Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (86 page)

Then, on July 26, 1939, the United States, having repeatedly protested Japanese actions in China, notified the Hiranuma government that it intended not to renew the U.S.–Japan Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, scheduled to lapse in January 1940. Up to that point the Roosevelt administration had pursued a policy of gentle appeasement of Japan, but its basic Asian policy had always been to maintain the imperialist status quo embodied in the Washington treaty system. Thus it had consistently refused to recognize any changes Japan had brought about by force in China. Roosevelt had also propped up China's national currency by making regular silver purchases—a policy that would eventually lead him to join the British in providing foreign exchange so that Chiang Kai-shek could stabilize his currency, counter the proliferation of Japanese military currencies in occupied areas, and go on fighting.
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Now, however, anticipating that war would soon break out in Europe, the United States put Japan on notice that serious economic sanctions could follow further acts of aggression. Thereafter, if Japan's leaders were to continue the war in China, they would have to take more seriously the reactions of the United States, on which they depended for vital imports needed to wage war.

“It could be a great blow to scrap metal and oil,” Hirohito complained to his chief aide-de-camp, Hata Shunroku, on August 5, shortly after the American move:

But of course Hirohito did not enjoin his chiefs of staff to end the China war, or to reduce the size of anything; he simply got angry at them for not having anticipated the American reaction.

A few weeks later, on August 23, 1939, while the Japan-Soviet truce to end the fighting on the Mongolia-Manchukuo border was being negotiated in Moscow, Germany signed a nonaggression pact with its ideological enemy, the Soviet Union—which contravened the 1936 Japan-German Anti-Comintern Pact. After a fruitless three-year quest for “collective security” with the West against German territorial expansion in Europe, Stalin had declared Soviet neutrality and, in a secret protocol attached to the pact, made a deal with Hitler to take over the Baltic states and eventually partition Poland.
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Stunned by this diplomatic reversal, and unsure how to interpret the enormous strengthening of both German
and
Soviet power that Hitler's alliance with Stalin portended, the Hiranuma cabinet resigned on the morning of August 28.

A very angry Hirohito used the occasion of this cabinet change to inform Chief Aide-de-Camp Hata that he intended to appoint someone he could trust as the next army minister, certainly not Isogai Rensuke or Tada Hayao (generals whose names had appeared in the press), and that Hata “should convey that to the army minister [Itagaki Seishir
].”
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For many months Hirohito's displeasure with Itagaki's reporting had been building, and he had told him to his face that he lacked ability. Now, on the twenty-eighth, Hirohito appointed General Abe prime minister, telling him (according to Konoe, who told Kido) to chose either his chief aide, Hata, or Gen. Umezu Yoshijir
as army minister, and to try to “cooperate” with the United States and Britain. However, “the most important matter” was “preservation of internal order.” “[B]e very careful in chosing your Home and Justice Ministers,” he warned.
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This seems to have been an authentic expression of Hirohito's distrust of the Japanese people; it may also have echoed, rather less clearly, his uneasiness with the German-Soviet rapprochement: nothing good could come of such an unnatural coupling, so be on guard against further Soviet and German maneuvering. On the afternoon of the next day, Hirohito formally appointed Hata Shunroku, the military
professional he liked and trusted, as Army Minister.
¹¹³
Retired admiral Nomura Kichisabur
, a man who promised to reestablish good relations with the United States, came in as Abe's new foreign minister.

Meanwhile Hitler had already revealed to his generals, in May, his strategy for attacking and destroying the armies of the Allies and seizing control of the European continent. With Germany at the height of its power relative to Britain, France, and Poland, Hitler now decided to put one part of his overall plan into effect. On September 1, 1939, the first day of the Abe cabinet, German armies invaded Poland, starting a new European war. Two days later Britain and France intervened, declaring war on Germany, and on September 8, President Roosevelt, Hitler's most implacable enemy, proclaimed a state of limited national emergency.

