4. How American Polcy Toward Japan Contributed to War in the Pacific

4 HOW AMERICAN POLICY TOWARD JAPAN CONTRIBUTED TO WAR IN THE PACIFIC by WILLIAM L. NEUMANN Japan has never harmed us. Japan is not threatening us. Japan has treated us better than any other wodd power in the matter of paying debts, courtesy to our visitors and residents, and never attempting to meddle in our affairs. Japan is the only world power that has paid back all sums borrowed without delay or default on a single penny. If we are going to answer this fair treatment of us by enmity, no incentive is left for any country to treat us well in the future. —CALIFORNIA COMMITTEE ON PACIFIC FRIENDSHIP, November, 1937 Today we have fallen heir to the problems and responsibilities the Japanese had faced and borne in the Korean-Manchurian area for nearly half a century, and there is a certain perverse justice in the pain we are suffering from a burden which, when it was borne by others, we held in such low esteem. What is saddest of all is that the relationship between past and present seems to be visible to so few people. For if we are not to learn from our own mistakes, where shall we learn at all.

—GEORGE F. KENNAN, American Diplomacy, igoo-1950 William L. Neumann was born in Buffalo, N.Y., on March 4, 1915. He received the degree of B.S. from the New York State Teachers College in Buffalo in 1938. He carried on graduate work in history at the University of Michigan, from which institution he received his Ph.D. degree in 1947. Dr. Neumann has taught history at the University of Michigan, Howard University, the University of Hawaii, and the University of Maryland. He acted as executive secretary of the Foundation for Foreign Affairs and was editor of American Perspective until it ceased publication in the autumn of 9 The main interest of Dr. Neumann in history has been in the field of international relations and diplomatic history. He wrote a brochure on The Genesis oi Pearl Harbor in 1945 which was one of the very first examples of revisionist historical writing as applied to the second World War. He is also the author of Recognition of Governments in the Americas (1947) and Making the Peace, 2941-1945 (1950). The latter is the best account we have to date of the wartime conferences which saw the loss of the peace for the United States and its Allies. Dr. Neumann is about to publish a comprehensive study of the relations of the United States with Japan from Commodore Perry to the present time.

I. BASIC ASSUMPTIONS IN THE JAPANESE POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES The war between the United States and Japan was neither, as official and semiofficial histories paint it, a struggle between good and evil nor a contest between a peaceloving nation and an arrogant proponent of aggression and chaos. These are the conventional labels used by nations to describe their enemies. Every victorious power attempts to certify similar interpretations of recent wars as eternal truths. While such moralistic simplifications have their value as nationalist propaganda, they have no place in an honest attempt at an unbiased study of international issues. Righteousness has never been the exclusive preserve of any one nation, nor has virtue been completely wanting among even the most chauvinistic peoples. If the Pacific conflict is to be the subject of moralizing, it might better be described as a tragedy of errors and as the unwanted offspring of false assumptions and follies on both sides of the Pacific.

The errors and fallacies of Japanese policy have often been set forth for Americans with a rich collection of assorted invectives. Stripped of all gratuitous adjectives and adverbs, Japan's course is clear and the errors of Japanese assumptions then become patent. An island nation with a growing population, stimulated by Western penetration, found its resources inadequate to achieve its aspirations for a higher standard of living. Following the Western pattern, Japan looked abroad for land, markets, and raw materials. Japan also developed aspirations for the status of a major power, again stimulated by Western influences, particularly by the humiliating experiences of the early post-Perry decades. It was in these formative years that Japan learned how helpless a small power could be in the face of energetic Western imperialism, backed by hostile naval squadrons. These two aspirations combined to create an expansionist movement in Japan which looked 233 234 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE primarily to Asia for its fulfillment. When economic penetration of Asia was checked by political obstacles in the form of intransigent Chinese war lords, Japan turned to the ultimate weapon of imperialism, military force.

Japanese expansionism also brought to the fore a chauvinistic group of military leaders who developed a racialist concept of Japan's manifest destiny. They believed that Asia was at last to find peace and economic progress under Japanese leadership in the form of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity sphere. No alien nation, neither Russia nor the United States, was to be permitted to stand in the way of this goal. To this end Japan fought a border war in Manchuria against the Soviet Union from 1937 to 1939. When the United States, from 1931 onward, stood firmly behind the Chinese Nationalist government, Japan's best customer became Japan's enemy. When other methods seemed unavailing, Japan prepared for a trans-Pacific war to remove the American barrier to an area which Japan believed was vital for national security and prosperity. But the willingness of the people of the United States, once attacked, to fight a long and costly war over a cause remote from their shores was not foreseen by Japan's leaders. This was the fatal error of Japanese policy. This was the false assumption which was to bring that nation to defeat and to destroy the accomplishments of two generations of vigorous diplomacy.

Americans have given little attention to the errors of their own Far Eastern policies. Self-examination is not a characteristic of the victor, even when the fruits of victory prove bitter. Most studies of the coming of the Pacific war by Americans still accept the official assumptions as valid.1 The United States is seen as a force exerted in behalf of peace and stability in Asia. American attempts to maintain the status quo and uphold the integrity of China are judged wise even though they failed. More important, the basic premise of American policy from 1931 onward—that the United States had a vital national interest in blocking the expansion of Japan in Asia—is seldom questioned. Yet on this premise any justification of the diplomacy of Secretary of State Henry Stimson or of the foreign policy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration must make its case.

HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 235 With the passage of time the propaganda of the war years will fade and a more objective appraisal of the issues will be possible. International antagonisms and friendships directly influence the writing of national histories. The shifting of these international alignments requires a rewriting of the past to keep pace with the orientations of the present. New enemies are treated no more objectively than the old, but former enemies then have the opportunity to receive less biased treatment. In due course these influences will lead to a reinterpretation of Japanese-American relations even in the officially sponsored histories. The shifts in international alignments are already in process. China and the Soviet Union are rapidly replacing Japan as the foci of American antagonism in Asia. Japan, by contrast, is almost attaining the status of an ally by the leasing of territory for American air and ground bases. Although the reorientation of the historiography of Japanese-American relations may lag behind these events, the influences of the new alignments cannot be long escaped. The historian may soon be in a position to view the course of American relations with Japan free from nationalistic preconceptions.2 Already it is possible to outline the misconceptions of American policy makers and to see in what respects they were blinded to basic facts and key relationships in Far Eastern international policies. No consideration was given to the historic ambitions of Russia in Asia nor to the expansionist element in Stalinist Communism. As a result there was a complete disregard for the role which a strong Japan played in the Far Eastern balance of power.

Gross errors were also made in calculating that Japan could be coerced by economic pressure and naval force to follow American bidding in its relations with China. The political and economic importance of China for Japan was not grasped, despite the fact that Japanese leaders spoke of it as a national interest to be defended regardless of costs. This blindness to the importance of China for Japan contrasts with the gross overrating of the importance of a Japan-free China for the United States. It was assumed by some key figures in the Roosevelt administration that this objective was worth the blood and toil which a costly trans-Pacific conflict would entail. Behind this premise was another, equally 236 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE invalid. This was the assumption that the power relationships of Asia of the 1920's could be maintained—or, after 1931, restored— despite the rising power of Japan and the Soviet Union and the internal political disintegration of the Chinese Nationalist government. The instrument of maintenance or restoration was not to be forces within Asia itself but the pronouncements and threats of American power with its center thousands of miles from Asia's shores. Faith in the growth of American naval power under the Roosevelt administration disregarded the strength by which the Japanese navy sought to counter American building.

The history of American policy in the Far East from 1931 onward is largely a story of these blunders and fallacies in the interpretation and implementation of American interests. It was Henry L. Stimson, twice Secretary of War, who, as President Hoover's Secretary of State, first set the course of American opposition to Japanese expansion. When Japan established in Manchuria a puppet government to protect its economic interests in that area, Stimson announced to the world that the United States would not accept the legality of the new government established by force. Japan was charged with a violation of the KelloggBriand Pact of 1928 as a result of its undeclared war with China. In taking this step Stimson set the direction of American diplomacy for the next decade. The influence and, finally, the force of the United States was to be employed in the hopeless task of maintaining the disintegrating status quo of Asia.

