Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (93 page)

Approximately nine weeks later, on June 5, the Japanese ambassador in Berlin, Gen.
shima Hiroshi, reported to the emperor and the high command that Hitler was about to invade the Soviet Union.
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The Army General Staff's “Twentieth Group” immediately responded by drafting a plan for opening war against the Soviet Union while simultaneously advancing south into French
Indochina. The Army Ministry's Military Affairs Bureau just as immediately set to work on its own, different plan, which featured postponing the attack on the Soviet Union “until the time ripens.” As these disagreements intensified between the Army General Staff and the Army Ministry over how to assess the new factor of a German-Soviet war, a new document—“Outline of the Empire's National Policies in View of the Changing Situation”—began to take shape.
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Then, on June 22, the situation changed as anticipated. Hitler turned on Stalin and, unconsciously following the footsteps of Napoleon Bonaparte after his standoff with Britain, invaded the Soviet Union.

On the following morning, June 23, a meeting of the top leaders of the Navy Ministry and Naval General Staff, attended also by Section Chiefs and Bureau Heads, firmed up the navy's position: Go for military bases and airfields in the southern part of French Indochina even if that move entailed “risking war with Britain and the United States.” For, as explained a few days later by a key participant, liaison officer Lt. Col. Fujii Shigeru of the Navy Ministry's Military Affairs Bureau, a Japan–U.S. war was probably inevitable, but just might be avoided by taking “an extremely hard line” toward the United States and Britain, throwing fear into them, and persisting in that tough attitude whenever they appeared threatening. He likened this approach to “walking on a tightrope.”
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Today we would use “brinksmanship.”

To all those who wanted to strike northward and destroy Soviet power throughout the eastern Siberian region as far as Lake Baikal, the German-Soviet war offered an obvious temptation. The participants in the liaison conferences and imperial conferences that led to Japan's declaration of war against the United States and Britain, were also influenced by the American tightening of economic sanctions against Japan after it had moved into southern Indochina, and
by President Roosevelt's commitment to the defense of Britain, China, and the Soviet Union. Since the British blockade of Germany's ports necessitated a tightening of economic sanctions against Germany's ally Japan, British policy also contributed in a minor way to the worsening of Japan's relations with the Anglo-American powers, and thus to a further narrowing of the possibilities for diplomatic conciliation in Asia during late 1941.

Of all the background factors that influenced policy decisions during 1941, the deadlocked China war, then in its fourth year, was the most significant. Here, however, the conventional image of a Japan whose military “had its hands full” or was “tied down” in China is somewhat misleading. The war was indeed bogging down Japan's large continental army. Yet precisely because Japan was fighting in China, its army and navy had been able to expand the industries, stockpile the weapons, and secure the enormous funds needed to confront the United States and Britain during the fall and early winter of 1941. After four years and five months of war in China, the army had expanded from seventeen divisions totaling 250,000 men in July 1937 to fifty-one divisions and 2.1 million men by December 8, 1941.
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By conducting military operations in China with minimal logistic support, engaging in mass looting and plunder, establishing client “puppet” regimes rather than direct military administration of occupied areas, all the while diverting, annually, large percentages of emergency military appropriations to build up basic war power, the army and navy arrived at a position where they felt they could risk a Pacific war. In this sense, China removed the restraints on Japanese military spending. It figured not simply as the justification for Japan's rising military budgets but as their very source. Without war in China neither the army nor the navy, even if they had wanted to, would have been able to take the gamble of advancing south by military force in late 1941.
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II

On July 2, 1941, ten days after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Konoe summoned an imperial conference to deal with matters debated but not resolved between June 5 and 23 within the Army and Navy Ministries and general staffs, and then aired at the June 30 and July 1 liaison conferences. The consensus of the conferences was that moving troops and planes into the southern part of French Indochina would not provoke the United States into coming out against Japan, but even if it did, vital national goals mandated taking the risk.

