Western opposition to Japanese ambitions in Asia and the Pacific—combined with Tokyo’s determination to overcome any obstacles to imperial goals—set the tone for the diplomacy of the pre-Pearl Harbor decade. That period saw the complete breakdown of the Asian-Pacific security system created by the 1921" 22 Washington Conference: that is, the Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty, the Nine-Power Treaty in respect to China’s integrity, and the Four-Power Pact relating to the Pacific island possessions of Japan and the Western powers.1 The Manchurian affair of 1931-33 basically set the stage for the 1940-41 crisis that culminated in the Pacific War. The Army militants who staged the Mukden incident in September 1931 not only brought about the Japanese seizure of all Manchuria and the establishment of a puppet state under the last Chinese (Manchu) Emperor, but they also created a crisis in East Asian affairs that intensified over the years. Although there may not be a direct, lineal progression from Mukden to Pearl Harbor, events of the early 1930s in Manchuria and North China—and the subsequent aggressive expansion of Japanese imperial power in the rest of China and points south—were the catalysts for steadily worsening relations between Japan and the Western powers.
Japanese seizure of Manchuria and the full-scale invasion of China proper in 1937 epitomized a strategy of continental expansion that had earlier involved absorbing Korea and the spoils of the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War in southern Manchuria. Such “continentalism,” which featured exploiting nearby Northeast Asia as a basis for Japanese self-sufficiency and security, had its strongest devotees in the Army and among its imperialist civilian allies. That doctrine, however, had long been challenged by “navalists” who espoused an oceanic strategy, backed by a large and powerful fleet, as the appropriate one for an imperial Japan rising to great-power status.2 To the Army, Soviet Russia was the primary threat to Japan’s interests, while the logic of the oceanic strategy led to viewing the United States and Britain as the major potential enemies. By the mid-1930s, however, an uneasy marriage of these approaches developed as Japan looked beyond the continent to wider areas of potential domination in the name of “self-sufficiency.”
One ominous outcome of the Manchurian crisis was military dominance over Japan’s civil government, especially foreign policy. Although the division of civil and military authority inherent in Japan’s peculiar constitutional structure was not of critical importance in the pre- World War I era of oligarchical rule, or during the following decade of limited parliamentary ascendancy, it endlessly bedeviled the diplomacy of Japan and the other Powers during and after Manchuria. The military’s increasing exploitation of the ‘‘Supreme Command” prerogative in defense and strategic policy greatly reduced the cabinet’s power and seriously undercut the Foreign Minister’s position in diplomacy. Furthermore, military mutinies and assassinations of moderate politicians and military officers by extremists engendered an internal atmosphere of fear that tended to prevent Japanese diplomatic concessions to the West during the pre-Pearl Harbor decade. Public discourse was continuously befogged by a virulent ideological campaign that stressed anti-Western and anti-Communist themes, as well as the nation’s mission to bring all of Asia under the benevolent rays of Japanese imperial culture.3
Japan never became a monolithic state in the mold of Hitler’s Germany, however. In reality, its government "'as a conglomeration of elitist civil and military factions, sometimes warring, sometimes cooperating. Coordination of national and foreign policy was attempted through a Patchwork of committees that functioned so inefficiently that they contributed more to the drift toward war than to a clear and rational definition of the national interest. Several civil-military committees within the cabinet functioned during the 1930s, but by 1940 it became quite evident that the so-called Liaison Conference—composed of the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, the War and Navy Ministers, and the representatives of the Imperial Head- barters’ “Supreme Command” (Army and Navy general staffs)—had become the key group in decisions affecting Peace or war. Interminable wrangling took place before a consensus, however vague, was ready for the Emperor’s formal assent at an Imperial Conference.4 Below these bodies were numerous formal and informal subgroups, largely composed of middle-level military officers who were usually more radical and bellicose than their superiors and remarkably successful in setting the agendas and shaping the outcomes of high-level deliberations.5
Although radicals in the Army were undoubtedly leading players in this military domination of Japanese foreign policy, the rather widely held view that the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was considerably more moderate and much less responsible for the drift to war can be seriously challenged. Since it was accepted that any war with the United States and Britain would be primarily naval, the UN’s role in policymaking was highly significant. In two crucial respects, the Navy was the major player in pushing Japan into confrontation with the maritime powers. One was the determination of the most influential groups in the IJN to break out of the limitations of the 1922 Washington and 1930 London naval treaties; the other was the Navy’s primary role in formulating the “southward advance” policy that would ultimately lead to war.