Stimson recalls informing the Hoover cabinet in 1931 that the Western-made treaties no more fitted the situation in the Orient than "a stovepipe hat would fit an African savage."3 The KelloggBriand Pact had already been violated by the Soviet Union in 1929 when an undeclared war had been launched against China along the Manchurian-Siberian border. The clash demonstrated that the pact was in Asia "essentially as meaningless as an agreement not to raise umbrellas except in rainy weather."4 Not only in Asia but in Europe as well the powers which signed the antiwar pact made enough reservations to indicate that they accepted the pact as a statement of principle rather than a commitment to action. Stimson's nonrecognition doctrine differed little from the earlier HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 237 effort of the Woodrow Wilson administration to enforce stability and to preserve the status quo in Latin America by refusing to recognize governments established by force. That effort had been a painful failure and Stimson himself criticized what he called the "misplaced morality of Woodrow Wilson" and Wilson's efforts to reform the world according to his own views.5 According to Stimson the true line of American recognition policy was that enunciated by Thomas Jefferson who, in 1792, had warned against any effort to differentiate between de facto governments on grounds of illegality. Yet the de facto government established by Japan in Manchuria was to go unrecognized because of its illicit origins.

Although Stimson's nonrecognition doctrine is thus attacked by his own statements, Hoover's Secretary of State was able to overlook the inconsistency of his position in an effort to play Marquis of Queensberry to the warring nations of Asia. In justifying his policy Stimson agreed that if the SinoJapanese conflict had occurred two generations earlier it would have had little meaning for the United States. But in 1931, he said, American economic and political interests in the Far East were "considerable." The United States did have, in 1931, an important and profitable trade with Asia. The chief source of that profit was not China, however, but Japan, where large quantities of American cotton were purchased and paid for by Japanese silk exports to the United States. The total value of American exports and imports to and from Japan in the 1930's was three to four times the value of exports and imports from China. In the peak years, 1927-30, American exports to China never exceeded 4 per cent of the total American exports while imports from China were less than 5 per cent of the total.

Even as late as 1938 American sales to Japan reached over $230,000,000 while China, in the same year, purchased only some $56,000,000 worth of American goods. American investments in China itself were also relatively small and never reached 2 per cent of the total American foreign investment. In 1935 the value of Chinese private securities held by Americans reached only $16,700,000 while Americans held over $323,000,000 worth of Japanese private securities. Of $2,600,000,000 238 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE in foreign investments in China, Japan claimed the larger amount, while most of the remainder was held by Great Britain. As late as 1943 a census of American-owned assets in China totalled only $122,000,000. It was for this small economic stake in China that the profitable trade relationship with Japan was to be endangered and finally destroyed by the Stimson and Roosevelt policies.

American interests in China were often discussed in future terms rather than in present realities. To some extent this dream was a projection of the past, of the early New England trade with Canton and of the great fortunes made by a few score families from the trade in teas and silks. Roosevelt himself showed signs of this type of thinking. After Stimson, in January, 1933, had won the President-elect's support for his nonrecognition policy, two of Roosevelt's advisers, Raymond Moley and Rexford Tugwell, tried to dissuade him from committing his administration to a policy they considered futile and dangerous. To their plea Roosevelt answered with the remark that his ancestors had traded with China and for this reason he had the deepest sympathy for the Chinese.6 The President's mother had lived in China as a small girl and the President repeatedly told the story of the business dealings of his family in the China trade of the early nineteenth century.7 A less romantic argument for the future economic importance of China and for American prosperity was developed in Marxian terms. Expressed most forcefully by Nathaniel Peffer's Must We Fight in Asia?, this line of argument stressed the inevitable collapse of American capitalism if it failed to capture new markets. China with its more than four hundred million potential customers was thus essential to the continuation of the American economic system. War with Japan over China was necessary to preserve a capitalism which could no longer live on its domestic markets.

Short of turning the United States into a socialist state and sharing the surplus with the American worker, a war of imperialist powers for China was said to be inevitable—so the argument ran.8 Whether the argument was made in present or future terms, phrased in romantic aspirations or Marxian dialectic, the assumption was made by the makers of American policy that this country's economic stake in China, along with the political stake, conHOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 239 stituted a vital national interest. Yet six years after the end of the war against Japan, American trade with China had practically disappeared and American investments in China were largely liquidated. Similarly, American political influence within China itself had reached a twentieth-century low. No noticeable damage had been done to the American economy and few would argue that a war to replace the Communist rulers of China by a pro-American regime was essential to American security. Historical developments have thus illustrated the falsity of the Stimson-Roosevelt assumptions.

Arguments were also presented in behalf of American intervention in the SinoJapanese conflict which went beyond the traditional political and economic concepts of national interest. World peace, in which the United States was said to have a vital stake, was also to be preserved by the Stimson-Roosevelt Far Eastern policy, according to its supporters. Stimson believed that American sponsorship of the KelloggBriand antiwar pact called for active steps to maintain peace by opposing Japanese expansionism. Secretary Hull thought along similar lines. In January, 1938, the Secretary was asked for statistics by the Senate on American economic interests in China. The Secretary replied that there was in China "a broader and much more fundamental interest—which is that orderly processes in international relationships must be maintained." Spokesmen for the Roosevelt administration frequently made similar claims for their policy's peace-spreading characteristics.

Two assumptions were made in these arguments. The first was that peace between two Asiatic powers was a matter of direct concern for the United States and an important enough national interest to justify the risk of spreading the war. The second assumption was again the optimistic one that a third power, far from the seat of conflict, could adjust the differences of the warring powers by supporting the weaker against the stronger. For over a century the American policy of neutrality had been based on the assumption that peace was divisible and that it was to the interest of this country to avoid wars in which national security and national prosperity were not endangered. That policy, dating back to the precepts of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, was now 24O PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE discarded on the assumption that neutrality was no longer a workable policy and that the use of American political, economic, and military strength could effectively check wars on other continents by exerting pressure on one of the contestants. The validity of these assumptions can most objectively be tested by their results.

Initially Stimson thought of this program—refusing to recognize Japanese success in Manchuria—as a moral weapon. It was originally aimed, he said, more at assuring China of American sympathy than at bringing Japan into line and restoring the pre-1931 status quo. But when Japan consolidated its conquest of Manchuria, Stimson decided that the United States should go a step farther and impose economic sanctions on Japan. President Hoover, however, realized that to place an embargo on supplies to one fighting nation while sending aid to the other was a dangerous breach of neutrality. It implied, if it did not explicitly suggest, that the United States was willing to move farther and, if necessary, go to war with Japan. Hoover saw this—as did Stimson—and with the support of other members of his cabinet he adhered to what Stimson called "the tradition of American foreign policy" which had always insisted that American interests in the Orient were not worth a war.9 On this ground Hoover refused Stimson's repeated pleas for sanctions and an embargo.

When Stimson found himself unable to win the support of the President to the use of American economic power against Japan, he turned to what he called "a bluff of force." Here Stimson was turning to an American tradition which dated back as far as Commodore Perry in 1853. In writing his instructions for that famous naval expedition which opened up the ports of Japan to the Western world, Perry said: "It is manifest, from past experience, that arguments or persuasion addressed to this people, unless they are seconded by some imposing manifestation of power, will be utterly unavailing." This concept of naval diplomacy was frequently applied to Japan by the United States and by European powers in the nineteenth century. Even in the twentieth century naval diplomacy had been given a vigorous trial by Theodore Roosevelt who, in 1908, sent the United States fleet to the shores of Japan itself. Stimson revived a HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 241 tradition which was to see its fullest application under the Franklin Roosevelt administration.

