FDR - Jean Edward Smith [319]
By 1940 Japan’s wrongful incursion into China was three years old, with no conceivable end in sight. Japanese troops had won significant victories and occupied China’s most productive coastal regions but had not been able to subdue Chinese resistance. In a word, China had become a quagmire. The impatience of the military to end the stalemate brought down Japan’s government in July 1940 (the third government to fall in less than two years) and installed an Army-dominated regime pledged to expedite the war and solve Japan’s dependence on foreign imports, particularly those from the United States.12 The Roosevelt administration was not complicit in the fall of the government, but a more conciliatory stance toward Manchuria—as was urged by the American embassy in Tokyo—would have provided Japanese politicians more leverage to withstand the military.*
Until 1940 the Sino-Japanese conflict was a purely regional affair. It convulsed Asia but remained an isolated event unconnected with the accelerating pace of aggression in Europe.13 With a new government in Tokyo, that changed quickly. Encouraged by Hitler’s conquest of France and the Netherlands, as well as the onset of the Battle of Britain, Japan’s promilitary government turned its eye to the colonial outposts in Southeast Asia: the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies, the rubber plantations of British Malaya, and the tin mines and rice paddies of French Indochina. “We should not miss the present opportunity or we shall be blamed by posterity,” said Japan’s new war minister, General Hideki Tojo.14
With Britain under German attack, Tokyo prevailed upon London to close the Burma Road for three months (cutting China’s principal supply route) and to withdraw the British garrison from Shanghai. A more concerted move against the French and Dutch colonies appeared imminent. The path to a world war lay open. Roosevelt responded on July 26 with an embargo banning the export of high-octane aviation gasoline and premium grades of iron and steel scrap to Japan. It was a slap on the wrist, but Washington hoped it would send a message to Tokyo and deter further moves against Southeast Asia. “We are not going to get into any war by forcing Japan into a position where she is going to fight for some reason or another,” FDR told the State Department.15
Roosevelt’s limited embargo produced the opposite effect to what he intended. It riled the Japanese but did nothing to restrain them. Indeed, it convinced Tokyo that its American supply line was in jeopardy and should be replaced as soon as possible. On September 23, with the reluctant acquiescence of Vichy France, Japan occupied the northern portion of Indochina, adjacent to the Chinese province of Yunnan. Roosevelt responded the following day with a complete embargo on all types of iron and steel intended for Japan and on September 25 announced a $100 million loan to China through the Export-Import Bank.16 An implacable tit for tat had begun. The United States and Japan settled into a rhythm that would characterize their relations for the next year. Each undertook a series of escalating moves that provoked but failed to restrain the other. Japan gambled on the action it could take without precipitating open conflict with the United States. The Roosevelt administration—which did not give its full attention to the matter—reckoned it could pressure Tokyo by economic means without driving the Japanese to war.17
Two days after Roosevelt announced the loan to China, Japan joined the Berlin-Rome axis. The move caught Washington by surprise. Japan recognized the leadership of Germany and Italy in Europe; Germany and Italy recognized Japanese hegemony in Greater East Asia. All three agreed to come to the aid of one another if attacked