7. Back Door to War

Chapter Seven

BACK DOOR TO WAR

FOR YEARS before Pearl Harbor Mr. Roosevelt had talked of peace. For months he had schemed for war. His deeds belied his words. These are some of the things he said, and some of the things he did:

At Chautauqua, New York, August 19, 1936, he said, “I hate war.”¹

At the dedication of the Chicago Outer Drive bridge on October 5, 1937, he proposed a “quarantine” of aggressors.²

To students of the University of North Carolina on December 5, 1938, he denied that “you and your little brothers would be sent to the bloody fields of Europe.”³

On January 4, 1939, he urged repeal of the arms embargo and resort to methods “short of war” but “stronger than words” to deter aggressors.⁴

In the same month he told the Senate military affairs committee, “The American frontier is on the Rhine.”⁵

On April 15, 1939, he said that the only excuse for war was “self-evident home defense . . . [which] does not mean defense thousands and thousands of miles away.”⁶

In June, 1939, he received King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain at the White House when they made an unprecedented visit to the United States three months before war began in Europe.

On October 26, 1939, almost two months after the start of the European war, he described as “one of the worst fakes in current history” protests against “sending the boys of American mothers to fight on the battlefields of Europe.”⁷

On November 4, 1939, after his fourth appeal to Congress in a year, neutrality legislation was revised to permit “cash and carry” shipments of arms to belligerents.⁸

On June 10, 1940, when Belgium and Holland had capitulated, the British army had fled from Dunkirk, and France was collapsing, he described Italy’s declaration of war as a stab in the back of France.⁹

On June 20 he enrolled the erstwhile Republicans, Frank Knox and Henry L. Stimson, in his cabinet as secretaries, respectively, of Navy and War, in order to further his third-term aspirations and suggest coalition support of his war policy.¹⁰

During June he stripped American arsenals to re-equip the British army, which had abandoned its arms at Dunkirk.¹¹

On August 18, 1940, he executed a defense pact with Canada,¹² a belligerent, encouraging Prime Minister Churchill of Britain to observe two days later that the empire and America were “somewhat mixed up together.”¹³

On August 28, Roosevelt mustered the National Guard into federal service.¹⁴

On September 2, 1940, by executive decree, he transferred fifty American destroyers to Britain for rights to bases in British possessions in the western hemisphere.¹⁵

On September 16, he signed the first peacetime conscription bill in America’s history, under which 42 million men were enrolled October 16 for military duty.¹⁶

At Boston, October 30, 1940, campaigning for the third term, he assured parents, “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”¹⁷

On November 8, 1940, after his re-election, he allocated half of American war production to Britain.¹⁸ The effect of the third-term victory upon Britain was described by Adm. Stark in a letter November 12, 1940, to Adm. Hart, commander-in-chief of the Asiatic fleet. Stark reported: “Ghormley (Vice-Adm. Robert L. Ghormley, naval observer in London) tells me that the British expected us to be in the war a few days after the re-election of the President—which is merely another evidence of their slack ways of thought and of their non-realistic views of international political conditions and of our own political system.”¹⁹

On December 17, 1940, Roosevelt proposed lend-lease to eliminate the “silly, foolish old dollar sign” in paying Britain’s war bills.²⁰

On December 29, 1940, he announced that the United States was to become “the arsenal of democracy,” but told the people they could “nail any talk about sending armies to Europe as deliberate untruth.”²¹ Churchill on Feb. 9, 1941, echoed: “Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”²²

On January 24, 1941, Roosevelt ignored protocol by hastening to Annapolis to greet Lord Halifax, the new British ambassador, who had arrived on the battleship “King George V.”²³

On March 11, 1941, he signed the lend-lease act, which made the United States, to all intents and purposes, a belligerent.²⁴ More than 49 billion dollars in aid was to be granted under lend-lease.²⁵

On April 9, 1941, Mr. Roosevelt transferred ten Coast Guard cutters to the British and assumed a protectorate over Greenland.²⁶

On May 29, 1941, he permitted British airmen to train here.²⁷

On June 14, 1941, he froze German and Italian funds and, on June 16, ordered consular staffs of the two nations out of the United States.²⁸

On June 22, he promised Russia support in its new war with Germany.²

On July 7, 1941, he ordered American Marines into Iceland to relieve the British garrison.³⁰

During the same month thousands of American workers streamed into Londonderry, North Ireland, to build a great American naval base.³¹

On August 14, 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill proclaimed the Atlantic Charter after a meeting at sea off Newfoundland.³² The Selective Service Act was extended on the same day and the previous limitation that not more than 900,000 men should be in training at one time was removed.³³