Stimson's use of the navy was limited to his last year as Secretary of State. He suggested and carried out an arrangement with the British Foreign Office whereby the ships of the United States Asiatic Fleet, usually based at Manila, were concentrated with British vessels at Shanghai when hostilities broke out at that city between the Japanese and Chinese forces. More significant was his success in convincing the Secretary of the Navy that the main body of the Pacific Fleet should remain at its Hawaiian base some weeks after it had completed its annual maneuvers. Stimson later suggested that this had a deterrent effect on Japan. More competent evaluations, taking into consideration the state of the fleet and its limited range of operation west of Hawaii, conclude that Stimson's view of his naval diplomacy was naive.10 In Japan, however, the chauvinistic press seized upon the American naval operation as proof that the United States was preparing for a trans-Pacific war.

II. THE AMERICAN NAVAL THREAT TO JAPAN When the Hoover administration was replaced in March, 1933, the direction which Stimson had tried to give to American policy in the Far East was at last accepted and greatly expanded. Not only was there to be political and economic pressure on Japan but the United States Navy was to be greatly increased in strength and the building program pointed directly at Japan. The position taken by the Roosevelt administration in its relations with Japan was in large part determined by the President himself. The naval program in particular was his personal interest. It was the product of the President's previous convictions about Japan and his strong admiration for the ideas of that great exponent of naval imperialism, Admiral Alfred T. Mahan. From Mahan, 242 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE Roosevelt not only received guidance in the use of the navy as an instrument of diplomacy but also confirmation of his belief that Japan was one of America's major enemies.

When Franklin Roosevelt was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy by Woodrow Wilson in 1913, he came to Washington at a time of public tension between Japan and the United States. Although Theodore Roosevelt had seemingly quieted the anti-Japanese agitation of the Pacific Coast States by his "gentleman's agreement" in 1907, severely restricting Japanese immigration, new difficulties developed in 1913. The state of California, under the pressure of powerful interest groups, passed legislation forbidding the sale or long-term lease of land to Japanese residents. The Japanese government protested this legislation to Washington and the irresponsible press magnified this protest into a threat of war. Although Secretary of State Bryan remained calm, an attempt was made by the Joint Army-Navy Board to force a mobilization of American forces in the Pacific. President Wilson forbade such a step and rebuked the Joint Board for its swordrattling by forbidding it to meet again without his permission.11 A group of naval officers, led by Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske, took the lead in the anti-Japanese agitation. Although Secretary of the Navy Daniels refused to give his support to the plans of this clique, they found a more sympathetic ear in the person of Assistant Secretary Roosevelt. With a background of sentimental attachments to China, young Roosevelt was more prone to be drawn into an anti-Japanese position. For Roosevelt and Daniels, Fiske prepared a memorandum in May, 1913, giving a number of reasons why Japan would be likely to go to war with the United States to secure the Philippines and the Hawaiian Islands. Roosevelt also secured naval intelligence reports for 1911 and 1912 giving accounts of alleged Japanese activity in Mexico in preparation for war with the United States. So moved was he by this agitation that he personally sketched some rough plans for naval operations against the Japanese forces.12 Roosevelt later wrote to Mahan that during the war scare he had also tried to get the American warships in the Far East concentrated at their base in the Philippines.13 Wilson and Bryan, howHOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 243 ever, felt that any move of the American naval forces might add to the tension of the situation and orders were sent out to the Far Eastern commander to that effect, over the Assistant Secretary's protest. In his correspondence with Mahan, Roosevelt found additional support for his feeling about the imminence of war with Japan. In June, 1914, Mahan wrote the Assistant Secretary that he felt that "our danger in the Pacific much exceeds that in the Atlantic." Roosevelt wrote in reply: "I wish it were possible to speak quite frankly and in public, about the excess of our danger in the Pacific over that in the Atlantic. I agree with you most heartily that the European powers are not disposed to interfere with us. . . ." Even after the outbreak of war in Europe in August, 1914, Mahan continued to warn Roosevelt about the dangers of war with Japan. Although the Navy Department soon found its attention drawn to the Atlantic and to the problems of submarine warfare, the end of the war in 1918 was once more followed by Japanese-American tension. And again the Assistant Secretary was supplied with lengthy intelligence reports showing the dangers of sudden attack by Japan.

In the 1920^ Mr. Roosevelt modified and revised some of his views on Japan. By 1923 he could write a letter to the Baltimore Sun in which he said: "Japan and the United States have not a single valid reason, and won't have as far as we can look ahead, for fighting each other/' That same year he even rejected some of the tenets of Mahanism and in a private letter he said in regard to Japan: "To enter into a new competition by the building of new fortifications and new navies will be a step backward which will do harm not only to the governments immediately concerned, but to the general future peace of the world." As late as 1928 Mr. Roosevelt complained about the extravagant naval building plans of the Coolidge administration, but this was at least in part a political criticism which may have lacked conviction.14 The man who took office in 1933, from all indications, was a reversion to the Roosevelt of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy days in his attitude toward Japan and naval power. Within a year in office the President was to launch the largest naval building program in the history of the United States. Two months before 244 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE he took office the President-elect announced that he would give his support to the Stimson doctrine of nonrecognition of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. When this announcement was made the New York Daily News editorialized: ". . . he had better begin building up the Navy the moment he becomes President.

You cannot make a war-provoking policy stick unless you have warlike weapons and plenty of them. . . ." The logic of the editorial writer's assumption seems to have been fully accepted by Roosevelt in his first years in office. As his Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt selected Claude A. Swanson, who was known in Congress for his faithful support of increased naval appropriations.15 There were two requirements, according to Raymond Moley, for Roosevelt's Secretary of the Navy: one was an interest in a big navy and the other was a high degree of susceptibility to Roosevelt's suggestions. Swanson seemed to combine both and, as delegate to the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1932, he had spoken in behalf of an American navy second to none. In his first press conference on March 7, 1933, the new Secretary of the Navy stated that his building policy was to expand the fleet "as quickly as possible" to the London Treaty limits. During the historic first "Hundred Days" of the New Deal the President was too busy with more pressing economic matters to back up his Secretary's plan. But on June 16 Roosevelt issued an executive order allotting $238,000,000 of the National Recovery Administration's funds to increasing the size of the Navy. The President's critics were quick to question the value of spending these funds in shipyards when there were areas of more pressing needs. But such complaints from the supporters of the President's economic program went unanswered. Before the first year of his administration was over, liberal critics were suggesting that the New Deal was "Drifting into Militarism."16 Although the new ships to be built with N.R.A. funds would not bring American strength beyond the 1930 treaty limits, Tokyo and many European capitals viewed the American program as again starting the world on a naval race. Naval building had been declining in all countries as national budgets were cut under the stress of HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 245 the world depression. Japanese appropriations for new naval construction declined from $40,900,000 in 1930-31 to $33,500,000 in 1931-32, and were further cut to $26,900,000 in 1932-33.17 The Roosevelt administration, by beginning the largest single program of naval construction undertaken by any nation since the end of World War I, was taking the initiative in reversing the trend.

In January, 1934, the Roosevelt administration presented new evidence that assumptions about the use of naval power in dealing with Japan played an important part in its thinking. Congressman Vinson at that time introduced a bill authorizing a building program over the next five years to bring the navy up to the maximum tonnage permitted by the Washington and London treaties in all categories. As finally passed, the Vinson-Trammell Act authorized the construction of over a hundred new vessels at an estimated annual cost of $76,000,000. No battleships were contemplated; the 1935 program began with an aircraft carrier, two light cruisers, fourteen destroyers, and six submarines. When he signed this bill, Roosevelt assured Americans that it was not a law "for the construction of a single additional United States warship." Its purpose, he said, was only to give general congressional approval to a future program. His administration still favored the limitation of naval armaments, Roosevelt argued, despite appearances to the contrary.

As seen from Japan, the American building program of 1933-34 had radically different implications than those offered by its sponsors. Admiral Osumi, Minister of the Navy, declared that the American program left Japan no alternative but to build more ships if national security was to be maintained. The new American ships thus provided the basis for a campaign by the naval expansionists of Japan. Despite pressure for cuts in the national budget, the Japanese naval estimates were the only ones to survive the Diet's economy slashes virtually intact. Some Japanese also assumed that the American effort at naval intimidation meant eventual war. Admiral Suetsugo, Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet, told Japanese reporters early in 1934 that his country must now be ready for an attack from a large air force carried across the Pacific by the American fleet.18 246 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE In October, 1934, preliminary conversations opened between the United States and Japan with regard to the 1935 naval conference.