Resentment against the treaty ratios (10-10-6) came to a head in the mid-1930s. Admiral Tomosaburo Kato and his successors had engineered and supported the two pacts, understanding that the ultimate hopelessness of a naval race with the United States dictated that Japan’s security lay in naval limitation and cooperation with the Western powers. To this group, the fleet was an instrument of deterrence rather than war. As their influence waned after 1930, however, a hard-line “fleet group,” headed by the rabidly anti-Western ideologue Admiral Kanji Kato and his allies, succeeded in purging the treaty supporters and in browbeating the cabinet into abrogating the treaties.6 When Admiral Osami Nagano walked out of treaty renewal negotiations in January 1936, the “official” resumption of the naval race to Pearl Harbor began— although Japan had already undertaken two building programs that were rapidly bringing the Japanese fleet to parity with the U.S. Navy, which had not been building to treaty limits. These major programs were usually justified as a response to “oppression” and “isolation” by the United States and Britain.7
As early as August 1936, a major decision by the cabinet of Koki Hirota, entitled “Fundamentals of National Policy,” clearly forecast Japan’s southward expansionist objectives. The UN’s role in setting these goals was quite apparent. While the Army wanted an anti-Soviet posture, the Navy insisted on arming against the Western powers who would naturally create obstacles to a southern thrust. The usual compromise over budget and material allocation was reached, but the Navy succeeded in pointing imperial aggrandizement toward the South Seas. Appropriations for an enormous additional building program soon followed. After all, a nation destined to be the leader of Greater East Asia must certainly have a great navy.
Full-scale invasion of China in 1937, which was to become a major factor in confrontation with the United States, ultimately became a hopeless quagmire for the Japanese Army. But the IJN —which became a major player in the “China Incident”—exploited the hostilities to expand its activities to the south. After blockading the China coast and Yangtze River, and actively participating in the harassment of Western commerce and other interests, it convinced the cabinet in late 1938 to authorize seizure of Hainan Island and the Spratly group, thus enabling Japanese forces to threaten Western colonial positions from vantage points in the South China Sea. The march to the south was under way.
War in Europe—especially the fall of Holland and France and the grim outlook for Britain in 1940—caused all the military leaders to concentrate on new possibilities for a southward advance. Awed by the swift German victories, the Army took the initiative in drafting what was to become in early July a major strategic and foreign policy document with the ponderous title of “Outline of the Main Principles for Coping with the World Situation.” It proposed not only to expedite a settlement of the China War on Japan’s terms but also to establish a self-sufficient economic sphere that would stretch from the Indian Ocean to the South Seas north of Australia. Any obstacles to the realization of these goals would be brushed aside. While there were certain ambiguities in the plan’s language, it nonetheless established a framework for policies followed through to December 1941, thus laying out the road to war. Although the Navy resented this Army intrusion into planning for the southern area, it gave support to a strategy of “defense in the north, advance in the south” that would provide the IJN with a greater claim on Japan’s limited resources.
Influential middle-grade officers in the Navy General Staff had developed plans to exploit a “golden opportunity” for seizing the colonies of defeated France and Holland and “soon-to-be-defeated” Britain. Although the Army’s initial thinking was that war with Britain alone might result from the execution of the “Outline,” the Navy insisted on providing for the more realistic likelihood of hostilities with the United States. Its top officers moved ahead with demands for more resources and preparatory mobilization of the fleet. Achievement of the plan’s goals by diplomatic means would be sought, but Japan would use force if necessary. The UN’s approval may have been opportunistic in terms of maneuvering internally for position against the Army, but clearly the Navy, by then dominated by hawkish General Staff members, was taking a firm step toward hostilities with the United States.