On September 11, 1941, after torpedoes were fired at the destroyer “Greer” near Iceland, Roosevelt issued an order to the Navy to “shoot on sight” if German or Italian warships were encountered.³⁴

On October 27, 1941, in his Navy Day speech, Roosevelt announced to the country that “the shooting has started” and “we Americans have cleared our decks and taken our battle stations.”³⁵

On November 17, 1941, Roosevelt received authority to arm merchant ships.³⁶

On November 24, he sent troops to occupy Dutch Guiana, source of the bauxite for 60 per cent of America’s aluminum production.³⁷

These were the things he was doing and saying openly.* Here are some of the things that he was doing secretly:

On April 21, 1941, he directed units of the Atlantic fleet to “trail” German and Italian merchant and naval ships and aircraft and to broadcast their movements in plain language at four-hour intervals for the convenience of British and allied warships and planes.³⁸

On May 22, 1941, he ordered Adm. Stark to prepare an expedition of 25,000 men to seize the Azores from neutral Portugal.³⁹ Plans to seize Martinique, French possession in the Caribbean, were laid at the same time.⁴⁰

On August 11, 1941, at the Atlantic conference, he revived the plan to seize the Azores, which had been left in abeyance. Prime Minister Churchill agreed at the same time that Britain would seize the Canary Islands from Spain and the Cape Verde Islands from Portugal.⁴¹

On August 25, Roosevelt ordered the Atlantic fleet to “destroy surface raiders.”⁴²

On September 13, 1941, he ordered the fleet to protect ships of any nationality between American ports and Iceland, and to escort convoys in which there were no American vessels.⁴³

On September 14, the crew of the Coast Guard cutter “Northland” seized a German trawler in Greenland waters and took the first prisoners of a war not yet acknowledged.⁴⁴

On September 26, Roosevelt promulgated “Western Hemisphere Defense Plan No. 5,” which, while assigning new tasks to the fleet, stated that it must be recognized that “the United States is not at war in the legal sense,” and hence would have no belligerent rights under international law.⁴⁵

On October 11, 1941, he implemented this hemisphere defense plan with an order assigning American warships to operations under British and Canadian naval command and placing sixty British Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy destroyers and corvettes engaged in convoying “under the strategic direction of the United States.”⁴⁶

On November 7, 1941, a month before Pearl Harbor, Adm. Stark, referring to this nondeclared war, wrote to Adm. Kimmel, “Whether the country knows it or not, we are at war.”⁴⁷

Stark told the Congressional Investigating Committee that he was thinking of the interchange of command among American, British, and Canadian warships and orders he had issued at the President’s direction to fire on German submarines. He said his own opinion was that “the time had come for us to get in” the war.⁴⁸

Representative Gearhart asked Stark, “It was because of action which the President was directing from day to day against the Germans and the consequent exchange of fire with German submarines that caused you to state we were at war in the Atlantic before Pearl Harbor?”⁴⁹

“That is correct,” Stark replied. “Technically, or from an international standpoint, we were not at war, inasmuch as we did not have the right of belligerents because war had not been declared. But actually, so far as the forces operating under Adm. King in certain areas, it was war against any German craft that came inside that area. They were attacking us and we were attacking them.”⁵⁰ He said that American warships were considered to be enforcing the congressional will to deliver lend-lease supplies.

“And there was no limit upon their belligerent rights in so far as serving that objective, was there?” Gearhart inquired.

“It was not all-out,” said Stark. “It was limited, but it was effective and it was war, to my mind. . . . When you are shooting at the other fellow and he is shooting at you, it to all intents and purposes is war, even though of a restricted nature. We were not, for example, flying planes over Germany.”⁵¹

Citing the President’s Navy Day speech, in which Roosevelt recounted that eleven members of the crew of the destroyer “Kearny” had been killed by submarine action, Gearhart said, “That shows that they were making war on us, too, doesn’t it?”

“Yes it does,” Stark said. “I am simply trying—”

“I know,” Gearhart interrupted. “You are trying to point out the legalistic differences.”

Stark conceded under further examination by Senator Ferguson that the orders for the nondeclared Atlantic war came from Roosevelt.

“Where we state, ‘The President directs,’ it was his directive,” the admiral said. “No one but the President, I would say, could direct us to take the action indicated in those plans.”⁵²

“That would indicate, though,” suggested Ferguson, “that congressional approval was not considered necessary for an overt act.”

“I do not know that you would call an act an overt act if you considered it in self-defense or in defense of carrying out the congressional will of getting material abroad,” Stark responded.