For weeks the exchange of views continued without progress in reaching any agreement. Japan was unwilling to accept a continuation of the $-5-3 ratio system laid down in 1922, which set its capital-ship strength at 60 per cent of that of the United States and Britain. The increase in the cruising range of battleships as well as the great advances in naval aviation so favored the attacking fleet that the Japanese felt that their forces had to be more nearly equal to those of their potential enemies. As an alternative to increasing naval strength, Japan called for the abandonment of "offensive" naval strength and the establishment of top tonnage limits for "defensive" fleets. Aircraft carriers, battleships, and cruisers with eightinch guns were all listed as "offensive" vessels while submarines and destroyers were considered to be defensive. Japan aimed at the maintenance of clear defensive advantage in the western Pacific while leaving the United States unchallenged supremacy within the American defensive triangle in the eastern Pacific.

Although this arrangement would have provided security for both nations, it would have nullified the power of the American fleet as an instrument of diplomacy in Japanese-American relations. The Perry-Stimson-Roosevelt assumption about the achievement of American objectives in Asia by threats of force would have had to be discarded. Since it would have no longer have been possible for the United States to intervene in behalf of China, the assumption in regard to vital American economic and political interests in the SinoJapanese dispute would also have had to be pushed aside. The American refusal to alter substantially the 5-5-3 ratio had implications for the future of the Philippines as well. With a Japanese navy that was not considerably weaker than the American fleet, defense of these islands would have been obviously impossible. Many American strategists, official and unofficial, had already written off the Philippines as indefensible.19 The long and vulnerable supply lines and the lack of good natural bases in the islands had forced that decision on American war planners.

Without rejecting these assumptions, the United States could HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 247 not change its position on maintaining a strong offensive naval superiority to Japan. The Japanese, seeing no hope of securing their ends by conference, announced late in 1934 that their country would no longer be bound by the Washington agreements after the two years' warning stipulated by the treaty. Shortly after the Japanese announcements, the Secretary of the Navy stated that American naval maneuvers for 1935 would be conducted in Far Eastern waters. The timing of the American announcement suggested a new attempt at intimidation although the relationship of the two events was denied by official American spokesmen.20 In Japan, however, the American action contributed to the rising chauvinistic spirit. Many American organizations protested the location of the war games as an uncalled-for provocation, but appeals to President Roosevelt to halt the maneuvers were without avail.

In his annual message to Congress in January, 1935, the President was optimistic. He said that: There is no ground for apprehension that our relations with any nation will be otherwise than peaceful. Nor is there ground for doubt that the people of most nations seek relief from the threat and burden attaching to the false theory that extravagant armament cannot be reduced and limited by international accord. But immediately after this statement Roosevelt sent to Congress a budget message calling for the largest military appropriations in the peacetime history of the United States—$485,000,000 for the Navy alone—a rise of $180,000,000 over the previous year. Counting the sums spent by P.W.A. on shipbuilding in 1934, this was an increase of almost 40 per cent for the fiscal year of 1936 over that of 1934. Such expenditures, liberal critics pointed out, could only be aimed at Japan and would stir the people of that nation to arm with corresponding speed.21 In view of the background of events and the uncompromising positions taken by the Japanese and American governments prior to the opening of the London Naval Conference in December, 248 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE 1935, there was small possibility on reaching a new limitation agreement. Two months earlier, Secretary Hull told the Japanese ambassador that the United States had not changed its attitude since the 1934 conversations and did not recognize any significant developments since that date.22 It would be, said Hull, 'Very difficult if not impossible" to reach a comprehensive naval treaty. The only hope expressed by the Secretary of State was for a limited agreement to tide over the situation until circumstances were more favorable.

In Japan there were some marked differences between the Navy Ministry and the Foreign Office. The latter was less adamant on the achievement of parity. Both ministries, however, insisted on the abolition of the ratio system. As Ambassador Saito said earlier, 5-5-3 sounded to Japanese ears like "Rolls Royce-Rolls RoyceFord." There were indications, however, that, with the ratio system abolished, the Japanese Diet would be unwilling to foot the bill for a "Rolls Royce" navy. While the American delegation was en route to London, Secretary Swanson released his annual report, strongly recommending continued building up to the 1930 treaty limits. But in his opening speech in London, Norman H. Davis, chief of the American delegation, said that the American building program was "essentially one of replacement" and, therefore, consistent with a desire for naval reduction. The Japanese proposal was the first item of the agenda, but it met with strong opposition from Britain and the United States.

The British charged that setting a common upper limit would lead to an increase in the size of the major fleets even though the Japanese were willing to set this limit low enough to require substantial cuts in their own navy. Such a reduction would have made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the Japanese as well as the British and Americans to operate offensively outside their home waters. Consequently, the British stated bluntly that they would have to stand for a high upper limit for the defense of their empire. Both the British and Americans argued against the Japanese plan, contending that their strategic needs were far greater than those of Japan and that their navies would consequently have to be HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 249 much larger. This concept of naval needs did not move the Japanese, who considered only the problem of defending themselves against a larger attacking force.

The chief alternative proposal was made by the British. Each nation was to declare the minimum tonnage it needed for security and also the upper limit beyond which it would not build. In effect, this meant the restoration of naval competition and offered no satisfaction for Japan. After the tenth session of the conference, with their proposal rejected, the Japanese delegates withdrew, leaving only an observer. In the United States Japan was given the blame for the breakup of naval limitation agreements. But the fact cannot be overlooked that Japan offered to cut tonnages to a point where naval war between the three biggest powers would have been impossible. This, however, was not a major consideration for the British and American delegations. With the closing of the London Conference, the Roosevelt administration continued its drive for a greatly enlarged navy. In the spring of 1936 Congress was asked to give the Navy Department $530,000,000 for the next fiscal year. Although this figure was cut a few millions in committee, the final bill still set a new high for peacetime naval spending. The Naval Appropriation Act provided for the construction of twelve destroyers, six submarines and some three hundred naval planes. Two battleships were also authorized, if either Britain or Japan began the construction of capital ships.

If, at any point in history, the die is finally cast after years of preparation, that point had been reached in Japanese-American relations in the years 1936 and 1937. In Japan the political and economic developments assured a continuation of the policy of expansion. In the United States the Roosevelt administration committed itself to programs which meant eventually going to war to stop Japanese expansion. It was, thereafter, only a question of time until the two policies converged and exploded into war. The continuation of the external political and economic pressures upon Japan during the first half of the 1930^, coupled with the world-wide increase of militarism, gave more strength to the Japanese army's hold on the government. In February, 1936, a 250 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE coup was attempted by military extremists. Important government buildings were seized and held for several days before the revolting troops and their leaders surrendered at the command of the Emperor. As a result, one extremist group in the army, the Kodoha, was eliminated. But this left in power the Control Faction, a rival group which was also chauvinistic but avoided extra-legal means in its striving for power.

Military domination of the government was now almost complete. In May, 1936, an imperial ordinance required that all officers filling either the Ministry of War or Navy be on active status. The army and navy could thus make or break cabinets as they pleased, and the political parties were helpless in attempting to form a cabinet which did not have military approval. When members of the Seiyuki party early in 1937, attacked the dictatorial program of the army and the signing of the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact, the army forced the resignation of the War Minister and the collapse of the Hirota cabinet. Even though the electorate, in May, 1937, repudiated the next cabinet headed by General Hayashi, there was little hope for effective action by the status quo forces which favored rapprochement with Britain and the United States. It was on the basis of these facts that a review of American policy toward Japan was called for in 1936-37. The issue of peace or war for the American people now hung on the question of whether or not it was of vital national interest that future Japanese expansion in Asia be blocked. It was clear, even that early, that there was only the remotest of possibilities that this expansion could be checked by methods short of war. The dreams and proposals of amateur strategists for forcing Japan to her knees by economic means merited little consideration by serious students of Japanese character and foreign policy.