First use of force to move south came with the Japanese occupation of bases in northern French Indochina in September 1940. Ostensibly for the purpose of cutting off supplies to China, it was promoted by the Navy as a good step forward in the southern advance, and a strategic advantage in war with the United States and Britain. In the minds of the military planners, the ultimate consequences, of course, were never thought through. Thorough preparation and strong resolution would somehow bring triumph.8
Another major issue between Japan and the Anglo- Saxon countries that arose late in the decade was Tokyo’s membership in the Tripartite Pact (the Axis Alliance of Germany, Italy, and Japan). Signed in September 1940, the treaty was foreshadowed by the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936, which had committed these three partners to a generalized struggle against world Communism. The 1940 agreement was brief and pointed. It recognized Japan’s leadership of a “new order in Greater East Asia”; Tokyo reciprocated by recognizing German hegemony in Europe. The key article, number III, which committed each party to come to the aid of any other member attacked by a power not then engaged in the European war or the China conflict, was clearly intended to deter the United States from participation in either. What remained unclear, however, were the precise circumstances under which Japan would be obligated to become a belligerent. This was to become an extremely serious obstacle in the U.S.- Japanese negotiations of 1940-41.
Although the Army had been the most enthusiastic backer of alignment with the Axis, consummation of the pact was the special handiwork of the American-educated, anti-U.S. Foreign Minister of the second Konoye cabinet— the quixotic, verbose, and thoroughly disagreeable Yosuke Matsuoka. The UN’s role was an ambivalent one. When the matter of strengthening ties with Germany had been discussed in high councils in 1938 and 1939, leaders in the Navy Ministry such as admirals Mitsumasa Yonai, Isoroku Yamamoto, and Shigeyoshi Inoue strongly opposed an Axis alliance. They knew that such an entanglement would likely mean a war with the United States and Britain which Japan could not win. They were outmaneuvered, however, by the increasingly vocal and influential group of officers—especially in the Navy General Staff— who had come under German technological and ideological influence after the late 1920s. As the number of IJN officers training in Germany or residing there as attaches grew, relative to those with similar experience in the United States and Britain, the prestige and influence of the latter declined.9 Thus, sentiment in favor of an Axis alliance grew powerful, especially in the wake of German victories in Europe in 1940. Despite this, however, a basic IJN reluctance to go to war with the United States (at least not until thorough preparations had been made) remained. This posture helped render somewhat ambiguous the nature of Japan’s obligations under article III.
Western opposition to this decade of Japanese aggrandizement was verbally vigorous but slow and equivocal in Practice. Secretary of State Henry Stimson’s strong condemnation of the Manchurian adventure in 1931-33 may have been morally satisfying, but its practical effect was only to intensify Japanese hostility toward the United States. Hampered by the Great Depression, the spirit of disarmament, and an isolationist and pacifistically inclined public, Washington and London were in a weak Position to challenge Tokyo’s moves. Japan’s naval building programs following departure from the limitation treaties generated only modest responses, even from the Navy-oriented Franklin D. Roosevelt, who read congressional and public sentiment perceptively.
Provision for a two-ocean U.S. Navy did not come until Britain was in extremis in mid-1940. The growing German and Italian threats close to home rendered Britain increasingly passive north of Singapore. By 1939-40, it had essentially lost its military and diplomatic position in China, while plans for naval and air reinforcement of the Singapore bastion were scaled back significantly. Whatever the dubious merits of the old U.S. War Plan Orange— which called for the American fleet to move to the Western Pacific to challenge the IJN upon outbreak of war— the Japanese Navy unquestionably enjoyed superiority there by 1940.