Long before Pearl Harbor other high officers were also proceeding on the assumption that we would inevitably be fighting beside the British before long. In an undated memorandum in the summer of 1941, Gen. Marshall informed Roosevelt:

“Britain is reaching the limit of usable manpower. We must supplement her forces. . . . Germany cannot be defeated by supplying munitions to friendly powers and air and naval operations alone. Large ground forces will be required.”⁵³

Maj. Gen. Sherman Miles, former chief of Army Intelligence, said that throughout 1941 he considered that the European war represented “a much bigger picture” than any threat from Japan.⁵⁴ His intelligence estimate for November 29, 1941, stated, “The United States is contributing powerfully to the decision in the Battle of the Atlantic by direct naval action.” On December 5, two days before the Pearl Harbor attack, his estimate contended that American naval power and economic blockade “are primary deterrents against Japanese all-out entry into the war.”⁵⁵

Adm. Ingersoll agreed that in the fall of 1941 the Navy knew it was committing overt acts which could provoke Germany to declare war.⁵⁶ In that he echoed the statement of Adm. Stark, who, on October 8, 1941, in a memorandum to Secretary Hull, said that Hitler “has every excuse in the world to declare war on us now if he were of a mind to.”⁵⁷

Vice-Adm. Smith said that Washington thought that “the war was in the Atlantic.”⁵⁸

As the Atlantic war mounted, the Pacific fleet was stripped of important units and trained personnel to support the operations in the other ocean. When the Azores seizure was first planned in May, 1941, practically all of the trained and equipped Marines on the West Coast, six transports, and some other small craft, were transferred from the Pacific to the Atlantic.⁵⁹ Gen. Marshall withheld fourteen Flying Fortresses from Hawaii for the same operation.⁶⁰

In April and May, 1941, one aircraft carrier, three battleships, four cruisers, and eighteen destroyers—approximately one-fourth of the fighting ships of the Pacific fleet—were transferred to the Atlantic. Stark described these fleet units as “the first echelon of the Battle of the Atlantic.”⁶¹ In June, 1941, when he visited Washington, Adm. Kimmel intervened personally with Roosevelt to save three more of his battleships, four cruisers, two squadrons of destroyers, and an aircraft carrier.⁶²

According to Rear Adm. Inglis, the United States had 105 fighting craft in the Pacific before the transfers in May, 1941, compared to 162 in the Jap fleet.⁶³ On December 7, Inglis said, American fleet dispositions were as follows:

VESSEL	ATLANTIC	PACIFIC	ASIATIC
Battleships	6	9	0
Carriers	4	3	0
Heavy cruisers	5	12	1
Light cruisers	12	10	1
Destroyers	97	54	13
Submarines	58	23	29
Mine layers	0	9	0
Minesweepers	37	26	6
Patrol vessels	5	13	14
Totals	224	159	64

Although the computation of Adm. Inglis showed 159 units in the Pacific fleet, we were actually outnumbered in the major categories of surface craft, 162 to 78, on December 7.

The comparison follows:

VESSEL	U.S.	JAPAN
Battleships	9	10
Carriers	3	8
Light and heavy cruisers	22	35
Destroyers	54	109

Almost all of the naval officers who testified before the congressional committee conceded that because of transfers of fleet units and lend-lease diversions to Britain and other nations, the defenses of Pearl Harbor were seriously impaired and the fleet, in any encounter with the Japanese, would have been defeated. The minority report of the Joint Congressional Committee (Conclusion 17, pp. 49-50) says on this point:

High authorities in Washington failed to allocate to the Hawaiian commanders the material which the latter often declared to be necessary to defense and often requested, and no requirements of defense or war in the Atlantic did or could excuse these authorities for their failures in this respect.

The first part of this conclusion calls for no special citations of authority. In reports of the President’s Commission, of the Army Pearl Harbor Board, and of the Navy Court of Inquiry, three points in this respect are accepted as plain facts: (1) The ultimate power to allocate arms, ammunition, implements of war, and other supplies was vested in the President and his aide, Harry Hopkins, subject to the advice of Gen. Marshall and Adm. Stark; (2) Gen. Short and Adm. Kimmel made repeated demands upon their respective departments for additional material, which they represented as necessary to the effective defense of Pearl Harbor; and (3) Washington authorities, having full discretion in this regard, made decisions against Gen. Short and Adm. Kimmel and allocated to the Atlantic theater, where the United States was at least nominally at peace, matériel, especially bombing and reconnaissance planes, which were known to be absolutely indispensable to efficient defense of Pearl Harbor. (See Exhibits 106 and 53, request for materials.)