The document adopted at the imperial conference and immediately approved by the emperor—entitled “Outline of the Empire's National Policies in View of the Changing Situation”—opened the preparatory steps for new wars against the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States. For the first time a policy statement used the expression “war with Britain and the United States.” Specifically the July 2 document called for establishing the “Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere,” expediting the settlement of the China war, and advancing “south…in order to establish a solid basis for the nation's preservation and security [literally, ‘self-existence and self-defense'].” It further stipulated:

From start to finish the document was conditioned by circumstances and burdened by contingencies.

Where French Indochina was concerned, the policy outline projected movement of the army into the Cam Ranh Bay and Saigon areas to secure bases for further operations.
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It also marked out for confiscation (“at the appropriate time”) the remaining Western treaty enclaves in China, and specified the completing of preparations for the destruction of Anglo-American military power in Asia. On the other hand it neither approved Japanese intervention in the German-Soviet war (as sought by foreign minister Matsuoka and Privy Council President Hara Yoshimichi) nor ruled out the possibility of such intervention. In fact the July 2 imperial conference authorized secret preparations for a future attack against the Soviet Union, designated “Kwantung Army Special Grand Maneuvers.” This decision led to a succession of secret troop mobilizations at home, and to the massing, during July and the first week of August, of approximately seven to eight hundred thousand Japanese troops in northern Manchukuo. Their mission was to be ready by early September for a war with the Soviet Union, which, however, would be started only if the Germans succeeded in quickly destroying Soviet resistance in the West.
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Hirohito sanctioned this hard-line policy reluctantly but sanctioned it nevertheless.
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He ratified the idea of “not be[ing] deterred by the possibility of being involved in a war with Great Britain and the United States”; and his approval of the stationing of Japanese troops in southern Indochina very quickly provoked American and British military reaction. Later he caused one part of the new national
policy to be reversed. All concerned were thereby reminded that decisions of an imperial conference were not immutable but could be changed by the emperor if he wanted to do so.

On July 30 Hirohito made a major operational intervention by suggesting to General Sugiyama that the buildup in Manchukuo stop as it was probably preventing the Soviet Far Eastern Army from redeploying to fight in the West.
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No thought was given to aiding his ally Hitler. At this time the emperor did not desire a full-scale war with either the Soviet Union or the United States; but if war had to be, he was more inclined to risk it southward into the Anglo-American sphere of interest than fight the Russians; and if the Soviet Far Eastern Army departed westbound, in relative terms Japan's war-power in the North would immediately improve. The threat of Soviet attack to take advantage of Japanese operations in China and the South would become negligible. Ultimately, of course, the U.S. oil embargo would make a northward invasion impossible for the short term. For that reason also, the movement West of the Soviet Far Eastern forces would be gratifying. So, though for a short period of time in early July the “peace-loving” emperor had contemplated a military invasion of the Soviet Union even though he had ratified the Neutrality Pact with Russia a mere three months earlier, he changed his mind, gave an operational command, and as a result the liaison conference on August 9 cancelled for that year the “planned” invasion of the Soviet Union.
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Hirohito's intervention thus prevented Japan from going to war with the Soviet Union as the army high command wanted. An initial imperial decision did not control the final one at this point in time.

In the interim between the July 2 imperial conference and the next one on September 6, several important changes occurred in Japan's ruling setup, and in the situation facing its policy-makers. The conflict intensified between Prime Minister Konoe and foreign minister Matsuoka, who had become the most vocal advocate of the
go-north strategy. When Matsuoka forced a confrontation over how to handle negotiations with the U.S., Konoe, supported by the army and navy ministers, quickly reshuffled his cabinet in order to drop Matsuoka and bring in Admiral Toyoda Teijir
, a less mercurial figure. The formation of the third Konoe cabinet, however, provoked fear among middle echelon officers of the army and navy that Konoe would soon abandon both the Axis and the plan to advance into southern Indochina. As a result, the army and navy ministers—T
j
and Oikawa—made increased preparations for war against the United States and Britain a condition for their entering the cabinet.
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And, most important, Hirohito came to believe that war with the United States and Britain had to be risked, though he still hoped to avoid war if at all possible.