Despite Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s cautious diplomatic policy, confrontation between the IJN and the U.S. Navy flared in the early years of the Sino-Japanese War. Much of this tension arose from the determination of the redoubtable and outspoken Admiral Harry Yamell, Commander of the Asiatic Fleet, to provide protection for U.S. nationals and American interests in Shanghai and up the Yangtze. He did so, regardless of the risk of armed conflict and despite the unhappiness of Secretary Hull over Yamell’s manner of giving effect to the secretary’s own position on the international legalities. Yamell’s 1937-38 encounters with the UN’s China Fleet commanders—admirals Kiyoshi Hasegawa and Koshiro Oikawa—as well as the reverberations in Washington and Tokyo, were a colorful part of the military/diplomatic tapestry of the period. The sinking of the Panay (PR-5) off Nanking in 1937, and the blockade of the Monocacy (PR- 2) farther upriver the next year, were only the most dramatic incidents in this first stage of the USN-IJN face- off.10
Aside from a potentially overwhelming U.S. naval buildup, the UN’s immediate concerns by 1940-41 centered on two points: American commitment to Britain and defense of the British and Dutch colonial positions in Southeast Asia, and U.S. embargoes on critical commodities, especially oil. Both contributed significantly to the diplomatic difficulties of the period and to the Navy’s role in the decision for war. While active American assistance to imperiled Britain in the Atlantic meant a more passive and defensive U.S. Navy posture in the Pacific (as exemplified in Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold R. Stark’s plan “Dog” and the Joint Board’s “Rainbow 5”), the Japanese Navy had reason to worry about a premature war with the United States arising from Japan’s Tripartite Pact obligation, should U.S.-German hostilities erupt. Furthermore, in early 1941 the expanding U.S.-British staff conversations bearing on defense of the Pacific, in addition to regional United States/Britain/Netherlands staff talks in Singapore and Batavia, fostered a siege mentality in the IJN—the notion that Japan was being “oppressed” by an “ABCD encirclement.”11
Above all, however, the Japanese Navy feared Western embargoes on vital materials such as oil. Early U.S. trade restrictions in response to Japanese aggression in China were mild, reflecting Secretary Hull’s marked success in outmaneuvering administration hardliners who advocated more severe measures.12 Whereas Hull’s moral and legal censures of Japanese actions eventually had a considerable impact on the drift to war, the gradually tightening economic sanctions imposed between 1938 and mid-1941 (while worrisome to the Japanese Navy) were not critical. That crunch came with the total U.S. embargo through freezing their funds after the Japanese occupied southern Indochina in July 1941—a move also made by Britain and the Netherlands. It was a blow that the IJN planners expected would follow seizure of the entire French colony and would thus require further “advance” to capture the oil of the Indies, bringing war with the United States unless an American backdown could be negotiated. At the decisive 2 July Imperial Conference, Navy Chief of Staff Nagano quite clearly stated that Japan would brook no interference with its imperial objectives.13 At that point, the IJN had cast the die.
Could negotiations with Washington bring a favorable solution to the problems threatening the IJN and the nation? The decision-making and diplomatic records of the period indicate that there was some hope in the Navy that the 1941 talks would bring results, despite much bellicose and fatalistic talk in Tokyo. Perhaps this desire was linked to the choice of two admirals considered friendly to the United States for leading roles in the diplomatic crisis of 1941: Kichisaburo Nomura as Ambassador to Washington, and Teijiro Toyoda as Foreign Minister in the third Konoye cabinet. Both seemed to represent the chance that “moderate” elements in Japan might still at this late date contribute to a peaceful “adjustment” of U.S.-Japanese relations. Their ultimate failure had less to do with them than with the intractable nature of the issues.
Although Nomura had earlier been Foreign Minister for a brief period, he was essentially without diplomatic experience. He never failed to tell the public, as well as his superiors in the cabinet and the American negotiators, that he was but a “simple sailor,” without political expertise, reluctant to take on the task, but committed to trying his sincere best to promote an amicable solution to the fast- developing crisis.14 Before accepting the Washington post, Nomura solicited support from his Navy friends and was given assurances by Prime Minister Konoye of policy review. Nonetheless, he also took the precaution of checking with powerful Army leaders in Tokyo and on the continent.15
When the genial admiral arrived at his post in February, the atmosphere seemed hopeful.16 But Nomura carried the general burden of his country’s policies on China, the Axis alliance, and the southward imperial march. One particular cross he had to bear until July was the cantankerous Matsuoka. In an inauspicious beginning, the Foreign Minister sent Nomura a truculent “guidance” cable on 14 February—a rambling, bombastic diatribe whose content Nomura was careful not to pass on to his American hosts. Of course, they had read it all through the decryption of the “Purple” diplomatic code, dubbed “Magic.”17 Later, Matsuoka harshly reprimanded Nomura for allegedly implying to Secretary Hull that the Foreign Minister opposed better relations with the United States, and shortly before he lost his post in a cabinet reorganization in mid-July, Matsuoka gave Nomura a “parting shot across the bow,” accusing the ambassador of toadying to the Americans.1'
Ironically, however, it was also the admiral’s great eagerness to arrive at an understanding with the United States that caused him serious difficulties. His first meeting with the President was characterized by the bonhomie typical of FDR and an exchange of pleasantries between the two “former naval persons.” Secretary Hull was cordial, but cautious, as usual. The Hull-Nomura “conversations” (Hull being careful to avoid the term “negotiations”) went on until 7 December except for an interruption at the time of the Japanese occupation of southern Indochina.