The second part of this conclusion may be arguable from the point of view of some high world strategy, but it is not arguable under the Constitution and laws of the United States. The President, it is true, had powers and obligations under the Lease-Lend Act of March, 1941. But his first and inescapable duty under the Constitution and laws was to care for the defense and security of the United States against a Japanese attack, which he knew was imminent; and, in the allocations of matériel, especially bombing and reconnaissance planes, he made or authorized decisions which deprived the Hawaiian commanders of indispensable matériel they could otherwise have had and thus reduced their defensive forces to a degree known to be dangerous by high officials in Washington and Hawaii.

In a secret report to Roosevelt December 15, 1941, Secretary Knox said that lack of an adequate number of fighter planes to defend Hawaii against air attack “is due to the diversion of this type before the outbreak of the war to the British, the Chinese, the Dutch, and the Russians.” He said there had been a “dangerous shortage” of anti-aircraft artillery, “the next best weapon against air attack,” through no fault of Gen. Short.⁶⁴ As has been seen, the United States in the ten months before Pearl Harbor lend-leased 1,900 patrol planes and 1,900 anti-aircraft guns, of which 1,750 planes and 1,500 guns went to the British.

In February, 1941, when this country was deficient 10,000 planes in its 14,000-plane program, Britain was asking America to deliver 50,000 planes in 1942. At the time this request was made, Army plans called for the dispatch of only eighty-one fighter planes to Pearl Harbor.⁶⁵

Col. Melvin W. Maas, of the Marine Corps Reserve, former Minnesota Congressman, said that when two hundred fifty patrol bombers necessary to bring Hawaii up to required minimum strength of three hundred planes came off the production lines, Washington ordered them sent to Britain. When protests were made to Roosevelt, he referred the admirals to Harry Hopkins, in charge of allocating war materials.

“Hopkins received them as he lay in bed, nonchalantly smoking a cigaret,” said Maas. “He listened to them, then told them the interview was over and that he had already made the allocation. Adm. Kimmel told me if those two hundred fifty patrol planes had been sent to Hawaii, the December 7 attack could never have succeeded, and probably would never have been attempted.”⁶⁶

Prime Minister Churchill made some acknowledgment of the effect of lend-lease in handicapping American defense when, in an address to the United States Senate December 26, 1941, he said, “If the United States has been found at a disadvantage at various points in the Pacific Ocean, we know well that it is to no small extent because of the aid which you have been giving us in munitions for the defense of the British Isles and to the Libyan campaign, and above all, because of your help in the Battle of the Atlantic.”⁶⁷

Capt. Edwin T. Layton, intelligence officer of the Pacific fleet, asserted that if the fleet had been able to spot the approaching Jap force before December 7 and had gone out to meet it, we would have been beaten. Our battleships, he said, were too slow to have brought the Jap vessels under gunfire, and the remainder of our fleet would have “suffered severe damage if not defeat by reason of the great [enemy] superiority in the air.”⁶⁸

Although Secretary of War Stimson promised to rectify Hawaii’s deficiencies in patrol bombers, fighter planes, anti-aircraft guns, and aircraft warning equipment by June, 1941, Rear Adm. Bloch, Pearl Harbor base defense officer, complained four months after the Secretary’s deadline had passed that “the only increment that had been made to the local defense forces during the last year, exclusive of [harbor] net vessels, was the U.S.S. “Sacramento,” an old gunboat of negligible gun power and low speed.”⁶⁹

Adm. Kimmel forwarded Adm. Bloch’s letter on October 17, 1941, with a complaint of his own concerning the “reluctance or inability” of the Navy Department to provide him the vessels he asked. “A fleet, tied to its base by diversions to other forces of light forces necessary to its security at sea is, in a real sense, no fleet at all,” Kimmel said.⁷⁰

Not only had the light screening units been diverted to patrol duty in the Atlantic, and fifty highly useful “over-age” destroyers given to the British by Roosevelt been lost to our fleet, but Kimmel had only eleven tankers when seventy-five were necessary to keep his fleet at sea.⁷¹ This fact, together with Washington’s failure to maintain adequate fuel deliveries for the fleet, condemned the Pacific commander to a policy of keeping a substantial part of the fleet in harbor like sitting ducks.

Thus President Roosevelt weakened the Pacific fleet and the Pearl Harbor defenses to sustain the nondeclared war into which he had plunged in the Atlantic. Although he was itching to get into the war in Europe, Hitler would not oblige him with an incident of sufficient gravity to take the nation to war.

