Pearl Harbour - A novel of December 8th (29 page)

“Mr. President, I feel that despite all our problems in Russia, North Africa, and the Atlantic, I also have to remind you that we could face a very nasty situation in the Pacific,” Churchill replied, his eyes focused on FDR.

“I have a source I trust who has been touring French Indochina and other places, and he is convinced the Japanese are going to move south soon to grab the oil of the Netherlands East Indies. We shall have to support our Dutch allies, and we have very little to send to stop the Japanese. I am scraping the bottom of the barrel. I think I can find a few ships to establish a presence, but I cannot build a Pacific battle fleet capable of defending the East Indies region. I can hold Singapore, which we have spent twenty years building up, but I am afraid your forces will have to do any heavy lifting in the Pacific.”

FDR nodded yes and pointed toward General Marshall and Admiral Stark.

“We have already decided to quadruple the number of B-17s in the Philippines to thirty-six. Those strategic bombers will serve as strategic deterrent to the Japanese because we will be able to bomb their supply lines if they try to move south. I would send some battleships, but as Stark told Admiral Pound, we have a big problem with the mechanical systems on our newest battleships, and they have to be refitted. We simply have nothing to send.

“Maybe you could send a few key ships such as that beautiful new battleship you came over on.” FDR motioned toward the Prince of Wales lying at anchor a few hundred yards away.

“Together, my friend, we will draw together the will and the forces to stop the Japanese. I just hope we can convince them to accept peaceful negotiations. Britain does not need a second major war at this time, and we do not need your strength diverted to the Pacific,” Churchill responded.

“You have my word, America will continue to focus on defeating Germany no matter what happens,” FDR responded.

Tokyo, Office of the Foreign Minister: 18 August 1941

The day was boiling hot, more like Washington in August than Japan, which usually gets some cooling breaks. Dressed in formal diplomatic attire, Ambassador Joseph Grew felt as if he were already swimming in a sea of sweat beneath his suit, vest, button-down collar, and tie.

His limousine, parked in front of the office of the foreign minister, had the traditional American flags mounted on the front. A cordon of security guards kept a watchful eye as a servant of the foreign minister opened the car door for him, bowing low. Passers-by paused at the sight of him and his cane. An elderly couple, making eye contact, stopped in their tracks and bowed low, and he returned the gesture with a polite nod. Several army officers were walking by; there was a whispered exchange at the sight of the flag and they slowed, but a security agent quickly rushed up to them, snapping an order for them to move on. Reluctantly they agreed, but the eye contact with Grew was cold, icy. He ignored them.

At the open doorway, in a most unusual gesture, stood the new foreign minister, Teijiro Toyoda, a former admiral of the navy, a replacement for the hotheaded Matsuoka, who had so aggressively dragged their two countries closer to the abyss.

Teijiro even made the unusual gesture of coming down the steps to greet him, old training first causing him to begin to raise his hand in a military salute, but then it fell to his side as he bowed formally, then offered his hand to shake.

“The heat, it is killing,” Teijiro offered, and Grew nodded in agreement as they walked into the ministry and quickly down the hall to the Foreign Minister’s Office, the hallway cleared of all traffic as the two passed.

If anything, once inside the office with doors closed, the heat was even more stifling. The new luxury of air-conditioning was all but unknown yet in Japan, where such days of intense heat were relatively rare. Already waiting and standing politely to one side was Teijiro’s interpreter and, as usual, Grew had his own young assistant following in his wake.

The formalities disappeared within seconds.

“Mr. Ambassador, may I make a friendly suggestion?” Teijiro offered. “Let us get out of these ridiculous coats and ties. I’ll have ice and towels fetched for us.”

Grew smiled and found an instant liking for this man. He was not a bureaucratic climber such as the detestable Matsuoka; but instead a military man, one who had come up through the standard ranks to command of a battleship in his Imperial Navy. He had that weathered look of a man who had seen many years at sea on the bridge of a ship, keeping watch, someone who instantly struck Grew as no-nonsense, with the reputation of a straight talker rather than a smooth one.