In naval as well as in diplomatic policy, two courses were open to the United States. One was the continuation of the American building program on the Roosevelt-approved Mahan hypothesis that the cure for the curse of navalism would be found in more navalism. Accepting this assumption, to win victory at a minimum cost, the United States had to build a tremendous offensive navy, HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 251 one which could carry the conflict across the Pacific, cutting off Japan's trade routes and threatening the home islands. As Charles Beard phrased it, the navy had to be either for "defense or portent." If the latter, the Pacific Fleet had to be strong enough to sweep the Pacific if Japan reacted to a threat of force as proud nations hitherto responded to this type of diplomacy. The other course promised peace in the Pacific but peace for a price. It involved recognition of the fact that Japan was in at least portions of China to stay for the forseeable future. It involved acceptance of the word "parity" in naval relations, but with the knowledge that this did not of necessity mean a change in the actual power relationship. On these terms, friendship with Japan was assured, the security of the Philippines was unlikely to be questioned, and America's profitable economic relations with Japan could continue undisturbed.

Congress, as well as the American people as a whole in 1936-37, assumed that American interests in China were far too small to justify war or even a risk of war with Japan. The apathy and lack of warlike spirit in response to the sinking of the U.S. gunboat Panay by Japanese planes in December, 1937, testified to the disinterest in Asia. If the issues of war or peace had been stated clearly, the overwhelming popular as well as congressional vote would have favored nonintervention in Asia. It was different, however, when it came to appropriating funds for a navy which might eventually fight an unwanted war. At this level Congress and the voter only briefly and infrequently glimpsed the relationship between naval expansion and the administration's diplomatic aspirations in the Far East. As a result the Mahanist hypothesis was accepted without serious challenge and continued large-scale naval building met with little resistance.

In January, 1937, the President announced that he had approved the construction of two new battleships, an answer to British construction and the first American capital ships to be built since the Washington Conference. Here and there an influential voice questioned the concept of "defensive purposes" advanced by the President. The New York Herald Tribune could see no necessity for these "spectacular increases in our naval burden," and even the 252 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE New York Times admitted its inability to see the justification for the Roosevelt action. Congress, however, was again generous in meeting the Navy Department's requests for funds in 1937. Occasionally a question was asked on the floor of Congress about the purpose of the naval increases but the usual arguments about national defenses were given in reply. Navy spending for the fiscal year 1938 continued to set new highs, falling just short of six hundred million dollars.

In the next Congress the President was even more successful in stepping up the pace of his program. At Roosevelt's request, a second Vinson bill was passed, raising the total authorized tonnage 20 per cent above the 1934 goals and giving the President authority to replace all vessels designated as overage. The President had initiated his new armament campaign in his annual message to Congress early in January, 1938, when he stressed the need of keeping "adequately strong in selfdefense." A week after the House voted $547,000,000 for the Navy, the President sent another message to Congress, calling on it to meet the arms increases in other parts of the world with even larger appropriations and by immediately increasing the authorized size of the Navy. No nation was named by the President, but there were numerous indications that the building program was aimed in part at Japan. In the first place the President's message came a month after the sinking of the Panay, when diplomatic negotiations were still in process for the indemnification of that loss. On the day of the President's arms message, the State Department released an elevenday-old note to the Japanese Foreign Office, sharply protesting the disregard shown for American rights in China by the Japanese forces. And at the same time the Department gave the press news of the slapping of an American diplomat in Nanking by a Japanese soldier.

These three events, coupled with the arms message, clearly suggested a relationship between rearmament and Japanese expansion in the mind of the administration despite the continued protestations that arms were for defense only and not for overseas intervention. An influential minority in Congress, at times verging on a majority, began to ask whether there was any inconsistency beHOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 253 tween the congressional position of hands-off in Asia and naval expansion. When hearings were held on the naval increases early in 1938, a number of distinguished citizens appeared to inquire into the purpose of the bill. Admiral Leahy, chief spokesman for the Navy, parried all questions about the relationship of the building program to foreign policy. The Admiral insisted that the Navy was for defense only and that there was no intention of using it to police the world. As for taking action against Japan, Leahy said that it would require "at least three times the proposed increase"

to make that possible. On the floor of the Senate, Hiram Johnson of California, no lover of Japan, also asked questions about the meaning of the building increases and whether they were intended for overseas operations. Senator Pittman, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Roosevelt spokesman, gave strong assurances that the President's policy was still that which he enunciated in 1933, "noninterference and nonintervention in the affairs of other governments." The Senator went so far as to repudiate the President's "quarantine speech" of October, 1937, and to insist that foreign policy could not be judged by the use of that suggestive word. By quarantine, he said, the President meant to ostracize the outlaw nations rather than to place an embargo on them. In the House, four members of the Naval Affairs Committee submitted a minority report attacking the proposed naval increases, but the committee majority gave it full support. The bill passed the House over one hundred dissenting votes and went through the Senate by a vote of fifty-six to twenty-eight. Big Navy interests succeeded in surpassing even the President's request by making three thousand naval planes the minimum rather than the maximum to be built and by adding a new dirigible to the naval air force at the cost of three million dollars.

The Japanese press, while remaining silent on Japan's own building plans, devoted much space to the American debate over the 20 per cent increase in the building program. Japanese newspapers argued that the American move was a direct threat to Japan. Navy Minister Yonai assured the Japanese people that their navy was keeping pace with the Americans in building.

254 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE In February, 1938, Japan was given a hint that in a future war there would be joint British-American naval operations conducted in the western Pacific. The new British naval base at Singapore was dedicated that month with only three foreign vessels on hand; all three were ships from the United States Navy. News also leaked out on the floor of Congress about a secret mission to London in January, 1938, by Captain Ingersoll, chief of the Navy War Plans division. Although the details of the Ingersoll conversations were then unknown, correct surmises were made in Congress that the purpose of the visit was the planning of joint operations against Japan.23 In Japan these surmises strengthened suspicions that the Japanese navy must be strong enough to resist an AngloAmerican blockade which would cut off Japanese trade with Europe and southeast Asia. III. USE OF THE U. S. NAVY IN FAR EASTERN POLICY After 1938 the increase of Hitler's power in Europe and the fall of Austria and Czechoslovakia made it easier to overcome congressional opposition to naval building and to administration pleas for a two-ocean navy. For the fiscal year of 1939, total arms expenditures mounted to more than twice those of 1935. The Navy also drew on the Treasury for over $670,000,000 in 1939, almost $900,000,000 in 1940, and for over $2,000,000,000 in the fiscal year ending in June, 1941. Authorizations later that year, moved by the fall of France, almost doubled the Navy's building goals.

As the Navy grew larger, there was increasing confidence that American naval power could easily threaten Japan into submission or, if necessary, crush the Japanese forces with a minimum of losses for the United States. There was no expectation that the war would be a long one or a hard one. The American racialist stereotype of HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 255 the Oriental, assuming basic inferiority on the part of the yellow races, did not permit any consideration of the possibility that the Japanese might be a formidable opponent. The surprise victory of the Japanese over the Russians in 1904-5 was forgotten, even though it had once raised the stature of Japan in American eyes. In July, 1937, shortly after Japan renewed its warfare against China, President Roosevelt began work on a plan to force the Japanese into submission by a joint British-American naval blockade to cut off Japanese trade.24 The opposition of many of the leading admirals to such a bold plan, which they believed meant war, as well as the adverse public reactions to the famous "quarantine speech" in October, 1937, led the President to put his plan aside.

In 1938 a new joint Army-Navy Plan was drafted for use against Japan. It assumed that Japan might begin hostilities against the United States after a period of strained relations and without a formal declaration of war.25 Among the American fleet's tasks was a westward movement from Pearl Harbor to capture and establish control over the Caroline and Marshall Islands. The Ingersoll conversations in London had already explored the possible use of the new British naval base at Singapore for operations against Japan. In mid-April, 1939, the United States fleet, which had been moved to the Atlantic three months earlier, was suddenly ordered by the President to return to the Pacific. The Atlantic transfer had been considered as only a temporary one but the fleet was to have remained longer and to have been part of the New York World's Fair. In the fall of 1939, despite the outbreak of war in Europe, reinforcements were also sent to Admiral Hart, commander of the Asiatic Squadron, consisting of a half dozen new submarines and a squadron of planes. Hart had asked for a heavy cruiser squadron because of the increased dangers of operation in the western Pacific, but this much strength could not be spared for the Pacific Fleet.