Grand Adm. Karl Doenitz, testifying at the Nuernberg war crimes trials, told the international tribunal that Hitler was so anxious to keep the United States out of the European war that he overruled the admiral’s plans to mine North Atlantic shipping lanes carrying lend-lease supplies to Britain. Doenitz said:

A 300 mile safety zone was even granted to America by Germany when international law called for only a three mile zone. I suggested mine fields at Halifax and around Iceland, but the Fuehrer rejected this because he wanted to avoid conflict with the United States. When American destroyers in the summer of 1941 were ordered to attack German submarines, I was forbidden to fight back. I was thus forced not to attack British destroyers for fear there would be some mistake.⁷²*

The President’s dilemma was frankly discussed by his sympathizers of the war party. As early as June, 1941, Joseph Alsop and Robert Kintner, a pair of columnists favored by the White House (Alsop was a relative of the President), wrote,

In the last week, he [the President] has been repeatedly urged to order immediate action. He has been warned that to delay is to court disaster. He has been able to act, for all the preparations for meeting the Germans’ threat in the Battle of the Atlantic have at last been completed.

Yet he has not acted, because he hopes to drive the Germans to shoot first. . . . The problem was mentioned in this space in a recent discussion of the Atlantic patrol, in which it was pointed out that the President and the men around him privately hoped that the patrol would produce an incident. No man can doubt the German high command will do everything possible to avoid shooting first.

The writers attributed the President’s hesitation to his many pledges to stay out of war. “He does not feel he can openly violate them,” they said. “But he can get around them the ‘smart way.’”⁷³ The “smart way” was to provoke an attack.

The pact of Berlin, signed September 27, 1940, suggested a method to the President. It pledged Germany, Italy, and Japan to “assist one another with all political, economic, and military means when one of the three contracting parties is attacked by a power at present not involved in the European war or the Sino-Japanese conflict.” Germany was then committed to its uneasy nonaggression treaty with Russia, while Japan had specifically excepted Russia from application of the treaty. Inasmuch as the United States was the only other remaining power that need be reckoned with, the pact of Berlin obviously was directed against it.

The tripartite pact had, in the eyes of Roosevelt, a utility which its authors had not intended. It offered a means of entering the war in Europe by the back door, for war with Japan also meant war automatically with Germany and Italy under the terms of the pact. Thus, while the attention of the nation was almost wholly trained by official acts and utterances upon the war in Europe, the President simultaneously precipitated a crisis with Japan.

The idea of a Japanese-American conflict was not viewed unsympathetically in Berlin. The Nazis had doubts about the dependability of their Asiatic ally. They did not want to chance Japan’s response under its tripartite pact commitments by initiating a war with America themselves, but if Japan could be induced to attack the United States, Hitler could hope that the natural sense of outrage in the United States would divert America’s major effort to the Pacific, leaving him free to complete his unfinished business.

On July 6, 1941, shortly after Germany went to war with Russia, Ambassador Grew stated Hitler’s strategy: “It is generally held that what Germany most wants Japan to do is to take steps which will tend to divert America’s attention from Europe and that she is not pressing Japan to intervene in Soviet Russia.”⁷⁴

Accordingly, the Nazis began attempting to work a confidence game on their Asiatic allies. These efforts to hoodwink the Japs were continued unrelentingly up to the very moment that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, but they might not have been attended with success if American diplomacy had not finally presented the Japanese with the choice between fighting and capitulating.

On November 29 Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Nazi foreign minister, was found using all of his power of persuasion upon Maj. Gen. Oshima, the Japanese ambassador in Berlin. Ribbentrop said,

It is essential that Japan effect the new order in East Asia without losing this opportunity. There never has been and never will be a time when closer co-operation under the tripartite pact is so important. If Japan hesitates at this time, and Germany goes ahead and establishes her European new order, all the military might of Britain and the United States will be concentrated against Japan. . . . If Japan reaches a decision to fight Britain and the United States, I am confident that that will not only be in the interest of Germany and Japan jointly, but would bring about favorable results for Japan herself.

“Is your excellency indicating that a state of actual war is to be established between Germany and the United States?” Oshima asked.

Ribbentrop was reluctant to promise that his country be the first to dive off the deep end. “Roosevelt’s a fanatic,” he cautiously replied, “so it is impossible to tell what he would do.”⁷⁵

The view that a wary Germany employed all possible cunning to entice Japan into an attack upon the United States is fully supported bv the verdict of the International War Crimes Tribunal at Nuernberg. The court found that Germany repeatedly urged Japan to attack the British in the Far East after the Nazi attack upon Russia. It was further stated in the verdict:

It was clear, too, that the German policy of keeping America from the war if possible did not prevent Germany from promising support to Japan even against the United States.