All four shed their formal clothing with sighs, Teijiro going so far as to unbutton the two top buttons of his shirt. Iced tea was brought in on an ornate silver tray along with a large silver bucket, beading with moisture, small hand towels on another tray. Teijiro, without ceremony, scooped out a handful of ice, wrapped a towel around it and rubbed it against the back of his neck and face, sighing audibly. “Sir, I thought I was about to faint while waiting for your arrival.”

“And I, sir, thought I’d faint when caught in traffic getting over here,” Grew said, with a smile, warming to this man.

Their two assistants had sat motionless, at least shedding their jackets, and Teijiro, shaking his head, told them to pick up some iced towels as well and drink their iced tea, speaking with a slightly booming voice, like that of a commander at sea, the two a bit nervous but gratefully complying.

Teijiro had already redecorated his office in the short time since the Emperor had requested of Prime Minister Konoye that the old cabinet be dissolved and a new one called to order. Gone were Matsuoka’s collection of antique prints and numerous photos of himself with various dignitaries, including Hitler and Stalin. Instead there was simply a map of Japan, another one of China, and various nautical prints, some in the traditional Japanese style, others Western looking, along with several photographs of ships he had once commanded.

After draining a glass of iced tea, and taking a minute to let the rapidly melting ice in his towel soak through, cooling his neck so that a rivulet of cool water trickled down his back, Grew felt it was time to bring the meeting to order. Given that it was he who was asked to “attend to the Foreign Minister,” protocol was for his host to open the main point of discussion.

“I believe I can speak plainly and to the point,” Teijiro opened, and Grew nodded encouragingly.

“Though I am now in this office, my training of a lifetime was in the navy. We do not mince words; there is no time to do so when a typhoon is about to strike and you must prepare your ship or all will perish.”

“I concur,” Grew said softly, nodding for him to continue even as his own interpreter translated what Teijiro was saying.

“The embargo of all goods, but especially oil, laid down by your president will force a terrible crisis. Japan must import a minimum of eighty thousand barrels of oil a day just to barely sustain itself; anything less and reserves, precious reserves saved up over years, must be tapped.”

“Such an amount of oil for you Americans is trivial. Your citizens most likely bum ten times that amount each weekend merely to go to the beach or mountains. For us it is now a lifeblood, and the embargo is a stranglehold upon us. Blockade us from your oil, for which we are willing to pay fair market value, and in short order our economy will collapse entirely.”

“Withdraw from Indochina and I am certain my government will reconsider the actions it felt were necessary to protest your takeover of a neutral country.”

“Neutral?” Teijiro asked and shook his head. “The British are at war with the Vichy government, already engaged in combat against them in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria. One could see this as the removal of a potential enemy for your side.”

“I doubt seriously if that was your government’s true motivation for yet another act of imperialism,” Grew replied, but casting his voice carefully so as not to sound accusatory. If it was to argue about Indochina, the foreign minister would never have called him here; that issue for both sides was now set in place and obviously neither would back down unless some major gesture was made.

Teijiro sighed and shook his head.

“We had to take Indochina in order to provide secured air and naval bases for continued operations to suppress the rebels in China. It had nothing to do with German pressure as some now argue, which is most strange given that Germany and the Vichy are tacit allies. It is about China.”

“And my government must question this, sir,” Grew replied, as he put his soaking wet towel on the tray and picked up another one, wrapped it with ice and continued to cool his forehead and neck.

“Of what good are bases in Haiphong, in Saigon, when it comes to China, hundreds of miles of away? For that matter you have already seized the island of Hainan, and thus secured bases enough for both your navy and army in that area to operate from. If I represented the British, I would of course wonder if you were not, even now, casting eyes farther south.”

Teijiro sighed, following suit with the ritual of using another towel to cool his brow.

“Do you honestly believe we seek another war, while still caught up as we are in the one in China?”

Grew nodded slowly in reply.