While in the Pacific, the fleet was based on the California coast. But in October, 1939, a substantial number of ships—eight heavy cruisers, one aircraft carrier, and eighteen destroyers—were detached from the West Coast and stationed at Pearl Harbor. In April, 1940, the fleet was moved in its entirety to Hawaii for the 256 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE conduct of the annual maneuvers. Although the fleet's plans called for a return to the West Coast in early May, orders were given to postpone the return for two weeks. Before that period expired, the fleet was assigned to Pearl Harbor for an indefinite period. For two decades, since its assignment to the Pacific in 1920, the fleet had been based on the West Coast. This move, shifting the center of American naval power some 2,500 miles closer to Japan, was a highly significant event in the history of the power relations of the two countries.

In October, 1940, the commander in chief of the fleet outlined a new war plan which aimed at intercepting trade between Japan and the Americas.26 To achieve this extensive operation, major reinforcements were to be sent to the Asiatic Squadron which would retire to the East Indies area where it would operate in conjunction with British and Dutch naval forces. Another American detachment was to patrol the North Pacific from Hawaii to the Aleutians, sweeping the sea for Japanese commerce and raiders. The remaining forces would reconnoiter the Caroline and Marshall Islands preliminary to offensive operations against these Japanese outposts. The naval movements could be interpreted only as efforts to coerce Japan or as preparations for actual hostilities. For the most part the initiative for these movements did not originate in the Navy Department but with the President and the State Department. In the case of the shifting of the fleet base to Pearl Harbor, both the Commander in Chief of the fleet, Admiral Richardson, and Admiral Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, were in opposition.

Richardson was also critical of any stick-waving at Japan which might end in hostilities. He argued that Pearl Harbor was not adequately equipped and that the Japanese knew that the American forces were not sufficiently supported with auxilliary ships to conduct offensive operations. Another factor, generally overlooked, was that, in the 1938 fleet maneuvers, the aircraft carrier Saratoga had launched a successful surprise attack on Pearl Harbor from a position only a hundred miles away. Roosevelt's decision to use the naval power of the United States in an effort to squeeze concessions from Japan, or to engage in war, if necessary, came not only from his own assumptions about AmerHOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 257 ican interest and American superiority, but also at the urging of the British government. As early as March, 1939, Lord Halifax, British Foreign Secretary, was urging that the American fleet be returned to the Pacific and that this step be so timed as to have maximum psychological effect on Japan.27 The British also assumed that war was likely with the Japanese, but at the same time they were eager to keep most of the strength of the Royal Navy in European waters.

One British objective was to strengthen Singapore with detachments of the American navy. Five days after he became prime minister on May 10, 1940, Churchill sent a personal message to Roosevelt asking for American ships to be dispatched to Singapore.28 In early October of the same year, after the fall of France had drawn most of Britain's Far Eastern ships to the Mediterranean, Churchill again urged that American power be shifted to the western Pacific. He suggested the reinforcement of the Asiatic Squadron with battleships and once more offered Singapore as a base. In late November, 1940, another request came from London for the division of America's Pacific forces and a greater extension of power west of Hawaii. If war came as a result, Britain's First Sea Lord, Sir Dudley Pound, argued that the Japanese navy could be stopped north of the Dutch East Indies. The British ambassador to Washington told Hull that British naval experts had also figured out that the American fleet, if based at Singapore, could, on the opening of war, reach Japan before the Japanese navy attacked in the South Pacific.29 This optimism about the ability of the American fleet to move boldly into Japan's home waters was, fortunately, not shared by top American naval commanders. Admiral Leahy, formerly Chief of Naval Operations, told the President in October, 1940, that any reinforcements sent to the Asiatic Squadron would be lost in the event of war.30 Later it was revealed that the Singapore base lacked the equipment to effect major repairs on capital ships and would have been inadequate as a center of American operations in Far Eastern waters. The November, 1940, request was not filled, but before the year closed some further reinforcements were ordered to Admiral Hart's Far Eastern Squadron.

In Washington the amateur naval strategists not only included 258 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE President Roosevelt but also Secretary Hull and one of his aides, Stanley Hornbeck, State Department adviser on Far Eastern affairs. Hornbeck, according to Admiral Richardson, was exercising more influence over the disposition of the United States fleet in 1940 than was its commander in chief.31 When part of the fleet was moved west, to be based in Hawaii in October, 1939, this order was sent with the strong approval of the State Department. The major decision, the retention of the entire fleet at Pearl Harbor, was apparently made by the President himself. When the fleet commander asked the meaning of this move, he was told by the Chief of Naval Operations that it was to have a "deterrent effect" on Japanese moves into the East Indies. Admiral Richardson doubted, however, whether the intended effect could be obtained.

Japanese espionage in Hawaii, he was certain, was effective enough to inform Tokyo that the American fleet had assembled with only an 85 per cent complement and without the train of auxiliary ships needed for offensive action west of Hawaii.32 When the admiral presented this argument to the President in person, he found that Roosevelt was certain that the contrary was true and was determined not to permit a withdrawal to the West Coast bases. Admiral Stark agreed with Richardson on the inadvisability of keeping the fleet at Pearl Harbor. Several Japanese newspapers pointed out that the decision to move the fleet base was an effort to stop rumored Japanese moves toward the Dutch East Indies. But they also suggested that it would be difficult for the fleet to remain at Pearl Harbor because of limited facilities. The information now available on the formulation of Japanese foreign policy, in 1940, gives no support for the President's belief in the effects of his strategy.33 Roosevelt admitted some uncertainty about his policy, but held out against the opinion of his two top naval commanders and told Stark that he would "sit tight" on his decision.

As an amateur naval strategist, Roosevelt had other ideas about employing the Navy against Japan. For the most part he vastly underrated the ability and strength of the Japanese navy and expressed overly-optimistic views about the capabilities of the American fleet. In October, 1939, discussing the possibility of Japan's HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 259 moving into the Dutch East Indies, he said that "we could easily intercept her fleet"—an operation which American forces would have had to conduct some five thousand miles from their nearest major base.34 A year later, in October, 1940, the President's optimism went so far as to touch on the realm of fantasy. At that time he told the Secretary of the Navy that he was considering shutting off all trade between Japan and the Western Hemisphere if Japan took action against British possessions as a result of the opening of the Burma Road. This blockade could be achieved, thought the President, by a patrol of light ships stretching across the Pacific vastness in two lines. One would run from Hawaii to the Philippines and the other from Samoa to Singapore. Admiral Richardson, when the Secretary of the Navy told him of the President's plans, said that war would surely result, that the fleet was in no condition to carry out such an operation, and that to attempt it would expose many ships to certain destruction. Richardson's objections "hurt the President's feelings/' according to Secretary Knox, and Richardson was shortly after relieved of his post.35 Before being relieved of his command, Admiral Richardson drafted a tentative plan for carrying out a limited blockade, based on a more realistic measure of the fleet's limitations. His plan, however, called for the shifting of some ships from the Atlantic to facilitate operations and it never received the President's approval.