The court referred to Ribbentrop’s representations to Oshima and said that the Nazi foreign minister was “overjoyed” when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Hitler, the court stated, expressed approval of Japan’s tactics in striking without a declaration of war.^75a

In Rome Mussolini promised that “Italy would give every military aid she had at her disposal” if Japan were to fight Britain and America.⁷⁶

To stiffen Japan’s resolution, Hitler worked a huge military fraud upon the Japanese. On December 6 Berlin was heralding the imminent fall of Moscow. On December 8, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler’s forces were in full retreat to a predetermined winter line.⁷⁷

The Japs were taken in, with Germany unwittingly assisting the President in attaining his objective. Davis and Lindley wrote,

The question perplexing many high officials was how, in the absence of a direct Japanese attack on the American flag, to summon the nation, divided as it then was on questions of foreign policy, to the strong action which they believed essential. There had been considerable discussion of possible methods. . . . It was commonly supposed that the Japanese were too smart to solve this problem for the President by a direct assault on the American flag—especially at Hawaii, which even the extreme isolationists recognized as a bastion of our security.

The Japanese were not smart enough.⁷⁸

On November 29, 1941, at Warm Springs, Georgia, Roosevelt had given intimations of war to come. “In days like these,” he said, “our Thanksgiving next year may remind us of a peaceful past; it is always possible that our boys in the military and naval academies may be fighting for the defense of these American institutions of ours.”⁷⁹

This was a pallid statement of the realities which he then knew to exist. He knew for a certainty that war was not a matter of months or a year, but of days. He knew that not only “our boys in the military and naval academies” would be called to arms, but all able-bodied young men. And he knew that the war would start, not in the Atlantic, but in the Pacific.

Our stake in the Far East was not great. In recent years less than 3 per cent of our foreign trade had been with China, including the British colony of Hong Kong, and trade with China amounted to less than half of our trade with Japan, which had been America’s third best customer, taking 7.7 per cent of total American exports in 1938. The United States, in turn, was Japan’s best customer, 6.5 per cent of our imports coming from there.⁸⁰

The interests threatened by Japan in Asia and the Southwest Pacific were, with the exception of China, almost wholly the interests of the western empires, Britain, France, and Holland. None of them was capable by the final month of 1941 of defending its colonial holdings. It was clear to these nations long in advance of Pearl Harbor that the United States was their one hope in resisting a Japanese rape of their colonies.

By December 7, 1941, we had tolerated Japan’s war against China for fifty-three months. We might not like it, but the conflict was not regarded as of sufficient concern to send America into battle. It was only when Japan began to impinge upon the prerogatives of the western imperialisms that the President began to display symptoms of the moral outrage he usually reserved for Hitler and Mussolini.

On September 22, 1940, three months after the collapse of France, the Japanese began to move in on the western empires. Japanese troops were marched into French Indo-China and the colonial authorities acceded to Japan’s demands for air bases.⁸¹ On July 21, 1941, France acquiesced when Japan demanded military control of Indo-China.⁸²

This action was defended on the grounds that it was necessary to provide for Japan’s military security and to assure Japan a supply of rice and other foodstuffs and raw materials. In Washington Ambassador Nomura pleaded the severity of the food situation. Japan’s production of rice in 1941 was estimated at 297 million bushels, against an annual consumption of 400 million bushels.⁸³ Britain had embargoed the export of rice from Burma,⁸⁴ while lack of fertilizer normally obtained from Germany had cut down Japan’s domestic production. As a result, Japan was compelled to look to Indo-China for its supply.

In answer to these representations, Sumner Welles, Undersecretary of State, told Nomura on July 23 that there was no basis for pursuing further the diplomatic conversations which had been in progress since March looking toward a peaceful settlement of America’s differences with Japan. Welles said that the United States “must assume that the Japanese government was taking the last step before proceeding upon a policy of totalitarian expansion in the South Seas and of conquest in the South Seas through the seizure of additional territories in that region.”⁸⁵

Relations between the United States and Japan had been deteriorating for four years before the seizure of Indo-China. Afterward the process continued at an accelerated rate. The successive steps follow:

On December 12, 1937, three months after Roosevelt’s “quarantine” speech, Japanese warplanes bombed and sank the American gunboat “Panay” in the Yangtze River.⁸⁶

On July 1, 1938, after the Japanese had bombed Nanking, Canton, and other defenseless Chinese cities, the State Department asked for a “moral embargo” on sales of aircraft which might be used in attacks on civilians.⁸⁷

On July 26, 1939, Roosevelt gave notice that the Japanese-American commercial treaty of 1911 would be abrogated as of January 26, 1940.⁸⁸

Ambassador Grew remarked of this developing economic warfare, “I have pointed out that once started on a policy of sanctions we must see them through and that such a policy may conceivably lead to eventual war.”⁸⁹ Further American action manifested the intention of seeing them through.