“One could argue that point. China has become your tar baby.”

“What?” Teijiro asked, looking in confusion at his interpreter.

“I’m sorry,” Grew replied. “An American Negro folk legend. How a wily fox tried to trap a rabbit by making a dummy out of tar. The rabbit grew angry with the dummy, struck him, and became so entangled within the tar he could not escape.”

Teijiro smiled.

“And so the fox ate him?”

“No, the rabbit was able to talk his way out of the trap and escape. Perhaps China is the same. You are entrapped now in a war without end. It could be 1960, 1980 and you will still be fighting there without a final ending in sight. My president is more than willing to help broker a deal for you to disenthrall yourself from China, but my government cannot stand idly by while innocents by the millions are slaughtered, while American and British missionaries who are there out of the most altruistic reasons are attacked as well. Do you know that when the war started missionaries painted their nation’s flags and red crosses on the roofs of hospitals, schools, and churches they had built to signal to your pilots the neutrality of such places? They have erased them, for it seems such flags only drew more attacks, an insult to the most common ideals of humanity, let alone the rules of war.”

Teijiro lowered his head, saying nothing.

Grew nodded his head.

“I know there are profound divisions between your navy, which you honorably served in, and your army, which seems hell-bent on refusing to admit the stalemate in China, and as a result now turns covetous eyes elsewhere.”

“I speak for my government and the Emperor,” Teijiro replied stiffly, “not for any branch of service.”

“Withdraw from Indochina and perhaps that can be an opening to the lifting of the economic embargo,” Grew said forcefully. “Otherwise my government has no recourse but to interpret that invasion as an act preparatory to a great expansion of the war against British and Dutch holdings to the south.

There is no other reason for the occupation of such territory than that.” Teijiro sighed and slowly nodded his head.

“I feared you would say that, but that is not the main reason I asked for you to meet with me today.”

“Go on then, please.”

“Are you aware of the secret negotiations opened by the prime minister, Prince Konoye, and your Secretary Hull?”

“What?” Grew could not contain his surprise.

Teijiro smiled. He knew Grew to be an honorable man, representing his own government, but also a man who had a deep and abiding ideal that there was still a way for Japan and America to reach an accord. The stain of Nanking, the continued slaughter in China, the Panay incident had wounded his position, and the ever-increasing influence of the military’ in the affairs of the diplomacy and government of Japan had troubled him. Teijiro watched him carefully. Though Grew suspected that war plans were already being laid out, he had little idea that since early July the navy and army were moving full forward with the strategic and operational plans for a massive strike to topple American, British, and Dutch holdings in the western Pacific. For a military man, the offering of a chance of combat did hold appeal, but now, in his role of foreign minister he could see the other side.

Tojo and others in their war-plannings envisioned a quick victory. Britain had stripped its forces in the Pacific to the bare minimum, its Commonwealth troops and even their navies committed to the campaign in North Africa and the Middle East. America, though having moved its forward base to Pearl Harbor, still wished to be isolationist, the embassy in Washington reporting that on a daily basis peace protestors ringed the White House, calling for an end to Lend-Lease, the withdrawal of American garrisons in the Pacific to avoid “provocations,” and a general wish just to be left alone. Konoye had been maneuvered into a comer to agree with the meeting of 2 July, which set in motion a chain of events that would lead to war by the end of the year. But in secret he had also sent a direct communication to Secretary Hull, asking for a personal meeting with the president. Anchorage, Alaska, had been suggested, as had Hawaii.

Hull, the embassy in Washington reported, had rejected it as another “Munich,” a meeting where Japan would wrangle concessions that would only build its strength.

The foreign minister saw it in opposite terms. If a peaceful settlement was not reached, and reached soon, America would stir itself and truly begin to rearm, an effort that within months could outstrip anything Japan could achieve, or explode into war.

“Exactly that,” Teijiro continued. “Several weeks back he sent a private note to your secretary of state, suggesting that he and your president meet, in secret, to discuss a way of defusing the growing crisis between us.”