Although they may have been doomed to failure in any case, misadventure plagued these talks from the start. The State Department unofficially received a “draft understanding” that had been drawn up by two American Catholic missionaries, several unofficial Japanese close to Prince Konoye, and one of Nomura’s embassy assistants. The Secretary carefully warned Nomura that the document was entirely unofficial, involved no U.S. commitment, and must be acknowledged by Japan as its basis for beginning negotiations. He then enunciated his famous “Four Principles” for peace and nonaggression, which he insisted Japan must accept before official negotiations could start.19
Nevertheless, the admiral sent the “draft understanding” to Tokyo, neglecting to include the “Principles,' which implied that it was an American proposal generally agreeable to Washington.20 This misstep created a basic misunderstanding that contributed to the ultimate stalemate. It is difficult to comprehend the Japanese leaders believing the United States had agreed to a document which, despite some Japanese concessions, clearly still favored Tokyo’s position. It is evident, however, that when American attitudes later stiffened as Hull’s patience flagged, the Japanese erroneously considered this a retreat from Washington’s original posture. This became a critical point when the United States rejected a last-minute modus vivendi and Hull issued his important 26 November restatement of the American position.21
Nomura’s free-wheeling style took several forms. In addition to holding back Hull’s stem “Four Principles” for three weeks, he disparaged Matsuoka and simply pocketed some of the minister’s more abrasive fulminations. His tendency to report his own views rather than Hull’s or FDR’s brought rebuke from the newly installed Foreign Minister Toyoda, and he lost several critical days in reporting the President’s July proposal for neutralizing Indochina. The tragicomic scene at the Japanese Embassy as the final 14-part message from Tokyo was frantically being processed on 7 December seemed an almost appropriate finale. Through all these adversities, Nomura’s abiding concern about American belief in his sincerity and integrity shone through many a “Magic” decrypt.22 In sum, he attempted the impossible—to defend his country’s policies as best as he could and to achieve an understanding with the United States at the same time. His country and his Navy would not allow him to do so.
Nomura’s IJN colleagues certainly did not help his mission, whatever assurances they may have given him at the outset. In calling for “war now” at the 2 July Imperial Conference, Chief of Staff Nagano argued that the balance of forces would, in the future, tip against Japan—a view shared throughout the General Staff. During an imperial audience on 5 September, just preceding the decision to set a date for hostilities, it was Nagano who told the worried Emperor that while certain victory could not be assured, war would be a necessary “surgery” if diplomacy failed. In October, Navy Minister Oikawa refused to give Konoye a reprieve on the Washington negotiations, ensuring the cabinet’s downfall and the accession of General Hideki Tōjō as Prime Minister.23 Furthermore, Foreign Minister Toyoda was not particularly helpful to Nomura in either the Indochina crisis or in the latter’s attempts to downplay the Axis alliance, and of course, he did not inform the Ambassador of the 3 and 6 September conferences setting the timetable for hostilities. Commander in Chief Combined Fleet Yamamoto, who would probably have wished Nomura every success, had by autumn received Nagano’s agreement to launch his daring raid on Pearl Harbor, designed to immobilize the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Whatever the war responsibility of the hardline Army officers and the radical civilian hotheads, the fact remains that the Japanese Navy was a major factor on the way to the Pacific War. The Army engineered the Manchurian crisis and played the leading role in China, but it was the IJN that generated the main challenge to the United States by abandoning the naval treaty system and pushing for conquest in the Southwest Pacific. It is questionable whether the United States and Britain would have ever gone to war over China alone, but Japan’s determination to dominate all East Asia and the Western Pacific brought the inevitable consequences that diplomacy could not avoid. Although the IJN may have been fairly realistic about the slim chances for ultimate victory, it did not allow this consideration to deflect it from its fatal course.