Richardson was himself doubtful whether any offensive operations could be successfully conducted in Japanese waters without major increases in American strength. Despite Richardson's doubts, the American public received assurances from many quarters that the Japanese navy was not to be feared. A study of naval power in the Pacific by an American officer, published in May, 1941, stated that a surprise attack on the Pacific Fleet had already been averted.36 Pearl Harbor was already on a war footing, this authority believed, and, referring to Japan's successful surprise attack on the Russian navy in 1904, he said that there would be "no American Port Arthur." Only a few weeks before December 7, a popular writer on military affairs told a national radio audience that Japan was in no position to fight the United States. The Japanese navy was said to be hopelessly handicapped 260 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE by lack of air support and Japanese air power was termed "almost nonexistent." Six months earlier, Admiral Turner, director of the War Plans Division, told a British-American staff conference that the American navy could keep Japanese strength at home merely by cruising in mid-Pacific waters.37 This myth of overwhelming fighting superiority lulled many Americans into the passive acceptance of the coming conflict. Although it was obvious to many that the Roosevelt administration was taking a position which would force a military showdown, opposition voices were softened or stilled by a belief in a quick and inexpensive victory. The traditional assumptions of white or AngloSaxon superiority made it easy for the public as well as for government leaders to believe that an Oriental nation could not equal or outdo the West in adapting itself to the techniques and machines of modern warfare. It was this belief that also contributed to the unpreparedness of Hawaii and the Philippines, IV. ECONOMIC PRESSURE ON JAPAN The underrating of Japanese strength and morale also dominated the last phase of American peacetime relations with Japan. Like the naval program, the Roosevelt administration's economic program was based on the assumption that threat and pressure would achieve American ends in dealing with Japan.

The first call for the use of economic pressure against Japan followed the issuance of the Stimson doctrine in 1932. Proponents of sanctions advocated striking two blows at the Japanese, one by an embargo on arms and munitions and the other by a boycott on Japanese goods sold in the United States. The latter appealed particularly to the American manufacturing groups who were facing the competition of inexpensive Japanese merchandise which, in the depression years, seemed to be selling widely on the American HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 261 market. Neither program was successful, however, because of the unwillingness of Congress and of the public to interfere in the Asiatic conflict in the early 1930's. When Japan struck at China again in 1937, the movement for economic measures was revived with great strength. Former Secretary of State Henry Stimson, now a private citizen, took the lead with a letter to the New York Times in October, 1937. Stimson called upon the United States to end the sale of arms to Japan and claimed that in this manner the conflict could be brought to a halt.

In contrast to the views later expressed in his memoirs, he argued that aid could be given to China "without serious danger to us." There was no thought of sending troops to participate in the SinoJapanese conflict, Stimson said. With a rare bit of foresight he wrote that to attempt to send American troops "would do much more harm than good/' After repeating the various assumptions about American interests in China (these were also the Roosevelt administration assumptions), Stimson closed by expressing the hope that the President's "quarantine speech" at Chicago meant that America would carry through with its "responsibilities" in the Far Eastern crisis. Stimson's call for action found enthusiastic support from various groups. Self-interest combined in some instances with a desire to aid China. Labor, for example, was glad to campaign against cheap foreign manufactures which undersold American products. Both the C.I.O. and the A.F. of L., in their 1937 conventions, passed resolutions favoring a boycott of Japanese-made goods. Business interests in competition with Japan also gave some support to Stimson's call for action. But when The Nation promoted a consumer's boycott on all purchases of silk stockings, American hosiery manufacturers who depended on Japanese silk imports denounced the boycott as a blow to American industry.

Arguments in behalf of an arms embargo and a consumers' boycott were also furnished by books like Japan's Feet of Clay.38 The author of this volume pleaded for the United States and Britain to call Japan's bluff and to cut off all trade with this imperialist nation. Japan was to collapse within a few weeks, her feet of clay crumbling under the strain of economic hardship, thus bringing the war in 262 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE China to an end. Like other pleas for economic sanctions, this book claimed that such action would lead to peace. Any possibility of a conflict was denied, for the author believed that the Japanese were really mediocre righting men whose characters were unfit for the strains of modern war. These specious pleas were used by administration spokesmen in Congress in behalf of legislation which would give the President the power to curtail or suspend American economic relations with Japan. But Congressmen were hesitant to act, reflecting on the uncertainty of public opinion. Despite the preference of the majority of Americans for a Chinese victory, a public-opinion poll in October, 1937, found that fewer than 40 per cent of those questioned felt strongly enough about the Asiatic conflict to stop their purchases of Japanese goods.

The application of the socalled "moral embargo" by the Department of State in 1938 was the first official achievement of the supporters of economic sanctions. The decision, in 1939, to terminate the 1911 commercial treaty with Japan was an even greater victory. Within the Roosevelt cabinet the movement for embargoes grew in strength. Secretary Morgenthau was the strongest advocate of ending American trade with Japan, and he gained a strong supporter in Henry Stimson when the latter entered the cabinet in the summer of 1940. Six months earlier, Stimson had written another letter to the New York Times, again appealing for an end to the sale of war materials as the first step to a firmer policy. He assured his fellow Americans that Japan did not want war with the United States and that an embargo was the road to peace. This simple program for winning a bloodless victory over Japan, with its "having one's cake and eating it" solution, began to win wider public support. Public-opinion polls were able to produce larger and larger percentages in favor of embargoes on trade with Japan. The administration kept pace with this movement of opinion and, by its licensing program, made successive inroads on the sale of strategic materials to Japan. By the end of 1940 the only item vital to Japan's effort being shipped by the United States was oil. The sanctionist groups therefore concentrated their efforts in HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 263 1941 on ending the trade in oil and in nonessential commodities.

In mid-June of 1941 oil supplies grew so short on the east coast of the United States that all shipments from east-coast ports were prohibited. Although the reason for this action was a genuine domestic problem, restricting purchases to West Coast ports produced a major cut in Japan's oil shipments. The Navy, and Admiral Stark in particular, argued strongly against cutting off Japanese oil purchases. Little hope was placed by the navy in this method of forcing a reversal in Japanese policy. The shortage of domestic oil supplies was expected to force Japan into war for the Dutch East Indies oil and into war with the United States as well. The Navy, heavily burdened by its operations in the Atlantic in the convoying of arms to Britain, did not consider itself ready for war in the Pacific. Secretary Hull was also for months reluctant to give the approval of the State Department to this drastic move.

Secretary Morgenthau, warmly supported by Stimson, continued his fight against the moderates in the Roosevelt cabinet and called for the ending of Japanese trade by the freezing of Japanese assets. Outside the government he found many strong supporters. "Squeeze Japan Now!" was the title of one typical exhortation by a Far Eastern specialist.39 In a masterful oversimplification this writer promised that "terrorization of Japan by levying of penalties in advance as a token of what may come" was the only way to keep the European war from spreading to Asia. President Roosevelt was finally moved to carry out the Morgenthau-Stimson program. On July 26, 1941, following the movement of Japanese troops into Indochina, he issued an order freezing Japanese assets and cutting off all Japanese trade. Britain and the Netherlands followed suit. Pressing the point home, American oil was then sent to the Soviet Union via Vladivostok by American tankers which passed not far from the shores of oil-hungry Japan.

Japan now had no alternative but to bow to American demands or fight for the resources by which her economic and military strength was to be maintained. Short of a miraculous revolution, overthrowing army leadership, no change of course could be ex264 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE pected from the Japanese government. The war with Japan, which Admiral Ingersoll said the navy had confidently expected for the last twenty years, was now at hand. The only question which remained to be answered was where and at what hour the attack would come. Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and Guam were obvious Japanese objectives. But the vigor which had been applied to pressuring Japan in the previous months was not now applied in preparing to meet the results of that policy. V. AMERICA'S FALSE AND COSTLY ASSUMPTIONS The Far Eastern policy of the Roosevelt administration was born of an exaggerated conception of American political and economic interests in China. It was based on dream stuff rather than on the facts of Far Eastern history and statistics of American trade. It was based on the oft-disproved assumption that one major power can intimidate another by rapidly increasing its striking power without an arms race as the chief result. Yet this was the assumption stated most bluntly by Norman H. Davis, perennial American delegate to the naval disarmament conferences and one of Franklin Roosevelt's closest advisers in the realm of foreign affairs. In a memorandum which he prepared for the President in July, 1937, after the outbreak of war in China, Davis advocated the construction of two or three additional battleships "for the sake of peace and ultimate disarmament. I do not hold to the theory that the best way to preserve peace is to prepare for war, but I am convinced that the bigger our navy is the more influence we could bring to bear for disarmament."40 By these means American intervention in the SinoJapanese conflict was to restore the pre-1937 or even the pre-1931 status quo of the Far East. When war appeared finally as an almost inescapable certainty, there was still faith in the validity of American policy since out of war were to come order and progress for HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 265 China and more abundant economic opportunities for the United States.

