attack, it is possible to sink two or three battleships and aircraft carriers.”
⁸⁴

Statistical evidence presented by the chiefs of staff, and by the president of the Planning Board, Gen. Suzuki Teiichi, coupled with enticing illustrative comparisons from Japanese military history, probably helped convince Hirohito that a protracted war was not only possible to fight but could be concluded satisfactorily even without any real plan for doing so.

The emperor had discussions with his high commanders on November 3. Toward noon on the fourth, he told Kido that two problems still bothered him about the operation:

That was indeed a serious question and indicated Hirohito's keen sensitivity to the strategic weakness in Japan's position in the South Pacific. If control of the sea-lanes could be weakened by Anglo-American air and submarine attacks, Japan's strategy for a long war would prove flawed. The emperor's questions also demonstrated his ingrained habit of sniffing through procedural and tactical details and sometimes losing sight of the big issue—a dangerous habit for a supreme commander.

That afternoon Hirohito broke precedent by attending for the first time a full meeting of the Conference of Military Councillors. For three and a half hours he sat silently listening to questions put to his chiefs of staff and Prime Minister T
j
by Princes Higashikuni and Asaka, Gens. Terauchi Juichi, Yamada Otoz
, and Doihara Kenji, and Adms. Oikawa Koshir
and Yoshida Zengo. Hirohito's purpose in being present at the discussions was to imbue the forthcoming national policy document with the greatest possible authority prior to his sanctioning it. In the evening Lt. Col. Tanemura Sataka entered in the secret war log of the Twentieth Group that “the emperor [
okami
] seemed extremely pleased. Now the decision of the state is further strengthened and the result will be fine.”
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On another early November occasion, Hirohito once again went over the war plans with his two chiefs of staff:

Clearly, in the early days of November Hirohito's mind had become fixed on war. He no longer agonized over the deadlocked negotiations with the United States. At his daily informal briefings by the chiefs of staff, he had approved the contents of the national policy document that was to be presented at the next imperial conference; approval had also come from the Conference of Military Councillors. All these decisions were made before the cabinet had ever met to deliberate them, though the issues were a matter of life or death.
⁸⁸

On November 5, at the imperial conference that was not reported in the press, Hirohito made the actual (though next to last) decision for war by sanctioning both the completion of “preparations for operations” and a deadline for terminating the Washington diplomatic negotiations, at midnight December 1.
⁸⁹
The negotiations were to go forward on the basis of two proposals, A and B, to be offered in succession.