1. Excellent studies of the Washington treaties—especially the naval agreements— are William R. Braisted’s The U.S. Navy in the Pacific, 1909-1922 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), chapters 32-41, and Roger Dingman’s Power in the Pacific (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).
2. Mark Peattie and David Evans, “Sato Tetsutaro and Japanese Strategy,” Naval History 4:4 (Fall 1990):36-37.
3. David Lu, From the Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1961), chapter 1.
4. Seiichi Imai, “Cabinet, Emperor, and Senior Statesmen,” in Dorothy Borg and Shumpei Okamoto, eds.. Pearl Harbor as History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), pp. 53-79.
5. Robert J. C. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War (Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 149 and 171.
6. Sadao Asada, “The Japanese Navy and the United States,” in Borg and Okamoto, op. cit., pp. 234-42.
7. Ibid., p. 243. Also Stephen E. Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), p. 164.
8. Much of the above is based on Jun Tsunoda, “The Navy’s Role in the Southern Strategy,” from Taiheiyo Senso e no michi, Robert A. Scalapino, trans., in James W. Morley, ed.. The Fateful Choice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 241-62.
9. In conversations with the author in 1953-54, Admiral Katsunoshin Yamanashi, architect of the 1930 London Naval Treaty, recalled with wistful nostalgia his days as a young student officer in early-20th-century England. Also Asada, op. cit., pp. 228-29.
10. See James H. Herzog, Closing the Open Door (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1973), chapters 2 and 3.
11. Asada, op. cit., p. 253.
12. Secretary Hull’s cautious policy is well documented in Jonathan G. Utley, Going to War with Japan, 1937-1941 (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1985), especially chapters 1 through 7.
13. Nobutaka Ike, Japan’s Decision for War: Records of the 1941 Policy Conferences (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), pp. 50-51, 81-82, 98-99, and 106.
14. For example, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States-Japan 1931-41 (Washington, 1943), vol. II, pp. 128, 387 (hereafter FRUS-J). Department of Defense, The “MAGIC” Background of Pearl Harbor (Washington, 1977), vol. I, item #20 and #22, pp. A-16 and A-17, and vol. II, item #42, p. A-21; #127, p. A-69; and #216, p. A-120 (hereafter “Magic”).
15. Kichisaburd Nomura, Beikoku ni Tsukaishite (Mission to the United States), (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1946), cited in Hilary Conroy, “Nomura Kichisaburo,” in Richard D. Bums and Edward M. Bennett, eds.. Diplomats in Crisis (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 1974), pp. 300-301. Also Lu, op. cit., p. 156.
16. An interesting account of Nomura’s reception in Hawaii can be found in Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton’s “And I Was There”: Pearl Harbor and Midway— Breaking the Secrets (New York: Morrow, 1985), p. 82.
17. “Magic,” vol. I, item #4, #4A, and #5, pp. A-3 and A-4.
18. Ibid., vol. II, item #41, p. A-20, and #141, p. A-77.
19. FRUS-J, vol. II, pp. 406-10.
20. “Magic,” vol. I, item #45, p. A-35.
21. Robert J. C. Butow, “The Hull-Nomura Conversations: A Fundamental Misconception,” American Historical Review (July 1960):834.
22. In 1954, Nomura told the author that he (Nomura) must fly to Washington at once to assure a gravely ill former-Secretary Hull once more that his negotiations were sincere and that he was completely unaware of the impending Pearl Harbor attack. Some weeks later, Nomura appeared purged of his angst and reported a most gratifying visit with Hull at Bethesda Naval Hospital.
23. Butow, Tōjō, op. cit., pp. 254-55; Pelz, op. cit., p. 235.