Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (310 page)

27.
Tanaka Nobumasa,
Dokyumento Sh
wa tenn
, dai ikkan, shinryaku
(Ryokuf
Shuppan, 1984), p. 129; Shimada Toshihiko,
Kant
gun
(Ch
k
Shinsho, 1965), pp. 168, 175.

28.
In his “Monologue” Hirohito and his aides tried to pass lightly over the July 2 imperial conference and its decision to move into southern Indochina. For its main effect—the hardening of American policy toward Japan—he blamed the military. “An imperial conference on July 2,” Hirohito says, “put a stop to those advocating war with the Soviet Union and, at the same time, as compensation, I sanctioned an advance into the southern part of French Indochina.” Hirohito (or one of his aides) then added the preposterous statement: “Just around August, when our troops were in the process of gathering at Hainan Island and we still had time to recall them, I had military aide-de-camp Hasunuma [Ban] tell T
j
that because of the extremely bad domestic rice crop, the nation would surely starve if rice imports from the south were stopped, and that he should therefore discontinue the advance. But T
j
did not obey; thus the Japanese army's advance into southern Indochina, announced on July 26, resulted finally in dreadful economic sanctions against Japan.” See
STD
, p. 59.

29.
Sanb
honbu, ed.,
Sugiyama memo, j
, p. 284.

30.
Moriyama,
NichiBei kaisen no seiji katei
, p. 171.

31.
Ibid., pp. 164–65.

32.
Yoshizawa,
Sens
kakudai no k
zu: Nihongun no Futsuin shinch
, p. 232.