On July 2, 1940, Roosevelt licensed exports of machine tools, chemicals, and nonferrous metals.⁹⁰

On July 25 he licensed exports of oil products and scrap metal.⁹¹

On July 31 he licensed exports of aviation gasoline beyond the western hemisphere.⁹²

On September 25, 1940, he granted China a 25 million dollar loan for currency stabilization.⁹³

On September 26 he imposed an embargo, effective October 16, on all exports of scrap iron and steel except to Britain and nations of the western hemisphere.⁹⁴ Between 1933 and 1940, 10.16 million tons of scrap had been shipped from this country to Japan.⁹⁵ Japan termed the embargo an “unfriendly act”⁹⁶ and stated that further trade restrictions would make relations between the two countries “unpredictable.”⁹⁷

On October 8, 1940, American nationals were warned to leave the Far East.⁹⁸

On November 30, 1940, an additional 100 million dollar loan was made to China.⁹⁹

When Adm. Nomura came here as Japan’s new ambassador early in 1941, he said that he doubted that Japan would extend military operations beyond their present sphere “unless the policy of increasing embargoes by this country should force his government, in the minds of those in control, to take military action.”¹⁰⁰

On March 11, 1941, with the enactment of lend-lease, material aid was granted the Chinese as well as the British.¹⁰¹

On April 26, 1941, the United States announced a monetary stabilization accord with China. Lauchlin Currie, the President’s administrative assistant, was dispatched to China to help straighten out its finances.¹⁰²

On July 25, 1941, four days after Japan occupied Indo-China, Roosevelt froze Japanese assets of 130 million dollars in the United States, thus ending trade relations.¹⁰³ Britain followed suit the next day.¹⁰⁴

On July 26 the President nationalized the Filipino army, which became part of a new command known as the United States Army Forces in the Far East.¹⁰⁵

On August 26, 1941, an American military mission under Gen. John A. Magruder was sent to China.¹⁰⁶

American Army, Navy, and Marine flyers were permitted to fight for China as an “American Volunteer Group” under Brig. Gen. Chennault.¹⁰⁷

American engineers were sent to reorganize traffic over the Burma Road in order to speed supplies to China.¹⁰⁸

Generalissimo Chiag Kai-shek, on the President’s recommendation, accepted Owen Lattimore as his political adviser.¹⁰⁹

The Panama Canal was closed to Japanese shipping.¹¹⁰

This series of actions finally made it extremely doubtful that the peace could be kept. The only avenue remaining open was that of negotiation. While Secretary Hull and Ambassador Nomura were exploring the possibilities, Dr. E. Stanley Jones, a widely known missionary of long experience in the Orient, served as an unofficial mediator between the Japanese and the White House.

Dr. Jones contradicts the Roosevelt administration thesis, advanced by Hull in particular, that there never was any hope of keeping the peace. He says,

The idea that all the Japanese officials and people were united in their approval of aggression and their plans for further conquests in the Orient, even to the point of war with the United States, is commonly held. It has been carefully nurtured by propaganda. The American citizen is supposed to believe that a united Japan undertook world-conquest, with no inhibitions and no internal opposition. But the idea is disastrously false. From the time of the attack upon China, the Japanese nation went through a deep struggle of mind and soul. . . .

It was a titanic grapple between the war party and the peace party. It was touch and go as to which way the situation would swing. The struggle continued to the fall of 1941. Then the militarists triumphed. . . .

Had we been wiser we would have outplanned the militarists. If we had lent aid and encouragement to the peace party in their efforts to prevent war, we could have made Japan an ally instead of an enemy. Certainly our course played into the hands of the war party.¹¹¹

As to the American attitude, Dr. Jones says,

I was not sure whether the highest officials in the executive branch of our government really wanted peace. From the time of the Atlantic conference between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in August, 1941, the official attitude toward Japan had stiffened, bordering on belligerency. . . .

The attitude of some of our officials seemed to be: “Well, we have Japan by the throat by this oil embargo and we’ll strangle her. If she kicks and there is war, well, we’ll send a few planes over from Vladivostok, burn up her inflammable cities, and it will be all over in a few weeks.”

They felt that Japan was mired in China, that she was at the end of her resources, and that this anxiety for peace on the part of her Washington representatives was because she was weak and helpless in our hands. As Adm. Nomura said to me one day, “Everything I propose is suspected as weakness.”