Soon the United States, despite its declaration of neutrality, was shipping Britain and France growing supplies of war matériel. In October, Roosevelt ordered a large part of the American fleet, home-ported in Southern California, to Hawaii to relieve pressure on the British, French, and Dutch colonies and Pacific Ocean defenses. Positioning the fleet at Pearl Harbor, he hoped, might serve to deter revisionist Japan from overturning the status quo in Southeast Asia. These momentous events, all occurring during the early months of Abe's tenure, raised fears in Tokyo that the United States, despite its strong isolationist sentiment, would eventually enter the war on the side of Britain and France. Unable to respond to the new international situation, the Abe cabinet collapsed on January 14, 1940.

Immediately another frantic effort to choose a successor began. Privy Seal Yuasa queried the senior statesmen, even the venerable Saionji, but attended above all to the wishes of the emperor. At Hirohito's insistence Reserve Admiral Yonai, a man in whom he reposed great trust, formed the next cabinet, and Hata was asked by Hirohito to stay on and assist Yonai as the army minister.
¹¹⁴
To
assuage criticism in the army at the selection of a naval officer, Hirohito also sanctioned at this time Gen. T
j
's elevation to the post of vice army minister.
¹¹⁵

From the very start of his reign, Hirohito had played an active role in high-level personnel appointments. At such times he had imposed conditions, telling the prime minister–designate he must do such and such, or appoint certain persons to this or that ministry so they could control one or another particular section chief.
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Indeed, he and his advisers had destabilized the system of party government by insisting on determining who would be the next prime minister. Now, as the China war dragged on and the pace of European diplomacy quickened, his involvement in such matters increased. His interventions were made at his own choosing, and intentionally concealed from the public. When new calls arose from the army high command for a military alliance with Germany that would make Japan part of an anti–Anglo-American bloc, Hirohito continued to resist. The government, he insisted, should focus on bringing the China war to a swift conclusion and not ally Japan closer with Germany except to counter the Soviet Union.

Three months into Yonai's tenure as prime minister, starting in April, Germany invaded Western Europe, completing the drastic realignment in international relations that it had begun eight months earlier with its conquest of Poland. One after another Europe's remaining independent nations fell: Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and finally, with little military resistance, France, from which the British army was extricated at the last moment. Overnight the geopolitical perspectives in Tokyo changed. For three long years Japan's leaders had been locked in a war of their own making in China, with no military or political victory in sight. The Nazi victories in Europe had created unprecedented opportunities for Japan to take over the Asian colonies of Britain, France, and the Netherlands. The expectation grew apace of making gains and compensating for weaknesses by
riding on the coattails of the rising power of Germany, which now controlled most of the resources of Europe up to the Soviet frontier and was preparing to invade Britain. When Yonai failed to act on the long-pending issue of a German alliance, the army brought down his cabinet, and Hirohito did nothing to prevent it.

Throughout this chaotic series of international crises under three prime ministers—Hiranuma, Abe, and Yonai—Hirohito was content to watch as both the China war and the policy of southern advance unfolded. Not once did he make a personal effort to extricate Japan from its deadlocked war in China. And because Japan's policy toward China remained unchanged, relations with the United States also failed to improve. Believing the policy of southern advance to be strategically desirable, Hirohito worried mainly over what stance the British and the Americans would adopt if the navy continued to move south.

By the summer of 1940, two new elements had entered the picture, increasing the pressure on him to align more closely with the advocates of a new German alliance. One was the conquest of Western Europe by the German military juggernaut, which left Britain apparently isolated, on the verge of invasion; the other was the realignment of Soviet foreign policy under the aegis of Stalin's pact with Hitler. The Soviet move seemed to have imparted new strength to the Axis alliance while also raising the specter of renewed Russian military aid to Chiang Kai-shek.
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In this situation of rapid military conquest and intense diplomatic maneuver, Hirohito vacillated, uncertain whether to stand firm against the army on a tripartite pact directed against the U.S. and Britain, or to change sides and sanction what the army wanted. Ultimately his decision would have less to do with shared ideological goals with the Nazis than with preserving the unity of Japan.