FDR - Jean Edward Smith [325]
Grew said, “I returned to the Embassy from that historic meeting with the firm conviction that we had been dealing with a man of unquestioned sincerity, a point which need not be labored when one considers the high traditions of Prince Konoye’s background and family, extending back to the dim ages of Japanese history.”54
Grew immediately informed Washington of his talk with Konoye: “the most important cable to go from his hand since the start of his diplomatic career.”55 In numerous follow-up messages, including a personal letter to FDR on September 22, he warned that time was short.* Above all, he cautioned against the State Department’s tendency to insist on detailed, ironclad commitments before the meeting. It was not the Japanese way. The conciliation process was evolutionary. Konoye, with the Emperor’s backing, was taking the first step. The alternative, Grew warned, was replacement of the Konoye government by a military dictatorship and a steady drift toward war.56
Washington disregarded Grew’s advice. The hawks in the cabinet—Stimson, Knox, Ickes, and Morgenthau—were not interested in a settlement short of Japan’s capitulation. “I approve of stringing out negotiations,” Stimson told Morgenthau, but “they should not be allowed to ripen into a personal conference between the President and the Prime Minister. I greatly fear that such a conference if actually held would produce concessions which would be highly dangerous to our vitally important relations with China.”57 Hull and the Far Eastern Division of the State Department shared Stimson’s concern. When alerted to the possibility of a Roosevelt-Konoye meeting, the division warned Hull of the consequences, believing that FDR might be too accommodating. It insisted that prior to any summit meeting Japan announce its intention to withdraw from the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy; agree to remove its troops from China; clarify its stand on the open door; and resolve whatever ambiguities there were concerning Hull’s four principles for reconciliation.58
Hull needed no prodding. Weaned on the fundamentalist pessimism of southern Appalachia, the secretary wanted every i dotted before agreeing to a meeting with the Japanese prime minister. He was also concerned about the public effect of such a conference coming so soon after FDR’s dramatic meeting with Churchill off Newfoundland. “I was thoroughly satisfied that a meeting with Konoye, without an advance agreement, could only result in another Munich or in nothing at all. I was opposed to the first Munich and still more opposed to a second Munich.”59
In his Memoirs Hull wrote, “President Roosevelt would have relished a meeting with Konoye, and at first was excited at the prospect. But he instantly agreed that it would be disastrous to hold the meeting without first arriving at a satisfactory agreement.”60 As Hull would have it, the State Department should control negotiations with Japan, and only when it was satisfied should FDR meet with Konoye to ratify what the diplomats had agreed to. Hull’s account appears unlikely. For someone who placed as much faith in his ability to improvise extemporaneous solutions as Roosevelt did, and who thrived in unstructured negotiations, it is difficult to believe that he would have “instantly” passed up the opportunity to meet with Konoye.* A more plausible explanation is that FDR, consumed by the war in Europe, had given the deteriorating situation in the Far East too little attention. Deeply engaged with the battle against German U-boats