Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (101 page)

A, favored by the army, was communicated to the United States on November 7. It sought a full settlement of differences based on a revised version of ideas that had been presented during earlier
stages of the Japan–U.S. talks, including the question of stationing troops in China, the principle of nondiscriminatory trade in China, and the interpretation of the Tripartite Pact. This time the army indicated its willingness to confine its forces to fixed areas in North China and Mongolia for a fixed period of time, and not automatically to act in accordance with the Tripartite Pact. On the principle of nondiscrimination in commerce, T
g
insisted on attaching the condition that it was acceptable as long as it was applied not only to China but worldwide—that is, to Western possessions as well.

Proposal B, transmitted on November 20, omitted mention of China and simply sought a modus vivendi. It promised that Japan would not advance by armed force any further than French Indochina and would withdraw to the northern part of that colony
after
peace was reached in the war with China. In return the United States was asked to restore relations prior to the freezing of Japanese assets, furnish Japan with a million tons of aviation fuel, and assist it in procuring raw materials from the Dutch East Indies.
⁹⁰
Each proposal comprised a package; each had a deadline of midnight, November 30. Since the decision to proceed with final war preparations had been made, and only a few weeks allowed for a settlement of issues, the result was a foregone conclusion.

Kido wrote on the fifth:

Simultaneously Admiral Nagano, navy chief of staff, went over the war plan in detail with the emperor. “Imperial Navy Operations Plan for War Against the United States, Britain, and the Nether
lands” had been drafted by the general staff of the Combined Fleet aboard the battleship
Nagato
, then forwarded directly to the Navy General Staff before going up the chain of command.
⁹²
No ministers of state attended this audience, at which Hirohito gave the final go-ahead to attack Pearl Harbor.

According to Sugiyama's notes, the emperor (who already knew the approximate time, places, and methods of attack at all points) was worried about maintaining secrecy. Hirohito wanted to know when the assault groups could be set in motion. The precise dates would be settled shortly, said Nagano. Secrecy was essential, so they had to be especially careful to avoid too-early forward deployment. Even with great care, in an operation involving so many units, one could not be sure how long it could all be kept hidden. Hirohito, worried as always about the Soviet Union, cautioned Nagano to be especially careful in the north so as not to provoke the Russians.

They next turned to China, where Japan, after four years and nearly five months of fighting, had built up huge forces and was potentially capable of destroying Chiang's armies. Sugiyama told his supreme commander: “Since it is unsuitable at this time to withdraw troops from Yi-ch'ang [a main river port near the entrance to the Yangtze gorges, and a natural jumping-off point for an army intending to move into Szechwan Province and attack Chungking], we are thinking of using home units to reinforce our assault force. We are going over that now.” Hirohito, however, was of a different opinion. “We should probably withdraw the troops from Yi-ch'ang.”
⁹³

The last remark seems somewhat cryptic, but no matter what the emperor was really thinking, he wanted Yi-ch'ang, which since 1940 had been the staging area for the Japanese Eleventh Army in the Wuhan area to launch an assault against Chungking, to be downgraded to secondary importance, at least for a time. He thus left open the possibility of returning to Yi-ch'ang once the primary operation had been successfully completed. The underlying strate
gic problem, of course, was that Hirohito and his high command were taking the nation into a completely new war while more than half the Japanese army was, and had to remain, tied down on the continent.

V

After November 5 all Japanese “negotiations”—whether still aimed at securing oil from the United States and the Dutch East Indies or at stopping the United States and Britain from interfering with Japan's activities in China or taking any other action that could threaten Japan's fleet operation in Southeast Asia—were partly sincere, partly fraudulent. For months these negotiations had been of utmost gravity and importance to Japan's leaders, including Hirohito, who had very detailed knowledge of them and had hoped to see them succeed. Though Hirohito did invest hope in proposal B, at the same time he felt it wouldn't work and that it was therefore better to string Washington along until the exact moment when he and the high command were ready for the showdown. To Roosevelt and his strategists the negotiations were expressions of Japanese weakness. To have agreed to anything proposed by Tokyo would have been seen, all across the United States, as an act of “appeasement.” More important, they were under strong pressure from Britain and China not to compromise with Tokyo. By not taking seriously the Japanese military threat, the Roosevelt administration did not take seriously either the alternative to such a threat, which was a temporary settlement of differences that left the Japanese with a guaranteed minimum amount of oil and thus an incentive to go on talking at a moment when the anti-Axis coalition was at its weakest.

Hull had been reading decrypted Japanese diplomatic messages (intercepted and decoded by the system code-named MAGIC). He, like Roosevelt, was aware of the new T
j
cabinet's military
timetable for war and of Japanese troop movements toward Southeast Asia. On November 26, contrary to the advice of Ambassador Grew in Tokyo, Hull handed Ambassador Nomura and his special assistant, Kurusu Sabur
, a “draft mutual declaration of policy” and a ten-point written outline of principles for a comprehensive agreement rather than a temporary truce or tactical delay. The two-part document was headed “strictly confidential, tentative and without commitment.” The second part, entitled “Outline of Proposed Basis for Agreement Between the United States and Japan,” omitted any reference to the earlier Japanese proposal for a temporary truce. It called for Japan to “withdraw all military, naval, air and police forces from China and Indochina” but left “China” undefined in all six places in the text where the word appeared. It also omitted any mention of Manchuria, for Hull had discarded Stimson's earlier nonrecognition doctrine from the start of the talks. Equally important, Hull stated no deadline for troop withdrawal. On the other hand the draft document made quite clear that the United States would not support any government in China other than Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government.

When this “Hull note”—a postwar Japanese term—arrived in Tokyo on the twenty-seventh, T
j
misrepresented the American action by telling the liaison conference that Washington had issued an “ultimatum to Japan.” T
g
knew, of course, that Hull's statement was not really an ultimatum, for it was clearly marked “tentative” and lacked a time limit for acceptance or rejection. But T
g
kept silent. Afterward some members of the privy council also pointed out that Hull's memorandum could not be considered as America's final word because of its heading—an observation that apparently made no impression on T
g
. Soon he too consented to the opening of hostilities, just as in early November he had consented to the army's demand that the United States desist from supporting Chiang Kai-shek.