These assumptions dominated the thinking of President Roosevelt and key figures in his cabinet. When challenged by political opponents and others who were concerned with the maintenance of peace in the Pacific, the assumptions were dogmatically reaffirmed. On the basis of materials now available, there is no evidence that these assumptions were seriously re-examined at any time from 1933 down to Pearl Harbor. The warnings of Ambassador Grew and other students of the Far East, who managed to free themselves from the official frame of reference and the prevalent stereotypes, went unheeded. In 1935, for example, a former chief of the State Department's Division of Far Eastern Affairs warned his superiors that the defeat of Japan ". . . would merely create a new set of stresses, and substitute for Japan the U.S.S.R.—as the successor of Imperial Russia—as a contestant (and at least an equally unscrupulous and dangerous one) for the mastery of the East. Nobody except perhaps Russia would gain from our victory in such a war. . . ."41 This profound prophecy was ignored. The President and his policy makers went ahead with a program of resistance to Japan which was logical and consistent, if their assumptions were accepted, but could only end in war.

Any study of the wisdom of American Far Eastern policy must note the unpleasant facts of its results. The end of all foreign policies is the protection and advancement of national interests. If American policy was sound, the results should testify to that soundness. But its results have only been negative. Into the vacuum created by the destruction of Japanese power moved the power of the Soviet Union. In place of Japan, the Soviet Union became the dominant force in the Far East and a China under Soviet influence has yielded far less for American interests than did China under Japan. A war with the "Open Door" as one of its objectives ended with the door closed more tightly than ever. Not only were American interests in China destroyed but in the war the more valuable trade with Japan was eliminated and Japan turned into a subject nation, dependent far into the foreseeable future on an American 266 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE subsidy for its economic existence. Lastly, instead of bringing peace and order to Asia, World War II let loose in that vast area—as World War I did in Europe—all the passions of long-suppressed nationalism to create tumult and strife for decades to come.

"Wars begin in the minds of men," the framers of the UNESCO constitution concluded. So America's war with Japan began as much in the minds of Stimson, Roosevelt, and other architects of American policy, in the decade before Pearl Harbor, as in the minds of the leaders of Japan. It is unfair to ask that American leaders be endowed with superhuman powers of prediction and the ability to foresee all the results of their acts. But it is the responsibility of statesmen and diplomats to avoid war and warmaking policies unless there is a high degree of probability that unquestionably vital national interests can only be protected by war. A war policy must then be justified by the sanest of estimates of the outcome, evaluating the experience of the past and weighing the costs in blood and sweat against the benefits to present and future generations. By the standards of results—mankind's score sheet—the policies of Roosevelt and Stimson failed in their estimates of national interest and of the methods of achieving that interest. Their policy, paid for in American lives and resources, netted nought but ruin for Japan and assisted in the birth of an Asia more determined than ever to eject the Western interloper.

FOOTNOTES-CHAPTER 4 1. Cf. Walter Millis, This Is Pearl/ The United States and Japan (New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1947) and Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950). 2. An example of progress in this direction is furnished by George F. Kennan's American Diplomacy, 19001950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), in which a major State Department policy HOW AMERICAN POLICY CONTRIBUTED TO PACIFIC WAR 267 maker deals very critically with the "legalistic approach" of American diplomacy to Far Eastern problems. 3. Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 233. 4. A. Whitney Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc., 1938), p. 393. 5. Stimson and Bundy, op. cit., pp. 177-79. 6. Raymond Moley, After Seven Years (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939), p. 95.

7. Sumner Welles, Seven Decisions That Shaped History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951), p. 68. 8. The Peffer book was published in 1935 and a refutation of its arguments, made by Paul T. Homan, "Must It Be War With Japan?" appeared in the Political Science Quarterly, LIII (June, 1938), pp. 173-85. Peffer himself later argued against and, finally, for war with Japan on other grounds. 9. Stimson, op. cit., p. 244. Stimson says that he could not deny "that anything more than verbal action to check Japanese aggression might well lead to war." Ibid., p. 233. 10. Nicholas J. Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc., 1942), p. 157. 11. An account of this war scare and its background is to be found in Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era: Years of Peace, 1910-1917 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), pp. 167-68. 12. This plan as well as other evidences of Roosevelt's concern with Japan are presented in detail by Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Apprenticeship (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1952), pp. 22227.

13. This and the successive letters quoted are to be found among the unpublished materials in the Franklin D. Roosevelt library. 14. Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Our Foreign Policy, A Democratic View," Foreign Affairs (July, 1928), pp. 573-86. 15. Swanson was also chosen in order to open a Senate seat for a rising Virginia politician, Harry Byrd, who was later to become a bitter foe of the New Deal domestic program. 16. This was the title of an article by Mauritz Hallgren in The Nation, October 4, 1933, pp. 373-75. 17. U.S. Naval Intelligence figures, cited in the Congressional Record, May 20, 1933, 73 Cong., 1 sess., p. 3826. 18. Japan Advertiser, January 18, 1934. 19. Theodore Roosevelt reached this conclusion as early as 1907 when he called the Philippines America's "heel of Achilles." Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc., 1931), p. 408. The same conclusion was reached by Admiral Fiske in drafting war plans against Japan in 1913. See Bradley Fiske, From Midshipman to Rear Admiral (New York: The Century Company, 1919), pp. 528-29.

20. Admiral Morison considers the issuance of the American announcement to have been "purely by chance" in following closely on the Japanese 268 PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE step. What resulted he calls a "curious tension." Samuel E. Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1948), p. 12. For the Japanese reactions, see J. K. Kasai, The United States and Japan in the Pacific (Tokyo: Kokusai Press, 1935), passim. 21. "Our Navy Madness," The Nation, January 23, 1935; "We Must Not Arm Against Japan," ibid., March 13, 1935. These criticisms should be : contrasted with the later evaluations of a large-navy proponent like ' Commodore Dudley W. Knox who could say that Japan's actions "did comparatively little to stir us into active naval building." See S. E. Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II: The Battle of the Atlantic, Septembei7 1939-May, 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1947), I, xxxviii.

22. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations oi the United States, Japan: 19311941, Department of State Publication 2016 (2 vols.; Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943), I, 277-78. 23. Heahngs Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 79 Cong., 2 sess. (39 parts; Washington, D.C.: Govi eminent Printing Office, 1946), Part IX, pp. 4274-77. (The Hearings will hereinafter be designated Pearl Harbor Attack.) I 24. Welles, op. cit., pp. 71, 76. ; 25. This was known as Orange (1938) and is printed in part in Pearl Harbor ! Attack, Part XV, pp. 1423-25. 26. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part XIV, pp. 1006-12. ! 27. Cordell Hull, Memoirs (2 vols.; The Macmillan Company, 1948), I, 630. 28. Feis, op. cit., p. 57. 29. Hull, op. cit., I, 914. 30. Pearl Harbor Attack, Part I, p. 265. 31. Ibid., Part I, p. 297. 32. Ibid., Part I, pp. 265-66, 298-300. 33. The most thorough study of Japanese foreign policy in 1940 as yet available, that of Herbert Feis, op. cit., makes no mention of the fleet movement as a consideration by the makers of Japanese policy.

•j 34. Feis, op. cit., p. 41. ; 35. Pear] Harbor Attack, Part I, pp. 323-24. j 36. Commander William D. Puleston, U.S.N., The Armed Forces of the ) Pacific (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1941), pp. 116-17. ' 37. Major General-Sherman Miles, "Pearl Harbor in Retrospect," Atlantic ; Monthly, July, 1948, p. 65. 1 38. The author was an English publicist, Freda Utley, whose book was issued J in the United States in 1937. i 39. Nathaniel Peffer in The Nation, August 2, 1941. This publication j carried many similar articles and editorials throughout 1941. Cf. "Call ; Japan's Bluff," August 9, 1941. 40. This memorandum, initialed "N. H. D.," is dated July 30, 1937, and is ; included among the President's papers in the Hyde Park library. j 41. Quoted in Kennan, op. cit.f pp. 51-52.