Dr. Jones found that much of the agitation for war came from the British, the Chinese, and the Dutch. When he suggested to Dr. Hu Shih, the Chinese ambassador, that it was one thing for America to feel sympathy for China and to endeavor to help China, but another thing for us to be dragged into war because of China’s refusal of mediation, Dr. Hu replied, “This is all nonsense. You are already at war!”

Dr. Jones continued:

Great Britain was obviously trying to get us into the European war, as Mr. Churchill later openly said, and was not adverse to getting us in by the back door of a Pacific war. When I urged Lord Halifax to mediate between us and Japan and help avert a war in the Pacific, he replied, “You will find my views in the enclosed speech I have made.” The whole tenor of the speech was: “America must fight.”

The Netherlands shared that atitude.

The real issue of the war, Dr. Jones contends, was empire.

The Japanese suspected the United States of being willing to fight in order to preserve the white empires of the Pacific. That was correct, as time so amply proved. We did not go to the defense of China when she was attacked by Japan. In fact, we continued to send Japan our scrap iron and oil. But the moment Japan threatened Indo-China—a French possession—we were aroused. That touched a sensitive nerve—the prerogatives of the white nations’ colonial possessions in the East.

Dr. Jones’s own solution was to give Japan some unexploited area where it could dispose of its surplus population. His choice was New Guinea, a huge island owned by the British and Dutch, who had made no real attempt to develop it and who did not need it for emigrants. The island had a population of only 300,000 natives of low culture, but with proper development, Dr. Jones thought, could sustain from 20 to 40 million people.

Dr. Jones proposed that the United States pay 100 million dollars to Holland and Australia to compensate such landowners as might be dispossessed. He found the Australian minister in Washington sympathetic. “If we don’t do something now about Japan’s surplus population,” the minister said, “we shall have to do it within ten years.” When Dr. Jones interviewed the Dutch minister, however, he was told, “No part of the Dutch empire is for sale.”

On November 18, 1941, three weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack, Maxwell H. Hamilton of the State Department’s Far Eastern section submitted the plan to Secretary Hull.¹¹² Instead of considering this face-saving method of persuading Japan to abandon the program of the militarists, Hull handed Nomura and Kurusu the President’s ten-point statement of November 26, which, says Dr. Jones, “could have no other interpretation than that of an ultimatum.”

Even when confronted with the American demands, Dr. Jones says that the Japanese representatives did not abandon hope that we would grant them the means of reaching a peaceful solution. Two days after the Hull ultimatum, Counselor Terasaki of the embassy, in a note transmitted to Roosevelt by Dr. Jones, pleaded, “Don’t compel us to do things, but make it possible for us to do them. If you treat us in this way, we will reciprocate doubly. If you stretch out one hand, we will stretch out two. And we cannot only be friends, we can be allies.”

There was no response, nor any relaxation of the pressure. As Dr. Jones says, “Our ultimatum . . . put Japan in a box. She had to knuckle under or else fight us.”

In retrospect, Dr. Jones suggests that almost until the very end Japan and the United States were very close to peace. During the negotiations he was told by a member of the Senate foreign relations committee, “It has all boiled down to two air bases in North China—Japan wants to retain two air bases and we want her to get out of China.” Whether we were within two air bases of peace Dr. Jones says he does not know for certain, but in one of their last conversations, Nomura told him that “it would be absurd for us to go to war over two air bases in North China. It would be very expensive for both of us.”

In listing the causes of the war, Dr. Jones says a principal cause was “the pressure of a war party that surrounded the President. A Supreme Court justice said to us during the negotiations, ‘We have a war party as well as Japan. They are surrounding the President and making it more and more impossible to see him.’”

If it was surrounding him, Roosevelt was also the center of it. The testimony of Sumner Welles before the congressional committee investigating Pearl Harbor showed that it was Roosevelt who was running the show. Asked whether, when the fleet was moved to Hawaii, the Navy was not being made an arm of the diplomatic negotiations with Japan, Welles replied: “It was done as an integral part of the over-all policy. You can’t divorce the diplomatic field from the military field. It was a policy moving along parallel roads.”

“Who made the over-all policy decisions?”

“The President, of course,” Welles replied.¹¹³

*For a comprehensive and illuminating account of the foreign policy of the United States as defined for public consumption by Roosevelt, Hull, Wendell Willkie, and other politicians, see Charles A. Beard’s American Foreign Policy in the Making: 1932-1940 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946).

*Doenitz received the lightest sentence of any of the twenty-two Nazi defendants at the Nuernberg war crimes trial. The International Military Tribunal imposed a term of ten years’ imprisonment on him. This comparatively lenient treatment may, or may not, reflect the court’s belief in the credibility of his testimony.